He wasn't listening to the lesson. He was listening to his daughter's voice coming out from under a car, explaining something to a grown woman, and the woman laughing at the right places. It was the sound of a kitchen, almost. It was a sound he hadn't heard in his own shop or his own house in two and a half years, and it went into him under the ribs like a cold draft under a door, and he had to go into the office for a minute and pretend to look for an invoice.
Arvo was in there with his feet up and the pulla.
"Pretty," said Arvo.
"Don't start."
"I don't start. I say pretty. The red hair, like my aunt Ilta. She broke a man's arm once with a butter churn." Arvo chewed. "What church?"
"Bethany."
"Ah." Arvo's eyebrows went up and stayed there.
"What, ah?"
"Nothing, ah. Ah is ah." Arvo picked a cardamom seed out of his teeth. "You should go sometime. To Bethany. You used to go."
"I used to do a lot of things."
He went back out into the bay before Arvo could say anything else. Nora and Birdie had come out from under the car and were sitting side by side on an upturned five-gallon bucket and a tire, respectively, drinking coffee from the thermos lid and Birdie drinking hot chocolate from the machine, and Nora was looking at Birdie's head.
"Who does your braids?" she asked.
"Dad," said Birdie. "He's not very good at it. He learned from a book."