Nobody laughed. But Jonah leaned down a little in Terrence's arm, and reached, and his hand stopped in the air a few inches from the toy, the same way it had stopped before. He looked up at his father's face. He was checking. He was asking without asking, the way he always did, whether it was really allowed.
Terrence felt his throat close up. "It's yours," he said. "Go on. It's yours."
Jonah picked it up. He held it in both hands against his chest, the way Brielle had, and the legs were still kicking, and he watched them until they wound down and stopped. Then he held it there anyway.
He did not smile. Terrence had hoped, he realized, that he would smile, that it would be like turning a light back on. It was not. Jonah's face was solemn and blotchy and very, very careful. He held the Santa like somebody might come and take it.
Which was fair, Terrence thought. Which was entirely fair.
"Brie," he said. "You want to know a secret? There's something for you in the garage. Something big. Santa couldn't fit it under the tree."
Her head came up. The tears were still on her face, but there was a glint under them. "What is it?"
"Go put your boots on over your pajamas and I'll show you in a minute. Mommy and me have to talk in the kitchen first. Can you stay here with your brother and open your other presents? The red ones. Those are all yours. Every red one is yours."
She nodded slowly. She looked at Renee's back, at the window, and then at her father, and he could see her six-year-old mind trying to fit the morning together and not quite managing it.
He set Jonah down on the sofa, gently, with the Santa still in his hands. Jonah let him. He tucked the fleece throw around him. Then he took the strawberry hat package, the one that had kept its tag longest, and set it in Jonah's lap on top of the blanket.
"That one's yours," he said. "All the brown ones are yours. You can open them whenever you want. Nobody's going to take them. Okay?"
Jonah looked at the package. He did not open it. He did not let go of the Santa. But he nodded, once.
Terrence stood up. His knees cracked. His coffee mug had spilled a brown ring on the arm of the sofa, and he left it.