Page 70

“Nothing happened.” Her voice cracks on the last word.

My chest tightens. I look at the thing in her hand. It’s an ornament.

I’ve seen it before, but I don’t know where it came from. Small. Wooden. A Christmas tree painted green with tiny colored dots for ornaments. The paint is chipped along one edge.

Her fingers curl around it. “It was my grandma’s.”

Oh. I sit down. Right there on the floor. Never mind the fact that I’m wearing only a pair of flannel plaid pajama bottoms.

Noelle looks at me.

I don’t explain myself.

After a second, she looks back at the ornament.

“Grandpa made it.”

She turns it over.

There are words written on the back in faded black ink.

I can’t read them from here.

“He wasn’t very crafty,” she says with a watery laugh.

“No?”

“No. He cut it out with a jigsaw and nearly took off his thumb.”

“That seems inefficient.”

Another small laugh. “He would have liked you.”

The words hit somewhere I don’t expect. “You think?”

“Oh, yes. He distrusted men who talked too much.”

“Smart man.”

“He also thought anyone who paid more than thirty dollars for a haircut was morally questionable.”

I run a hand over my hair. “Then maybe not.”

She laughs again. It’s small, but it’s real. Then her face crumples.

Fuck.

“I just miss them.”

There it is. Quietly devastating. I don’t know what to say. I’m good at problems.

Give me a piece of land nobody can develop, a permitting issue, a contractor six months behind schedule. Give me a lawsuit. A financing problem. A deal everyone says can’t be done.

I will find the solution.

I’m even good at consoling my four-year-old son. But my wife?

I can’t solve this.