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is holding the poinsettia.
    “You asleep?”
    “Not anymore.”
    “Our flower is sick.”
    “It just needs water. Get a measuring cup from the cupboard. Give it a quarter cup.”
    She talks to the plant as she walks back to the kitchen.
    “You’re going to be just fine,” she says. Then, “Please live, little flower.”
    With dinner chores and homework done, Megan joins me in the family room, settling into a beanbag chair to watch television. Keeping my eyes closed, I pretend to sleep. I don’t want to answer any more Christmas questions tonight, but my little chatterbox has clearly made her mental list and is checking it twice.
    “Do you work late tomorrow?” she asks.
    “Argh.”
    My groan sounds more like a huff, and I am sure Megan feels like one of the Three Little Pigs facing the Big Bad Wolf. Her home is made of straw and sticks.
    “I’m sorry, Momma. I’ll be quiet.”
    Quiet. That’s what I long for, but I can’t ignore the hurt look on her face.
    “What’s up?”
    “I was just wondering … about getting a tree?”
    I definitely saw that one coming, and I have a response prepared.
    “Made any progress on your bedroom?”
    Hurricane Megan has been blowing with gale force this week, depositing school clothes, sports equipment, candy wrappers, and water bottles in every nook of her room, except where they belong.
    I have used her messy room and the overall disheveled condition of the house as an excuse to put off all kinds of things, and the latest is the purchase of a Christmas tree.
    “If only I could get my stupid brothers to help,” she says. “Can’t you make them?”
    “I have asked them, just like I asked you.”
    The conversation doesn’t inspire Megan to get busy, but it does quiet her.
    She channel surfs, finding news about a car accident, a robbery, and a standoff with police, instead of the holiday show or cartoon I know she prefers. When her movements morph from restless to quiet, I glance over. Though the overhead light hums, the darkness outside has crept indoors with the sunset casting shadows in corners. The late night and early rising have caught up with my Megan. Her chest slowly rises and falls in time with her slumbering breath, but her hands are clasped over her eyes. I roll into the couch, doing the same thing.
    But before I can drift off, I hear the crash of shattering glass in the kitchen, and I’m pretty certain the mayonnaise jar now rests in pieces in the bottom of the recycling bin. Ben is destroying the evidence.
    I have to talk to him.
    When he comes downstairs a few minutes later, neither of us says a word. We are gunslingers standing twenty paces apart. We don’t draw our weapons because Megan is asleep on the floor, but Ben knows that I know he never went to the grocery.
    Megan’s gentle snores divert our attention. Our showdown will come, but not tonight.
    “Can’t spend time with her if she’s asleep,” Ben says, covering his kid sister with a blanket.
    The bravado of his words doesn’t camouflage the gentleness of his actions as he tucks the blanket around his sister’s toes. Ben turns off the light and the television as I request. But the door to the basement bangs behind him as he goes downstairs, and the sound jolts Megan from sleep. She is confused.
    “Daddy?” she calls out.
    I have heard her sleepy voice whisper his name many times in the early morning hours, as her daddy left for work. Megan’s bedroom was always his last stop before heading out the door. Prone to kicking off her blankets at night, Rick never left home without tucking in his princess. Though sentimental and sweet, his actions often woke Megan. She would skitter to the window and wave good-bye as he backed out of the driveway. Of course, the wave was followed by a trip into my bed and an early wake-up for me. When I asked Rick to be quieter in the morning, he refused
.
    “Seeing her at the window waving reminds me why I go to work every day.”
    Megan sits up, and I can