Delia had the tape in her coat pocket. She had carried it all the way from Chicago in her hand, because she was afraid of it getting crushed in her bag. She took it out and set it on the table between them, the way Evelyn had set it on her counter.
Anton didn't touch it either. He looked at the spine. FOR A. — NYE '91.
"She wanted you to have it," Delia said. "She's never played it. She says it isn't hers."
"She's right," he said. His voice had changed. "It isn't."
He put one finger on the case and slid it an inch toward himself and stopped.
"I'm not going to see her," he said. "Tell her I'm grateful for this. Tell her I don't hate her, which is true about half the days. Tell her I'm not going to see her, and that it isn't to punish her, it's because I finally have a life up here that doesn't have a hole in the middle of it shaped like 1991, and I'm not ready to stand next to the hole again. Maybe someday. Not this year."
"Okay," Delia said.
"You're not going to argue?"
"No," she said. "You get to say no."
He looked at her over his reading glasses, a long appraising look, and then, unexpectedly, at Sam, who had said nothing for an hour and had kept everybody's coffee filled.
"You two," Anton said. "Are you the ones who throw his party now?"
"She throws it," Sam said. "I bring the ice."
"Mm," said Anton, and put the tape in his inside pocket, against his chest, and buttoned his coat over it.
IV. The Year
On the drive home, at a rest stop off I-94 just south of Kenosha, Sam turned off the engine and told her about his father.