He took the tags out of his pocket and picked the rest off the sofa, and he laid them out on the coffee table face-up, all seven, including the one Renee finally put down next to them without a word, its twine torn and a scrap of paper still clinging. TO JONAH. TO JONAH. TO JONAH. Then he went to the packages under the tree and, one at a time, kneeling, one-handed, he tied the tags back on. He could not double-knot them with one hand. He made big loose bows instead and pulled them as tight as he could. Where the tape had torn the paper, he tied the tag right over the torn spot.
Jonah watched him do it. He had stopped making the sound, mostly. He breathed in shudders against Terrence's shoulder and watched the tags go on, one, two, three, and on the fourth one he lifted his head and reached out a finger and touched the J.
"That's you," Terrence said. "That's right. You were right. That says you."
Jonah did not say anything. He put his thumb back in his mouth.
Brielle had been sitting very still by the tree all this time, holding the Santa, watching the grown-ups with her eyes going back and forth. She was six. She knew when the air in a room had changed, even if she did not know why. Now she said, carefully, "Daddy?"
"Yeah, baby."
"Mommy said those were mine." She looked at Renee, who had gone to stand by the window with her arms crossed, looking out at the gray yard. "She said Santa brought them for me but he put them on the wrong side."
Terrence breathed out through his nose. "I know she did."
"Is Santa going to be mad at me?"
"No. No, sweetheart. Nobody's mad at you." He reached out his free arm and she scooted over on her knees and leaned into his side, and he held both of them for a second, one on each side, like weights on a scale. "You didn't do anything wrong. You believed what Mommy told you. That's what you're supposed to do. Mommy made a mistake."
"Mommy doesn't make mistakes about Santa," Brielle said. It was not defiant. It was a fact she was checking.
At the window, Renee's shoulders moved. She did not turn around.
"Everybody makes mistakes," Terrence said, and it came out heavier than he meant, because he was not only talking about his wife. "Grown-ups too. Even about Santa. This was a big one. And now we're fixing it."