Afterward, one of the trainees asked why he always took the time to explain repairs to residents, even when they appeared uninterested. Everett thought about the mother who had apologized for calling about a broken light and about the father he had been in a freezing apartment. "Because a home is where people are supposed to feel safe," he answered. "If something in that home stops working, the person calling us is not an interruption. They're the reason we're here."
On a cold evening in early December, he and Marlo unpacked their old Christmas tree from its box. The missing branches were still missing, and the stand still leaned left, but she refused his suggestion that they could perhaps afford a new one. "This one knows our family," she said. Everett helped straighten it as much as possible and watched her attach the paper stars she had made in the old apartment.
She placed a new drawing at the top of the tree. It showed the green-doored house with its garden, a little girl holding a sketchbook, a man carrying a toolbox, and two stars above the roof. One star was for Clara. The other, Marlo explained, was for Adrian, because Serafina had told her he used to draw gardens too.
Everett called Serafina that evening and invited her to join them for dinner before Christmas. She said she would be delighted, then paused as though uncertain whether an invitation could truly be as simple as it sounded. He assured her that no speeches were required and that Marlo had specifically requested she bring her most recent tree drawing for inspection. Serafina promised to bring it, even though one of its birds still looked like a comma.
A few days before Christmas, she arrived carrying a pie from a neighborhood bakery and a sheet of paper she had folded carefully in her handbag. Marlo greeted her with a hug, then demanded the drawing. Serafina unfolded a picture of a house beneath a winter sky, with a broad tree in the garden and a small figure standing beside it. Her lines were uncertain, but there was a warmth in the picture that had been absent from the carefully arranged rooms of her former life.
"You've improved," Marlo declared.
"I've had a demanding teacher."
"The tree needs more leaves, though."
"I'll work on it."
They ate dinner around a small table and talked about ordinary things: school projects, a stubborn sink in one of the buildings Everett maintained, and the possibility of planting tulips when the weather warmed. Serafina did not mention business results unless someone asked. Everett watched her laugh with Marlo, then glance briefly toward the stars on the little Christmas tree. He wondered whether Adrian would have recognized the woman she was becoming and hoped, for her sake, that she would continue making room for joy without feeling that it betrayed him.