"Your voice is broken," she told him.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess it is."
"Lila." Nora knelt and took her daughter's wrists, gently, and unhooked her fingers one by one from the canvas. "Lila, look at my face. This is Papa's brother. His name is Tom. Do you remember I told you Papa had a brother who lived far away?"
Lila looked at her, and then at the man, and then at Nora again. "He has Papa's face."
"I know. They were born on the same day. They were twins. Like Avery and Ella at school, remember? Except boys."
"Avery and Ella don't look the same," Lila said. "Ella has glasses."
"These two looked the same."
Lila turned and studied him. The train doors chimed and closed behind him. The 5:52 pulled away north toward Beacon and Poughkeepsie with its windows lit, and the wind of its going lifted the hair off Lila's forehead. Tom didn't move. He stood with his arms hanging at his sides like a man waiting to be told whether he could leave.
"Check your pocket," Lila said to him suddenly.
"What?"
"Your pocket. The coat one. That's where the present is."
"Lila," Nora said, "honey, he doesn't—"
But Lila had already darted forward and pushed her hand into the right-hand pocket of the canvas jacket, the way she had pushed it into Daniel's peacoat four hundred times, and Tom flinched and then held still and let her. Her hand came out with something in it. She opened her fist.
It was a coin. Bronze-colored, a little bigger than a half dollar, with a triangle stamped in a circle and words around the edge. Lila turned it over. On the other side there was a Roman numeral nine.
"What's this?" she asked.
Nora knew what it was. Her own father had carried a drawer full of them, one of every color, and none of them had ever gotten past the number two.
Tom crouched down so his face was level with Lila's. He did it the way Daniel used to, one knee on the ground and one up, and Nora had to look away at the river.
"That's a thing I got," he said. "For keeping a promise for nine months."