“I know.”
He stood and came around the table.
For a second, I thought he might hug me. He had never been comfortable with sudden affection, not since he became taller than me and began pretending he had outgrown it.
Instead, he placed both hands on my shoulders.
Then he bent and rested his forehead against mine.
We stayed that way in the quiet dining room.
When he went upstairs, I walked through the house alone.
I passed the blue room, where a night-light glowed beneath the door. I passed the basement stairs, where the smell of fresh-cut wood lingered. I passed the framed photograph of my wife in the hallway.
Someone had placed a small paper crown beside it.
I picked it up and smiled.
At the front door, I turned off the porch light.
Then I changed my mind.
I turned it back on.
The oak tree moved gently beyond the window. The crooked sign hung beneath the light. Upstairs, the children whispered. From the kitchen came the low hum of the refrigerator, the same sound it had made for forty-one years.
The house was still mine.
But now, when the lights came on, they belonged to everyone who had found their way home.
