The signature on the wire sheet leaned left.

Lucas’s leaned right, always, because he wrote with his wrist bent like a left-handed man who had been corrected in school.

The letter t in Gallagher had no crossbar.

I said it out loud to the empty kitchen.

“That signature has Lucas’s name, but the t isn’t crossed the way he wrote it.”

The baby moved under my hand.

I set the wire sheet down and pulled the birthday card from the drawer, the one he had given me in June.

For Vic, who hates surprises, he had written.