The Toys We Wrapped Twice

“Your mom went and got them all again,” Jeremy said. “With her own money. She drove all the way to Lawrence. That was her, fixing what I did. And she didn’t say one bad word about me to you, did she?”

Hunter shook his head slowly.

“That’s because your mom is a good woman,” he said. “Better than I was being. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lied to you. That’s on me. It’s not on you, and it’s not on her.”

The room was very quiet. Even the kitchen had gone quiet.

Ty put down his piece of Lego. Then he climbed off his chair and put his arms around his dad’s neck, the way he had put his arms around me the day after Christmas.

“It’s okay, Dad,” he said. “We got them back.”

Jeremy put his face against Ty’s shoulder. His big back shook once, and then he held still.

Hunter did not hug him. Hunter is ten, and he is more like me than either of us would like. He sat in his chair in his red jersey and looked at his father for a long time.

Then he said, “Are you still coming to my game on Saturday?”

Jeremy lifted his head. “I’ll be there,” he said. “Front row.”

Hunter nodded once and went back to the Lego. That was all he had to give right then, and Jeremy took it.

In the kitchen

Later, after the pie, after Aunt Dot had packed up and Earl had gone home with a plate of ham wrapped in foil, Jeremy found me in Loretta’s kitchen, drying dishes.

He picked up a towel and started drying too. We stood there side by side at her old porcelain sink for a while without saying anything.

“Three payments,” he said finally. “On the pickup. Four hundred and twelve a month. They cut my routes in September and I just kept thinking it would turn around.”

I kept drying the gravy boat.

“The repo man called on the twenty-second,” he said. “Said he’d be out the day after Christmas. And if they take the pickup, I can’t get to the yard at four in the morning, and if I can’t get to the yard, I don’t have a job at all.”

“So you took the boys’ presents,” I said.

“I saw that envelope,” he said. “With the receipts. In your handwriting. And I thought, that’s one payment and the late fees. That buys me thirty days.”

He put the towel down on the counter.

“I told myself they’d never know,” he said. “I told myself I’d make it up on their birthdays. I’ve been telling myself a lot of things.”

I thought about the white envelope in my drawer, and the forty dollars every payday since August. I thought about my bald tires. I thought about Ty crawling under that shelf in Lawrence.

I also thought about the phone call in October, when he called to tell me the child support would be late before I had to ask. I thought about how I had said fine and hung up and never once asked if he was all right.

“You could have told me,” I said. “Before. You could have just called me.”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying I’d have had money for you. I didn’t. But I’d have known. We could have figured something out that wasn’t this.”

“I know,” he said again. “Mom said the same thing. In a lot more words.”

I set down the gravy boat.

“I’m going to pay you back,” he said. “All of it. Every dime. I don’t know how yet, but I am.”

“I believe you,” I said. And I found out, standing there, that I did.