"Renee," he said. "Kitchen."
She turned from the window. Her eyes were dry. She walked past him without looking at either of the children and went down the hall, and he followed her, and as he went he heard behind him the rip of red paper with gold snowflakes, Brielle starting in on her own pile, slower than before, and under that, small and steady, the crick, crick, crick of a brass key being wound by a hand that did not quite know how yet.
***
The kitchen still smelled like the coffee. The pot sat on its burner, half full, and the window over the sink showed a square of white backyard, the swing set with snow on its crossbar, the fence. Renee went and stood at the counter with her back to the sink and gripped the edge of it on either side of her, like she was bracing for weather.
Terrence closed the door to the hall. It did not latch right, it never had, and he leaned his shoulder against it to hold it shut.
For a while neither of them said anything. He found that he did not know how to begin. He had a hundred sentences in him and every one of them was a shout.
"Seven tags," he said finally. Low. "You took off seven tags."
"I know how many there were."
"You sat out there in the dark and you took his name off of every single thing I bought him. And you gave it to her. And you let him walk down those stairs to an empty stocking. Renee. An empty stocking."
"I had things for it," she said. "There's a bag in the closet."
"Then why is it empty?"
She did not answer. She looked at the floor.
"Why is it empty, Renee?"