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My eyes narrow.

“The rest?”

She bites her bottom lip.

Dottie abruptly turns her back.

“Define rest.”

“Well, Maverick, before you get upset, I want you to remember that you told me nothing permanent.”

“I remember.”

“Good.”

“And?”

“And everything can technically be removed.”

My eyes narrow. “Technically?”

“I feel like you’re focusing on the wrong word of that sentence.”

“What did you do?”

Shiloh grabs my hand.

“Come see.”

His fingers are small and sticky and I don’t even care. He pulls, and I let him.

Noelle follows us out of the kitchen.

I can hear her whisper something to Dottie.

Dottie laughs.

I don’t catch the words.

I’m too busy noticing the three stockings hanging from the mantel when we enter the great room. The ones I’ve studied in the pictures far more often than was necessary. They’re a little different in person.

Shiloh’s is green. Mine is dark red. Noelle’s is cream.

Three stockings.

Three names. Fat, wobbly glitter-glue letters. Up close, I can see the fingerprints in the glitter. Small ones. And one larger one, pressed into the corner of my K, where someone steadied his hand. I want to touch it, trace my fingers over it. I don’t.

Shiloh drops my hand and races toward the tree.

“Look, Daddy!”

I look at the tree. At the paper ornaments. At the lights. At the evidence of my son everywhere.

A construction-paper star with SHILOH printed across it in Noelle’s handwriting. A pinecone rolled in so much glitter it’s practically radioactive. A lopsided clay handprint with a hole punched through the top for the ribbon.

Noelle stands beside the doorway, watching me carefully, like she’s worried she went too far. Her arms are wrapped around her middle. She’s holding her breath. I can tell by the way her shoulders have gone still. She’s waiting for me to take it away from him. From both of them.

I think about the house I left. About the catalog-perfect decorations we usually have. Perfect, tasteful, subtle and very expensive. And yet empty.