“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.
