Yeah, Marcus said. Did you mean it? He looked at her. I said it, didn't I? She looked back at him with the specific expression she'd been developing over the past weeks.
The one that meant she was deciding how much to trust, what she was seeing, how much to let herself believe the evidence in front of her. It was a careful expression, hard one. The expression of a woman who had learned that the gap between what men say and what they do could be wide enough to fall into and not come back from. Marcus understood that expression. He didn't push against it.
Good night, Naomi, he said. She got out, went inside. He watched until the porch light stayed on, and then drove home. I didn't sleep much that night, either. But this time, it wasn't dread keeping him up.
It was something else, something more complicated and less comfortable than dread. Because dread, he knew how to manage. This feeling, the particular mix of care and accountability, and the slow, terrifying awareness that he was building something with people who would feel it if he broke it, this was different. This required more of him. And the question he sat with in the kitchen under the small yellow light at midnight was not whether he was willing to give it.
He'd already answered that. He'd answered it Saturday night when the sun went down and he stayed in the shop. He'd answered it Monday when Ava's backpack hit the bench and it felt like coming home. The question was whether he was enough. Whether what was left of Marcus Johnson after 7 years of carefully maintained solitude was sufficient for what this was becoming.
He didn't have an answer. He just had the next morning and the one after that. He decided that was going to have to be sufficient. November arrived and Marcus started showing up in ways that nobody asked him to. He showed up at Ava's school concert on the third Thursday of the month.
Naomi had mentioned it once in passing. The way you mention something, you're not going to ask for. And he sat in the third row with a program in his hand and watched Ava play recorder in a group of 22 third graders with the focused slightly martyed expression of a child who had practiced genuinely hard and was not going to let the kid next to her who hadn't practiced dragged down the whole performance. Ava saw him from the risers. Her expression didn't break into a grin.
She was midong and she had standards. But her posture shifted. She stood up slightly straighter. He stayed for the whole thing, including the fourth and fifth grade chorus, who went 20 minutes over their scheduled time. He showed up when Ava had streped throat, and Naomi was stuck on hour 9 of an 11-hour shift and couldn't reach any of her backup contacts.
She'd called Marcus at 4:15 in the afternoon, and he could hear in the first three words, "Marcus, I'm sorry, how much it cost her to make that call. How much she'd resisted making it until she had no other options. What do you need? He said, I need someone to pick her up from the school nurse and stay with her until I get home. I know it's a lot to ask.
I'm leaving now, he said. He picked up Ava from the school nurse's office. She was pale and her throat was clearly bothering her, and she had the specific misery of a sick child who is trying very hard to be stoic about it and not quite managing. She saw him come in and something in her face went from closed up and enduring to just open. The way a child's face opens when the right person walks into a room.
She didn't say much in the truck. Just leaned her head against the window and held the paper bag with her things from the nurse. He took her back to his house because it was closer than Dellwood. He set her up on the couch with a blanket and the television and a glass of ice water and the specific brand of throat lozenes his wife had always kept in the medicine cabinet. Still there, still good for another year, as if the house had been waiting to be useful again.
He sat in the chair across from the couch and went through invoices on his laptop while she watched something animated on the TV. Around 6:00, she said in the raspy, diminished voice of a sick person. Marcus. Yeah, he said without looking up. Do you miss her?
Your wife? He looked up. Ava was watching the television, not him. Like she'd asked a question about the weather, like it was a normal thing to ask. I thought about saying something careful and managed.
He thought about the various ways to redirect an 8-year-old away from a complicated question. Then he said, "Every day," Ava nodded like this was the answer she'd expected, and it made sense to her. "My mama misses my grandma," she said. "She died before I was born, but mama still talks to her sometimes, like out loud. She paused.
I asked her once if she thought grandma could hear her. She said she thought probably not, but it helps her feel less alone. Marcus set the laptop down on the side table. Smart woman, your grandmother, he said. I think so, Ava said.
Even though I never met her. She finally looked at him. Do you talk to your wife out loud? Marcus was quiet for a moment. Sometimes, he said, in the shop.
Ava considered this. What do you say? Different things, he said. Sometimes I just tell her what I'm working on, what I'm thinking about. He paused.
Lately, I tell her about you. Ava's expression did something he hadn't seen from her before. Not the careful, controlled look she usually wore. Something younger and more open, like the face under the face. What do you tell her?
She asked. Marcus thought about it honestly. I tell her that I think she would have liked you, he said. And that you would have driven her absolutely crazy with all your questions and that she would have loved every minute of it. Ava was quiet for a moment.
I think I would have liked her too, she said. Then she turned back to the television. Marcus sat in the in the chair and felt something move through his chest. Vast and aching and not entirely painful. The way certain large feelings are when you've been away from them long enough that you've almost forgotten they were part of the landscape.