“So, it looks like you’re sad,” he said. “Is everything alright?”

H- hesitated and began, “Everything’s mostly alright.”

“Now I know something is wrong. Want to talk about it? Can I guess?”

The girl just about began again, then stopped. Her eyes said she would rather he guess.

Her father continued, “Well, obviously it’s the holidays and we’re not together. So that’s sad.”

“Yeah, and then you brought up the time when we were at Miss M’s house for Thanksgiving.”

“I didn’t know that you didn’t like being there for Thanksgiving.”

“It’s not that. It’s that we were together,” she clarified.

“Oh.”

A pause.

He began again. “And then I suspect seeing me having fun at work makes you sad.”

“A little.”

“Well, H-, I don’t know what to say.”

A longer pause.

“So we’re just going to read! Like always,” he faux exclaimed.

She chuckled, pathetically.

“What we’re actually going to do is repress our feelings,” he said smiling.

Now as they were FaceTiming, he really amped up the physicality of his mockery and explained with accompanying motions, “We’re going to push our feelings way down deep. And we’re going to try and hold them there as long as we can. Then, one day, unexpectedly, they’re just going to burst out!”

She laughed at his large unexpected expressions of surprise.

He cloaked the next line in mystery, “We won’t know when; we won’t know in what way-”

“-like a Jack-in-the-Box!” she interrupted.

Yes, H- had done it again. She had the gift—even if she had the blues.