She Walked Out, and Ten Years Later She Showed Up With Expensive Gifts at a Twelfth Birthday Dinner

“Broken things always deserve another chance,” I said, wiping a smudge of dried varnish off the corner of the oak drawer.

Mark took his hands out of his back pockets and picked the wooden sanding block back up.

“You put in sixty hours this week, Dad.”

“Fifty-eight,” I said.

“The dining table job over on Elm Street ran two hours long because the cedar frame was warped.”

“You haven’t taken a Saturday off since July,” Mark said, smoothing the curved edge of the mirror frame.

“Saturdays are for Lily,” I said.