Heidi blinked. "You owe me?"
"For the toolbox," Frank said. "I thought about it after I drove home. Ray asked every day, yes. You asked for paint, yes. But I also liked the story of Ray as the practical one and you as the artistic one, and I fitted the gifts to the story instead of listening for what else you might have wanted. If that story followed you into motherhood and made you sort your sons into use and display, then my hands are not clean."
Heidi sat down slowly on the coffee table, facing him, cups forgotten in her hands. "I didn't expect you to say that."
"I didn't expect to need to," Frank said. "Then I watched you rewrite a tag's meaning and heard my own old sentences in a new mouth."
They sat with that. Outside, a lawn mower started two yards over. Inside, Charlie's engine sounds rose and fell.
"I'm not asking you to absolve me so I can absolve you," Frank continued. "I'm saying we are both in the middle of a correction. Middles are ugly. We stay in them anyway."
Heidi nodded. A cup tilted in her grip; she righted it. "Charlie asked if I liked Cody more."
Frank's mouth tightened. "What did you tell him?"
"The truth, as carefully as I could. He said okay. He didn't say I believe you."
"Good," Frank said. "Belief is earned in weeks, not speeches."
Cody appeared in the doorway with Charlie behind him, both slightly dusty. "We're going to build a ramp with the cardboard from the recycling," Cody announced. "If that's allowed."
"Allowed," Heidi said. "Outside. And Cody—use the tape in the junk drawer, not my wrapping tape."
"Yes, management," Cody said, and Charlie echoed, "Yes, management," delightedly, as if management were a funny animal.
They thumped out the back door. Frank chuckled once. Heidi found herself almost smiling, then letting the smile exist without auditing it for adequacy.
"Stay for lunch?" she asked.
"I brought sandwiches in the car," Frank said. "I am learning not to arrive empty-handed to complicated houses."