He put the hood down gently and latched it. When he looked up she was standing by the workbench with her hand flat on top of the red present, and she was crying without making any sound at all, the tears just running down past the careful wing of liner and over the rose of her cheek, and she was not doing anything to stop them.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Let's open them."
She untied the ribbon. He came and stood beside her at the bench, close enough now that their sleeves touched, and she slid the silver present toward him and kept the red one.
"You first," she said. "It's heavy. I nearly dropped it in the Sheas' yard."
"You ran across a lawn with this?"
"I thought you were leaving."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he picked at the tape on the silver foil with a thumbnail, carefully, because Frank had taught him that good paper could be used twice, and folded the foil back. Inside was a cardboard box with FORD stamped on the side in faded blue, and inside the cardboard, nested in crumpled pages of the Plain Dealer sports section from December of 1985, was a steering box. It was rebuilt, painted black, the input shaft wrapped in a clean rag and tied with string. Taped to the top of it was a cassette in a clear plastic case. The label said DANNY #144 — IN PERSON.
Danny did not say anything. He lifted the steering box out of the newspaper with both hands, the way you would lift a sleeping animal, and set it on the bench, and stood with his palms flat on either side of it and his head down.