"Can they do that?"
"They did."
She went quiet.
Caleb's chest hurt.
Then Nora asked the question he had been dreading.
"Are we poor now?"
He almost laughed.
Instead, his eyes burned.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"We have a home."
"We have food."
"We have heat."
"We have each other."
Nora considered.
"Can we still get a tree?"
Caleb swallowed.
"Yeah."
"A little one?"
"Yeah."
"With lights?"
"Of course."
"And hot chocolate?"
"Obviously."
Nora relaxed.
"Then okay."
Caleb looked at her.
"Okay?"
"Yeah."
"That's your response?"
She shrugged.
"You fix airplanes."
"I did."
"You'll fix another thing."
Caleb turned away before she saw his face.
The light changed.
They went to the discount tree lot behind a grocery store.
By then most of the good Christmas trees were gone.
What remained leaned against temporary fencing under strings of bare bulbs.
Tall ones with uneven branches.
Short ones that had dried too quickly.
Trees nobody had chosen.
Nora inspected each like an art critic.
Finally she stopped before a small spruce barely taller than she was.
One side had a visible gap.
The top leaned.
"This one."
Caleb looked.
"Really?"
"It's cute."
"It's crooked."
"So?"
"Half the needles are on one side."
"It has personality."
"That's what people say when something's ugly."
Nora gasped.
"Dad."
"I'm sorry."
She hugged the tree.
"Don't listen to him."
Caleb laughed for the first time that day without forcing it.
The tree cost twenty-eight dollars.
He paid cash.
At the grocery store, he bought milk, cocoa, marshmallows, pasta, eggs, bread, and enough food to make Christmas dinner modestly respectable.
He mentally subtracted every amount from the number in his bank account.
The habit had returned instantly.
Jobless arithmetic.
Rent.
Utilities.
Insurance.
Food.
Gas.
Health coverage after the end of the month.
Every purchase now represented days.
How many days could he buy before he needed another paycheck?
At home, Nora insisted they decorate immediately.
Their apartment was small.
Second floor.
Two bedrooms.
A kitchen just large enough for one adult and one child to bump into each other repeatedly.
Elise had loved it.
She had called the living room "cozy."
Caleb had called it "structurally incapable of holding a normal sofa."
They had lived there for eleven years.
After Elise died, Caleb had considered moving.
He never did.
Her fingerprints were gone from the windows.
Her clothes had been packed.
Her toothbrush thrown away.
But traces remained that had nothing to do with objects.
The corner where she always placed her shoes.
The cabinet where she hid chocolate.
The tiny chip in the bathroom tile from the morning she dropped a hair dryer.
Caleb could leave someday.
He simply had not learned how yet.
Nora sat cross-legged on the floor opening ornament boxes.
"Daddy airplane!"