Kenneth crouched beside the smallest blue hand.
“That’s mine.”
His voice broke.
“Dad said it was a surprise.”
Daniel touched the other little print with one fingertip.
“I thought it got painted over.”
I knelt between them. My knees complained. Kenneth moved a folded blanket beneath them without speaking.
There was my husband’s hand, broad and familiar. Beside it, mine.
“He got me to press it on a scrap board,” I whispered. “Said he was testing the paint.”
“He cut around it,” Daniel said, following the faint outline of the inset wood.
All those years I had believed the table was something my husband had bought for me.
It had been something he made about me.
Kenneth covered his face.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
Not to stop him crying.
Just to let him know I was there.
That Christmas, I invited both my sons and my sister.
Kenneth arrived carrying bread he had baked twice because the first loaf burned. He waited on the doorstep until I opened the door.
“Come in,” I said.
At dinner, nobody occupied my husband’s chair. We moved it beside the window, where the afternoon light warmed its worn wooden seat.
There was no grand speech.
Ruth passed the potatoes. Daniel spilled gravy. Kenneth asked before taking the last roll, and I told him not to be ridiculous.
Later, while the others washed dishes, I rested my palm against the underside of the table.
My fingers found the edge of the little blue handprint.
From the kitchen came the soft clatter of plates and my sons arguing gently over how much soap was too much.
I left my hand there a moment longer.
Then I went to join them, leaving my chair pulled out, certain at last that it would still be mine when I returned.
