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Show to hug us, wrapping one arm around David and one arm around me, squeezing us too tightly. I asked her what was wrong and if maybe we were in trouble. She looked at me like I had said something startling, then took my face in her hands, wiped with her thumb at something under my eyes and brushed the hair back from my forehead. She smiled then, like she was proud of what she had done to me, as though she had prepped me for a school photograph. She looked at me like she wanted to say something but then she didn't have the words. I saw the skin around her mouth tighten and relax once and then twice. And then she cried harder, and she said, "Oh" like it was the only thing she had left. ( That was the year neighbors brought us more food than we could eat. They brought casseroles and homemade bread and pie. And all the food came with little cards that mom opened and read and stacked up on the kitchen table. Many afternoons, we found her sitting at the table writing thank-you notes on cards that looked just like the others. Sometimes, when a note she was writing was to a neighbor we knew well or the parents of our friends or when the food was something we boys had especially liked, mom would ask us to write our names on the note as well. In big, blocky letters that nearly filled the cards, we wrote "Love David" and "Love James." That was the year Christmas was warm and snowless. We both found a set of Legos under the tree but wasted no time combining them into one big pile. We also found a lot of candy, and some new clothes, and a slot-car racing set dad set up and played with more than we did. He joked that maybe Santa hadn't meant it for us and that maybe this |