Theresa came closer and lowered her voice. She was eight years older than Lena, shorter and rounder, with their mother's high forehead and their father's laugh, and her own hair permed into a cloud of tight curls that she had been trying to grow out since Easter. "Ma heard," she said. "She's doing the face."
"Which face?"
"The fish face." Theresa meant the face their mother made when she was frying the smelts, a thin-lipped concentration that could just as easily mean she was angry with someone. On Christmas Eve, there was no way to tell the difference until it was too late. "Go change. You're dripping on the runner. And Lena." Theresa's hand closed on her wrist. "Are you okay?"
Lena looked down at the presents still clutched against her sweater. She had not set them down. She realized she had not set them down since Sunday, not really; she had carried them from the garage to her old bedroom and back down to the living room and out the door and across the snow, as if they were something that might evaporate if left unattended.
"I'm going to open them tonight," she said. "With him. In the garage."
Theresa's eyebrows went up and stayed there.
"Don't," Lena said.
"I didn't say a word."