The Toys We Wrapped Twice

The porch

He got up and got his coat off the hook by the door, and his mother got her barn jacket, and they went out the front door together, and the storm door banged shut behind them.

The room stayed quiet for a minute. Then Aunt Dot said, too brightly, “Well, who wants pie?” and got up and went into the kitchen.

Ty looked up at me. “Is Dad in trouble?”

“Grandma just wants to talk to him,” I said.

“About the presents?”

I did not lie to him. I said, “I think so, baby. Why don’t you and me start on that fire station while we wait? It’s got about a thousand pieces.”

So we did. We opened the box on the end of the table and spread out the little bags of pieces, and Hunter put on his jersey over his shirt and sat down and helped too, even though he said it was a kid set.

The old neighbor from down the road came and sat with us. His name is Earl, and he is eighty-one, and he put on his reading glasses and helped Ty sort the red pieces from the gray pieces without saying one word about anything.

Through the lace curtains I could see them out there. Loretta was standing with her arms crossed against the cold. Jeremy was sitting on the porch steps with his elbows on his knees and his head down.

She talked for a long time. I could not hear the words. Once he looked up at her and said something, and she shook her head, and he put his head back down.

They were out there for almost twenty minutes. It was twenty-eight degrees.

Kneeling

When the storm door opened again, Jeremy came in first. His face was red from the cold and from something else. His mother came in behind him and hung up her barn jacket and went straight to the kitchen without looking at anybody.

Jeremy stood in the doorway of the dining room for a second. Then he walked over to where the boys were sitting with the Lego, and he got down on one knee on the floor between their chairs.

“Boys,” he said. “I need to tell you something, and I need you to listen to the whole thing.”

Hunter set down the piece he was holding. Ty kept holding his.

“Your mom’s presents didn’t fall out of my truck,” Jeremy said. “That’s not what happened. I made that up.”

He stopped and swallowed.

“I was the one who lost them,” he said. “I made a bad choice. I was scared about some money things, grown-up things, and I did something I shouldn’t have done with your mom’s presents. And then I told you a story so I wouldn’t have to tell you the truth.”

Ty looked at him with his whole face open, the way little kids do when they do not understand yet whether they are supposed to be sad.