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“What’s it for?”

“We’re going to inlay it in the door,” I said. “So anybody who walks in here knows whose shop this is.”

“And?”

He waited. He was good at waiting.

“And it goes on everything we build together. From now on.”

My father turned the pine over, checked the blank side of it, and turned it face up again.

“What are these letters?”

“Nico’s grandfather’s initials.”

Nico moved to my side and was the most nervous I’d ever seen him. My mom, still holding her coffee cup, moved closer to Dad.

My father turned the pine so the burned face was toward him. “That’s my mother. And that’s your grandfather.”

“Yes, sir,” Nico said, and my dad nodded at him.

Nobody said anything for a moment as Dad set the pine where he’d found it so it faced out into the shop. My mother put her hand around my father’s arm.

Dad turned his attention to Nico. “You know, he wouldn’t open that box.”

Nico didn’t pretend not to know which box. He simply nodded.

“It sat on his desk for years. I’d go into that office and see it, and I’d think, he’ll do it soon.” He put his hands in his coat pockets.

“He was afraid of it.”

Dad worked his jaw, searching for the words. “I’m her son. I couldn’t get him to do it. I couldn’t even ask him. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yes.”

Dad crossed the room to where the stamps stood together and picked up Nana Mary’s. He held it carefully as he studied the mark. “Now she’s in the light. Back to work. Thank you.” I heard the slight variation in his voice. Mom would’ve heard it too.

I didn’t understand how much I’d affected Dad by not using the stamp all these years. How much had he held back when we finished the workbench and I didn’t use it then?

But here on Christmas Day, my father was telling a man he’d met four hours ago the things he’s never once been able to tell me. He had nine years to see that box sit on my desk, and he never said a word. He waited until I was finally ready.

When he was done, he set the stamp exactly in its place, even squaring it to the edge of the counter. Then he came to me. He put his hand on the back of my neck the way he’d done when I was twelve. “Show me the rest.”

Nico and I showed him all of it. The headboard. The boards we’d picked to make bookshelves. What would become the chairs. The half-finished table for Sarah’s client. My father stood in his coat and took it all in.

Mom moved to my bench, where she had a clear view of the whole thing. She drank her coffee and watched Nico and me talk about the work still to do.

Nico

The taillights traveled down the street a little after seven, and the house went quiet all at once.

Jake shut the front door and put his back against it. “We survived.”

“Did we?”

“We did.” He grinned, tired around the eyes. “You got the twenty questions.”

“I liked her questions.”