Wunder’s father called the house that afternoon to say he would be working late.
“There’s tons of food in the fridge,” he said. “You can heat up whatever you want for dinner.”
“Okay,” Wunder said. “Sure.”
His father was quiet for a few seconds. “I know I should be there,” he said. “But I’ve been gone for two weeks. There’s a lot to catch up on.”
“It’s fine,” Wunder said. “I’ll be fine.”
Wunder’s father was an engineer at SunShiners, where he designed solar panels. He used to be a technician there. When Wunder was younger, he would go to work with his father, and they would take apart equipment—massive metal machines—and his father would explain how the pieces worked. How they fit together.
Then, when Wunder was seven, his father graduated from college after years of night classes and applied for the engineer position. Wunder had written about it in The Miraculous. It went like this:
Miraculous Entry #322
Yesterday, I lit a candle at church for my dad because he really wanted the engineer job.
Then today, he came home and told us he got it! There were a lot of other people trying to get that job, but they chose him. He’s really happy about it, and so is my mom, and so am I.
Everyone said Wunder was like his mother—always smiling, always asking questions, always wanting to know more. They even looked alike, both tall with freckled noses and blue eyes and dark brown hair that would never lie flat.
Wunder’s father, on the other hand, was quiet and serious, and even though he didn’t mind Wunder’s and his mother’s questions, he didn’t ask many himself. He was satisfied, he always said, with the answers he had.
They were so different, Wunder and his father.
But every week, they went to church together, sitting and standing and kneeling side by side. And Wunder had been sure that he had helped his father to get the job he loved. That miracle, he had felt, connected them to each other.
Now, sitting alone at the kitchen table, eating casserole made by, the card said, Jairus Jefferson, Wunder knew that he hadn’t had anything to do with it. And now that he had shoved his angels into the closet, now that he never wanted to go to church again, now he wondered what would connect him to his father.
He was almost finished with the casserole—which wasn’t so bad, a sort of taco salad—when his mother wandered into the kitchen.
“Wunder.” She said it like she was surprised to see him, like she hadn’t expected him to be there. “Are you alone?”
Wunder struggled to find the words to say. He wasn’t sure which ones would be right. “Dad had to work late,” he finally said.
“He should be here with you,” his mother replied. She looked older and more tired than he had ever seen her.
“He missed so much work,” Wunder said. “And I’m okay. I’m fine. I’m doing fine.”
“I know you are.” She took out a can of soup, opened it, and poured it into a bowl. “But he should be here. And I should be too—I know that.” She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the floor, gripping her soup bowl. “I know I should have let your grandparents stay—for you. And Dad’s family—I know they want to come so badly. But I need—I just need a little more time.”
Then she hurried out of the room, taking the bowlful of cold soup with her. Wunder kept waiting for her to come back to heat it up, to come back for a spoon, but she never did.
And he was left wondering what would connect him to his mother too.
When he went to bed hours later, his parents’ door was shut again. He put his ear to the wood, but he couldn’t hear anything. His father wasn’t home yet. And the crib-bar shadows were already reaching toward his bed.