Owen was sitting on the porch steps.
He was eight now. He had turned eight in March, and Daniel had been there, in person, in the backyard of the townhouse with eleven second-graders and a sheet cake shaped like a tank and Claire on the back steps helping hand out juice boxes. He had grown again. He was all legs, his face longer, two big front teeth that he still had to grow into. He wore a green hoodie. It wasn't the same one. The old one had finally gotten so short in the sleeves that it stopped at his wrist bones, and Claire had tried to buy him a blue one, then a red one. Owen had refused both with the iron dignity of a small man who knows exactly who he is. So she had searched three stores and finally the internet and found the same hoodie, the same forest green, two sizes up. The old one hung on a hook in his closet at the townhouse. He wouldn't let anyone give it away.
Owen saw the truck and came down the steps at a run. Daniel got out and went to one knee on the walk in time to catch him, the way he always would, the way he had decided a long time ago that he always would, as long as the boy kept running at him.