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see from her expression that reality is returning.
    Daddy’s truck is not pulling out of the driveway.
    My mind shouts, “Momma is here. I love you,” but the words change as they spill from my lips.
    “Hey, sleepy head,” I say, flabbergasted at my own speech. “How about using some of that Christmas spirit to clean your bedroom.”
    Megan stares at me for a moment and then heads upstairs.The room closes in around me without her. Family photos—my grandmother, mom, all the matriarchs of my family—glare down at me from the walls.
    A family room is no place to be alone.
    After a very few minutes, I follow Meg upstairs.
    She sits with her back to the open door surrounded by sheets of construction paper. I see Ben’s name printed on one with artwork cut from a CD cover glued in the center. A hand-drawn angel flies across the sheet bearing my name. Nick’s holds a newspaper Nintendo ad. Each is embellished with a bow.
    Christmas presents.
    Megan is gathering up her art and hiding the homemade cards behind her bed before she begins organizing her stuffed animal collection.
    “I just wanted to hug her,” Megan confides to a plush puppy, before launching it into her toy chest.
    “Just because I’m a kid doesn’t mean I don’t understand,” she speaks this time to a photo of her dad gazing down at his newborn daughter. “How can I help, if Mom won’t talk to me?”
    A teacher had told Megan the family would heal, that we would all feel better, that “it just takes time.” The thought seems to comfort Megan, but I don’t know if I believe it. The mood in the house is getting worse as the holidays approach.
    I lean back against the hall wall, ashamed to be listening, but I don’t walk away.
    “It’s the gifts, I know nobody else wants them,” Megan continues. “I’m the only one who wants Christmas.”
    When I hear her open a window, I think it time to intervene, until she starts talking to our true friends.
    “Thank you, but please stop,” she says, and I can picture her leaning on her windowsill facing the dark night. “You are making Momma sad.”
    I back down the hallway avoiding the floorboards that creak.

    Twenty minutes later I find her still at her window, bundled in sweatshirt and mittens, listening for passing cars. I tell her to close the window, but she begs to leave it open a little longer.
    “I’m listening for the gift givers,” she explains. “I’m going to catch them tonight.”
    The furnace is roaring, and I envision the electric meter on the back of the house spinning dollar signs. But I have told my daughter no too many times these last few days.
    “Ten more minutes. Then close the window. And you can clean your room while you listen.”
    Megan gathers an armful of her dirty clothes and deposits it in the laundry room, then ventures down to Ben’s hideaway, perhaps to ask him for help with the cleaning. When she opens the door to his room, I hear the volume on her brother’s stereo shoot up.
    Megan doesn’t tell me what he said, but she comes back upstairs shortly. Out of Ben’s earshot, I hear her mutter a name for her brother that makes me smile to myself.
    “Poopy head.”
    Nick at least listens to her idea. He agrees to clean his room but will do so using one hand while the other, and his attention, are focusing on a video game.
    “You’ll never get it get done that way,” she complains. “Don’t you want a Christmas tree?”
    Nick doesn’t immediately respond. When he does give her an answer, I think it is an honest one.
    “I’m not sure we should get a tree,” he says slowly. “I don’t want Christmas. I want …”
    He doesn’t finish the sentence, and Megan heads back to her room with a resigned sigh.
    Her sense of defeat doesn’t last long.
    Within minutes she is tossing laundry out into the hall using her best foul shot form.
    “She shoots. She scores. The crowd goes wild.”
    A pair of blue jeans flies through the imaginary hoop, then gym shorts