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Then his mother slid a box across to me.

I ran my hands over it a second too long.

“It’s not much,” she said. “Jacob hasn’t told me one thing about you except that you make furniture.”

I opened the box to find a pair of gloves. Good ones, lined deerskin. The kind a man wears to move lumber or do other things where his hands need to be cushioned, or just warm.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Do they fit?”

I slid them on and my hands immediately warmed. I made a fist and opened it. “Nice and snug.” I held up my hands and turned them so she could see.

My parents moved to Florida two years ago. Nobody had put a box with my name on it under a tree since. Now they send money because they know that’s always useful, while I send them something I’ve made.

Jake had a carefully wrapped package that I’d watched him wrap and re-wrap three times last night. He leaned over and kissed his mother’s cheek. “Merry Christmas.”

Kathleen tore the paper off like a child, which is maybe where Jake got that trait from. When she got her first look at the maple, her eyes went wide.

She held it carefully and turned it around and over. She found the cherry line in the lid and traced it down with one finger. Her eyes were wet, and she didn’t seem to care.

“Jacob, it’s⁠—”

“It’s a jewelry box.”

“I know what it is, silly.” She rolled her eyes at him, and I had to swallow a snicker. “I asked you for one two years ago and you said you’d think about it.”

“And I did.” He gave her a sheepish smile.

She turned it around once more. Then she opened the lid. Her mouth formed an O, but she said nothing. Instead, she turned the box so the open lid faced her husband.

I knew what was there. The Celtic knot burned into the pale maple, sharp all the way around. MS woven through the lines. Burned last night in our workshop, with my hands over Jake’s.

His father stood up and took the box from Kathleen. He crossed to the window, tilted it toward the light, and studied the lid. Once he closed it, he examined the outside, turning it over and studying every facet.

Then he opened it again.

“Who pressed this?”

“I did,” Jake said.

His father set the box down in front of his wife carefully.

“It’s on the inside,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Then he sat down in the borrowed oak chair that creaked and said nothing else.

I’ve listened to Jake play on the radio. There’s a half-second after a hit lands. The crowd changes pitch, and the man calling the game stops in the middle of a word.

That was this, except it lasted much longer.

His mother reached over and put her hand over her husband’s. Without a word to him, she came back to asking me about my family and what it was like moving here from Russia when I was young.

A few minutes later, Dennis pushed away from the dining table. He’d been quiet, and the only way I could describe him was contemplative.

“I’m going out to the shop,” he said, at a break in the conversation.