"Operation what?"
"You don't want to know," she said. "Except that you asked a nine-year-old on Monday if I was coming home for Christmas, and got a face, apparently."
He did not say anything. It was too dark now to see whether he was blushing, but he looked down at the snow, and she watched him decide not to deny it.
"He was right, you know," Danny said finally. "Frank. On the tape. About the wrench."
Lena bent down. She scooped up a handful of snow from beside her father's stone, and packed it, turning it in her bare palms until it squeaked, and he watched her do it and did not move, and she did not throw it. She stood holding it between them, white and round in the blue dusk.
"I'm going to California," she said. "In February. I got the job. I was going to turn it down. I'm not going to turn it down."
"Good," he said.