My Son Told Me Not to Come for Christmas but Two Days Later My Phone Would Not Stop Ringing

of people who mattered more.

I stood up. My knees made the sound they always make now, the sound of thirty years of laying concrete and framing houses on cold mornings, a record of labor written into cartilage. I picked up my coat from the arm of the sofa.

“I understand,” I said.

“Dad, wait—”

I walked past the mantle where Isabella had arranged the family continue reading …