Had his own father ever looked at him and wondered, and worried? Probably, Brody thought. It had never showed, but probably. Still, Bob O’Connell hadn’t been one for wrestling on the rug or foolish conversations. He’d gone to work. He’d come home from work. He’d expected dinner on the table at six.

He’d expected his son to do his chores, stay out of trouble, and to—above all—do what he was told without question. One of those expectations had been to follow, precisely, in his father’s footsteps.

Brody figured he’d disappointed his father in every possible area. And had been disappointed by him.

He wasn’t going to put those same demands and expectations on his own son.

“Zee! Zee, Zee, Zee!” Jack picked up the paper, waved it madly. “I finished.”

“Hold it still, hotshot, so I can see.” A long way from neat, Brody noted when Jack held the paper up. But it was done. “Good job. You want some graph paper?”

“Can I come over there and help work on yours?”

“Sure.” So he’d stay up an extra hour and work, Brody thought as Jack scrambled down from his stool. It would be worth it to have this time with his son. He reached down, hauled Jack up on his lap. “Okay, so what we’ve got here is the apartment above the school.”

“How come they wear those funny clothes when they dance?”

“I have no idea. How do you know they wear funny clothes?”

“I saw a cartoon, and there were elephants in funny skirts. They were dancing on their toes. Do elephants really have toes?”

“Yeah.” Didn’t they? “We’ll look it up later so you can see. Here, take the pencil. You can draw this line here, right against the straight edge.”

“Okay!”

Father and son worked, heads close together, with the big hand guiding the small.

When Jack began to yawn, Brody shifted him, laying Jack over his shoulder as he rose.

“I’m not tired,” Jack claimed even as his head drooped.

“When you wake up, it’ll only be five days till Christmas.”

“Can I have a present?”

Brody smiled. His son’s voice was thick, his body already going limp. He paused in the living room, by the tree, swaying slightly as he had when Jack had been an infant, and fretful in the night. As Christmas trees went, Brody mused, this one wasn’t pretty. But it was festive. The mix of ornaments covered every available inch. Wads of tinsel shone in the multicolored lights Jack had wanted.

Rather than an angel or a star, there was a grinning Santa at the top. Jack still believed in Santa Claus. Brody wondered if he would this time the following year.

Thinking of that, of the years passed and passing still, he turned his face into his son’s hair. And just breathed him in.

After he’d carried Jack up to bed, he came down and brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Probably a mistake, Brody thought even as he poured the first cup. It would very likely keep him awake.