A pair of leather work gloves lay on the bench. Daniel picked them up without knowing why. They were good gloves, broken in, dark at the palms. The left glove was wrong. The last two fingers, ring and pinky, had been folded down inside and stitched flat with heavy brown thread, careful small stitches, so the glove fit a hand that only had three fingers and a thumb.
He stood holding it for a long moment. Something cold opened behind his breastbone, like a door on a winter night, and he didn't yet know what room it led to.
Behind him the kitchen door opened and Owen came down the two steps into the garage in pajama pants and the green hoodie, which he had apparently slept in or put on again first thing. His hair stood up on one side. He looked enormously relieved, and Daniel realized the boy had woken, found the bed in the master bedroom empty except for his mother, and come looking. He wanted to check that his father hadn't been a dream. Daniel put the glove down and opened his arms, and Owen walked into them and leaned there, warm and heavy with sleep.
The boy had brought something. He held it against his chest: an old Nike shoebox, the corners mended with layer on layer of Scotch tape, MY TRESURE BOX written on the lid in marker, with a skull and crossbones that had been colored over at some point, possibly by order of his mother. He had promised to show his father the treasure box. He had remembered at five in the morning. He set it on the workbench next to the gloves and opened it with a magician's ceremony.