When he was done he carried them into the living room and set them under the tree on the right side, near the window. The left side already had Brielle's gifts on it, wrapped by Renee in the shiny red paper with gold snowflakes. There were fewer of those than he had expected, and they were mostly flat or small, and he frowned at them a little. Renee had said money was tight, and it was. He knew it was. He saw the same bank account she did.
Still. He looked at the two piles, his brown lumpy ones and her neat red ones, and he felt the first thin wire of something he did not want to name.
He told himself it would be fine. He told himself Brielle was six and had a bike in the garage under a tarp, a used one he'd fixed up himself, and that would be the big thing for her, and she would not count boxes. Kids did not count boxes.
He went to the bottom of the stairs and called up softly. "Renee?"
After a while she appeared at the top, in the cream sweater she slept in when the heat was low, her hair pulled back. In the dim she looked older than thirty-four. She looked like she had been awake.
"I wrapped Jonah's stuff," he said. "It's under there. You want to do the stockings or you want me to?"
She looked past him, at the tree. He could not see her face well. "I'll do them," she said.
"You sure? I got the candy canes in the cabinet, and the oranges—"
"I said I'll do them, Terry. Go to bed. You're dead on your feet."
He was. He climbed the stairs, and she moved aside to let him by, and he stopped and kissed her on the temple, and she let him. Her skin was cool.
"Merry Christmas," he said.
"Merry Christmas."
He looked in on the kids on the way. Brielle slept sideways across her bed with one foot out of the blanket, her curls everywhere, a book about horses open on her chest. Jonah slept in the small room that used to be the sewing room, in a toddler bed he was almost too long for, flat on his back with his fists up by his ears like a baby. He was wearing the green pajamas with the white stars, the matching set Terrence's mother had sent for both kids. Brielle's were new. Jonah's were last year's, Brielle's from last year, the hems let down. Renee had said there was no sense buying new ones when he'd outgrow them by March.
Terrence stood in the doorway and watched his son breathe. Then he went to bed and fell asleep in his clothes before Renee came up, and he did not hear her moving around downstairs for a long time.