What he wanted to do, for one bright red second, was shout. He could feel the shout in his chest, the size of the room. He wanted to hold the tags up in her face and say what is wrong with you, what is wrong with you, in front of God and the tree and everybody.
He looked at Jonah on the rug and did not.
He put the tags in the pocket of his pajama pants. He went down on his knees on the carpet, which hurt, because his knees were thirty-six and had loaded trailers all night, and he put one hand flat on his son's back. He could feel Jonah's ribs going up and down, fast, under the thin worn cotton.
"Jonah," he said. "Hey, buddy. Hey. It's Daddy."
Jonah did not lift his head. The thin sound went on.
"Can I pick you up?"
A small nod into the carpet. Terrence slid his hands under his son's arms and lifted him, and Jonah came up limp and heavy the way sad children are heavy, and Terrence sat back on his heels and held him against his chest. Jonah's face was wet and hot. He smelled like sleep and the cheap detergent and, faintly, the strawberry shampoo he had insisted on. He did not put his arms around Terrence's neck. He just let himself be held, his hands curled against his own chest like he was keeping something in.
"I got you," Terrence said. "I got you. I'm right here."
Over his son's head he looked at Renee. She was still standing by the tree with the last torn tag in her fist. She looked at him, and for one second he saw something in her face that was almost relief, like somebody who has been carrying a thing alone so long that being caught is a kind of rest, and then it was gone and her jaw set.
"Terry," she said. "Not in front of them."
"No," he said. "Not in front of them." He kept his voice very quiet and very level, the voice he used with new guys on the dock who had done something stupid with a forklift. "But you and me are going in the kitchen in a minute. And first I'm going to fix this."
***
He did it with Jonah on his hip, because Jonah would not be put down.