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“That’s where he taught me to put it.”
She was quiet. Then she moved her hand two inches, over to the leg, and then to the letters, and back to the leg.
“It’s right by the leg.” Her kind eyes almost undid me. “So he’s under here holding it up. Every Christmas, every dinner—he’s right here with everybody.” Her voice softened. “He’s still here, then. Isn’t he?”
For a moment I couldn’t speak, and a tear escaped my eye. “Yes. I guess he is.”
She held her hand out, and I reached out and squeezed it. She backed her way out from under the table. I moved closer to the mark, and put my hand on it.
“Merry Christmas, Deda,” I said softly.
Twelve
Jake
I was rinsing plates and getting them into the dishwasher when Dad came in. Chilly air followed him through the back door. I couldn’t get a read on his mood.
He’d been in the shop about twenty minutes. In that time, I’d organized leftovers so Mom and Dad could take some home, and washed the roasting pan. I also kept an eye on the shop windows.
When he came inside, he didn’t remove his coat. He barely even got all the way into the kitchen. “Come out to the shop. All of you.”
“Dennis?” my mother said. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
That was everything he gave us. He held the back door open. My mother put her cardigan on and took her coffee with her. Nico and I didn’t get into coats, but we traded a look.
The shop sits at fifty degrees when we’re not working. You don’t let glue freeze. You don’t let wood take a big temperature swing if you can help it. I’d had an HVAC unit put in when I set the place up, to hold the environment steady winter and summer. Coming in from the yard, it wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t freezing either.
Everything was in the same place it was when we finished in here last night. The rolling worktable, which we’d used for a new purpose, still sat in the middle of the space. The headboard sat covered on the cabinet counter. Sarah’s client’s table sat under a blanket along the wall. The lumber rack. The tool chest. The two stamps side by side where they live now. Last night’s votives still gave off faint light along several of the surfaces.
My father headed directly to my bench. He put his hand flat on the top and left it there. The way he’d set a hand on something he’d built himself.
“Jacob and I built this,” he said to Nico.
“Yes, sir. He told me.”
“I did the legs. He did the top.” He bent and checked underneath. I couldn’t imagine what he thought he’d find. Nothing had changed since we’d worked on it. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but he guided me. I never got the knack for it from my mom the way he did.”
“It’s a solid build,” Nico said.
My father straightened up and looked at him a beat longer than he had to. “Yes. It is.” He crossed to the built-ins and picked up the pine where we’d burned our joint mark. “What’s this?”
“It’s ours.” Nico and I spoke together.
“Ours?”
“That’s Nana Mary’s knot.” I moved to him and circled the air over the mark with my finger. “And that’s Nico’s grandfather’s. His grain. His letters. They join, right there.” I ran a finger over the join.
“You drew it?”
“He drew it. I burned her half.”
“With what?”
“A pen. Freehand. There’s no stamp for it. Not yet.”
He held it under the light. Nico and Mom stayed behind us, watching, and not saying a word.
