The coordinator asked for his name.

"Raymond," Dad said.

Which were right.

Then he told her he'd been a carpenter all his life.

Which weren't.

He were a postman for thirty-two year. They gave him a plaque when he retired.

We put it in the loft when we moved him.

There were nowhere to hang it here.

She wrote down carpenter. I let her.

* * *

Eli pressed his face to the window.

"There's a cat," he said.

There weren't.

I did the labels the night before. Masking tape and permanent marker. Raymond Holt pressed into every shirt collar.

Every pair of trousers.

The comb he'd kept since before I were born.

My mam used to say he'd take that comb to his grave.

I wrote his name on the plastic. The first one smeared, so I wrote it again.

Forty-three labels.

* * *

The coordinator took us to the room. Dad sat on the bed.

He pressed both palms into the mattress—that same flat-palmed bounce from the Sunday furniture sales, gathering evidence.

That were still him.

He looked up at the coordinator. "Have you met our lass?" he said. "She comes Thursdays."

I were three feet away.

Eli turned from the glass. "That's me mam," he said.

Dad looked at me.

"Diane. I know it's you, ya daft 'apeth."

He said my name. The one he'd chosen.

"Good lass, our Diane," he said. "She comes Thursdays, don't you, pet?"

I locked my knees to keep from swaying.

* * *

We walked him to the dining room. He sat across from a stranger and told him he'd been a carpenter for forty year.

Dad picked up his fork and ate like he'd sat at this table every day of his life.

In the car park, our breath came out white. "Does Grandad know where he is?" Eli asked.

"He's settling in."

"He didn't know you, though," he said.

"He did. Just for a minute."

Eli went quiet. He were six. A minute still counted at six.

* * *

At the junction, I kept my foot on the brake.

In the rearview, Eli stared back at the building. Waiting the way he did when a film finished. On the back seat were two shirts with no labels. I'd run out of tape.

Dad's own father were a carpenter.

Died donkeys ago.

There were no photographs of him in our house. No old chisels in the shed. Just a name that dropped out of the air the day they buried him.

Dad had spent thirty-two year wearing the map of Oldham into the soles of his boots. He came home smelling of damp wool and exhaust fumes, his right shoulder permanently dropped from the canvas strap.

Not a speck of sawdust on him.

And now here he was, building himself from whatever parts remained.

Carpenter.

Father of three.

Raymond. Which were still true.

I hadn't put my name anywhere he could find me.

Not on a label, not on anything.

There were tape left in the drawer.

The light went green.

I just watched it.