“We still have four daughters, Aaron,” I said, resting my hand on my stomach. “They might want to keep their rooms the way they are.”
“They will share the big room upstairs,” he said. “This is different. My father always said a house needs a clean line of succession.”
He folded the receipt into a tiny square, then smoothed it out on his knee.
“He taught me how to measure a frame so it never sags,” Aaron said. “A man passes down what he knows. If he doesn’t have anyone to take it, the work just disappears into the ground.”
I looked at the unpainted wooden train on the bedside table, its rough wheels catching the morning light. “You never told me you felt this way when the girls were born,” I said.
“I was glad they were healthy,” he said. “But my father was still alive then. He was still watching.”
He stood up, walking over to the window to look down at the gravel parking lot.
“Now he isn’t,” Aaron said.
“He was proud of you, Aaron,” I said.
“He was proud of the work,” Aaron said. “He wanted to see it continue. He told me that the winter before he died.”
“We have a family,” I said. “That is what continues.”
He did not turn around to look at me, his fingers pressed against the glass of the windowpane.
At ten o’clock, his phone buzzed again with a text message from my sister Diana. He looked at the screen, a brief laugh escaping his throat before he cleared it.
“Diana says Ava drew a picture on the paper banner they are making at the house,” he said. “She used three different markers.”
“She was very excited about the welcome home party,” I said.
He stood up and walked to the edge of the bed, reaching out to touch the blue knit baby blanket that lay folded on the rolling cart. It was a simple twelve dollar blanket we had bought at the pharmacy down the road.
“Can you believe it, Elena, after all these years, we finally have a boy,” he whispered.
The word sounded heavy in the quiet room, carrying a weight that seemed to press down on the mattress between us.
