Manny came down about four minutes later, because he had seen me go and because he had spent the last two hours working out that something had happened that he had been on the edge of without knowing.

He said, “Emil.

What’s in the box?”

And I said, “You should ask your wife.”

And he said, “I’m asking the only other person here.”

So I told him, standing in a parking lot at ten at night on his wedding day, and it took about six minutes, and Manny Reyes listened to the whole thing with his hands in his pockets.

And when I finished he said one sentence, which I think about a lot, because he is twenty-eight and he makes cabinets and he had known my daughter for four years.