The Hundred Dollar Bill on Christmas Eve

Eleven people

The basement isn’t big. But it’s long, and that night it was full. Wyatt had to go around the coffee table and step over Caleb’s new remote control truck. He walked past his Uncle Mark and Aunt Jen on the loveseat. He walked past Tom, who was holding a sleepy Lily.

He walked past Lisa, and past Emma and Caleb on the floor. He walked past Pat in her rocking chair by the woodstove.

He walked past his own father.

He walked past Gene.

Eleven people. I counted them later, lying awake. Eleven people that six-year-old boy walked past, in tractor pajamas, to get to his sister.

By the time he got to the couch, the room had gone quiet. Not all at once. It went quiet the way a field goes quiet when a hawk flies over, one sound dropping out at a time, until all you could hear was the woodstove ticking.

Wyatt stopped in front of Addie. He held out the bill.

“Here,” he said.

Addie looked at it. Then she looked at me. Her pencil was still in her hand.

“Wy,” she said, “that’s yours.”

“I know,” he said. “Grandpa forgot you. So you can have mine.”

The room

I have never heard a room that quiet with that many people in it.

Addie tried to give it back. She pushed his hand toward him with the money still in it, very gently, the way you would push back a puppy that was trying to climb into your lap.

“No, Wy, I can’t,” she said. “It’s okay. I don’t need it.”

Wyatt put his hands behind his back.

“I already gave it to you,” he said. “You can’t give back a present. Mom says.”

I did say that. I said it about a hundred times, mostly about a sweater from Amanda’s mother that Addie didn’t like. I never thought it would come back like this.

Addie’s eyes filled up. She was ten years old and trying so hard not to cry in front of her cousins that her chin was shaking. The bill was in her lap, on top of her sketchbook, right on top of the drawing of the tree.

I moved then. I didn’t think about it.

I slid off the couch onto my knees, right there on the carpet, and put one arm around Wyatt and one hand on Addie’s knee. I wanted them both to feel me there. I wanted Addie to know she was not going to sit through this one alone.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I said to her. “It’s okay.”

I did not look at Gene. I couldn’t, yet.

And then, behind me, I heard the recliner creak.

It wasn’t Gene’s. It was the one by the bar. Ryan’s.