There were fewer presents than there had been the year before. Claire noticed this right away, and noticed too that the pile under the tree was arranged differently, not in a great silver-and-white flood but in five smaller groups, one for each of them. Madison got a pottery wheel of her own, secondhand, which made her scream louder than the laptop had. Greg got a bird feeder that was guaranteed squirrel-proof, and Grandma Ruth said, "Harold will see that as a challenge."
When it was Claire's turn, her mother got up and went to the tree herself.
She came back with a small box wrapped in brown paper, tied with green ribbon. She held it a moment before handing it over, and Claire could see that her hands were not quite steady.
"I wasn't sure," Diane said. "I've been trying to learn what you like. I asked your grandmother. And Madison. And I read some of the essays you sent home." She gave a small, self-conscious laugh. "I hope it's right."
Claire untied the ribbon. Inside the box, on a bed of tissue, was a fountain pen. It was old, black lacquer gone soft with age, a gold nib, a small dent near the cap. She looked up, confused.
"It was your grandfather's," Grandma Ruth said from the armchair. "Walter's. He wrote every one of his letters to me with that pen. Your mother called me in October and asked if there was anything of his I might be willing to part with. Something for a writer." She smiled. "I told her I'd been saving it for you for years. She asked if she could be the one to give it to you."
Claire held the pen in her palm. It was heavier than it looked, like the quilt had been.
"There's ink in the box, too," Diane said quickly. "And a notebook. I didn't know what kind, so I got the plain kind, I thought you might..."
She stopped, because Claire had gotten up from the couch and crossed the room and put her arms around her.
For a second her mother went stiff with surprise. Then Diane's arms came up, and held on, and Claire felt her mother's breath catch against her hair.
"Thank you," Claire said. "It's exactly right."
"I'm still learning," her mother whispered.
"I know. Me too."
When she sat back down, her grandmother was watching her from the armchair with her pale blue eyes shining, a cup of tea in her hands. Grandma Ruth set the cup down on its saucer. It made a small, distinct click, and everyone in the room, remembering, went still.
"Well," Grandma Ruth said, perfectly pleasant, looking around at the five small piles of paper and ribbon, at her son and his wife, at her two granddaughters sitting shoulder to shoulder on the couch. "I suppose I have only one question."
Madison started to laugh before she even finished.
"Where," said Grandma Ruth, "did all the sweet potatoes go?"
And the whole family, for the first time in a very long time, laughed together, loudly, without anyone watching to see whether the house looked happy from the street.
Outside, the snow began to fall.
THE END