On Thanksgiving night I got to Weber Road at eleven-fifteen. I let myself in and turned on the lamp by the couch and the light over the stove and sat at the kitchen table under the auto parts calendar with the manila envelope in front of me and waited, the way I had waited at that table a thousand times as a girl, in my pajamas, past my bedtime, listening for the bus brakes on Cleveland Avenue and then his boots on the stoop.
He came in at eleven-forty with the Kroger bag. Two turkey sandwiches on rye, a container of cranberry sauce, two slices of pumpkin pie in a clamshell, and a two-liter of Vernors. He stopped in the kitchen doorway in his work jacket with his name over the pocket and the cold coming off him and looked at me and looked at the envelope.
"Hey, kiddo," he said.
"Hi, Dad."
He set the bag on the counter. He took off his jacket and hung it on the hook by the back door. He washed his hands at the sink with the orange pumice soap, the way he always did, and then he came and sat down across from me, and put his hands flat on the table, and looked at the envelope again.
"Mrs. Severance tell you?" he said.
"No. Your suit did."
I told him. Mr. Avedian, and the lining, and the seam ripper, and the cotton rectangle with the blue thread. I told him about the records center. I took the transcript out of the envelope and put it on the table between us, and he looked at the blue cover with my name on it and did not touch it either, exactly the way Claudette had not touched it. They were more alike than either of them would ever be willing to hear.
When I got to the part about opening the lining, he closed his eyes.