The truth is so incomplete, so unsatisfying, not to mention painful, that she can’t bring herself to tell it. She’s the grandmother, after all. She’s supposed to soothe. What kind of comfort is there in saying she doesn’t know? I don’t know why your uncle killed your father. I don’t know why your mother dumped you here.

Silence and love seem the only answer. In these changed times, when people don’t know how to treat one another anymore, talk about how things used to be isn’t much of a solace.

Maybe the move will help. It would be a relief for Lincoln, maybe for Betty as well, to fret about the present, about a place to live, work, go to school, instead of the freight of the past. It would help if Simon let his feet work their way south to his old home. Betty had meant it when she said he should come by—for Lincoln, if not for her. She isn’t comfortable with the idea of explaining everything to Lincoln. Simon would be even more reluctant, but at least he could wean Lincoln away from his lonely circuit of school and home. Maybe if Lincoln was sandwiched between One-Two’s future hopes and Simon’s lost ones, he could shake himself out of the solitude he has forged out of an unspoken past.

Betty looks again at the presents tucked under the tree. The expensive Nikes and new jacket are what Lincoln wants. What for? He doesn’t have any friends his age, or a girl, as far as Betty can tell. Given his head, Lincoln stays home, or, at most, tags along with One-Two as he mends the old apartment building across the way. It will be the last holiday at the no-numbered house. By the time spring rolls around, they’ll be up north where Lincoln will have to make do, just as she will, without One-Two and the comfort of sameness that being in the house has afforded them.

As much as she loves Lincoln’s quiet ways, she does miss the rough joy of having Lester and Simon around. In comparison, Lincoln’s father and uncle seemed stronger, Lincoln more vulnerable. He is inquisitive but afraid to ask the questions. Betty is the opposite: content to let things be, but hungry for a resolution that necessitates asking the unaskable. And more important, with the passing of time, what is the sum of her life? Is she to add and subtract with each death? Jacob, Lester, Caroline. Take away with every missed opportunity? The city, work, One-Two. She subtracts continually, until what she holds is as hollow and worthless as an ant-eaten turtle shell. Complicated and brittle.