"I know," he said. "I've noticed."
He did not say anything else. He just waited, the way she had waited for him in the warming house, and he picked the gumdrop snowman up off the floor and set it back on the cookie sheet in front of her, among the wreckage, like an offering.
Gina looked at it for a long time.
"My father," she said, "owned a hardware store on Halsted. Castellano Hardware. Since 1951. He knew where every single screw in that store was, every washer, every hinge. If you came in and described a part, just described it, like, 'It's got a little thing that goes like this,' he could walk you right to it. People came from Pilsen, they came from the Back of the Yards. He was—" She stopped. "He was a lot. He was loud and stubborn and competitive about everything, bocce and parking spaces and whose tomatoes came in first. He taught me to haggle when I was seven. He taught me to never let go of anything I had my hands on. Never let go first, he'd say, the one who lets go first loses."
Graham's hand was resting on the table, very near hers. He did not move it.
"And every year," Gina said, "on the second Saturday of December, he'd close the store at noon and put a sign in the window that said GONE HUNTING, and he'd take me downtown on the bus to Halloran's. Just me. And the hunt was — we'd find out what the toy was that year, the one everybody wanted, the one you couldn't get. The year of the walking robot. The year of the talking bear. And we'd go after it. We'd go to Halloran's first and then Carson's and then Wieboldt's and then anywhere, all over the city, all day, until we found one. And we usually did. He was very good at it. He'd talk to the stock boys, he'd find out when the trucks came in. We'd have hot dogs at a stand somewhere and he'd tell me strategy like we were planning D-Day."
"Who was it for?" Graham asked quietly. "The toy?"
Gina smiled down at the gumdrop snowman.