Charlie knelt beside the small wooden table in the corner — the one Owen had used for his model kits and his baseball card sorting and the elaborate organizational systems he invented and abandoned on a regular basis. He found the loose tile at the base, the one that had always rocked slightly when you stepped on it and that Owen had apparently decided was a useful feature rather than a flaw.
He worked it up with a butter knife from the kitchen. Beneath it, in the shallow space between the tile and the subfloor, was a small gift box with a piece of tape across the lid.
Charlie lifted it out and set it on the table.
We opened it together.
Inside, wrapped in a piece of cloth that I recognized as cut from an old flannel shirt Owen had loved in middle school, was a wooden sculpture. Three figures: a man and a woman standing close together, and between them a boy, slightly smaller, the three of them connected at the shoulder and the hip in the way of people who belong to each other.
