He picked up his laptop, went back to the invoices. They sat like that until Naomi came through the door at 7:45, still in her scrubs, and saw Ava asleep on the couch under the blanket and Marcus at the chair and everything quiet and handled. And she stood in the doorway of his house that she'd never been inside before and pressed her hand over her mouth for a moment. Marcus looked at her. She lowered her hand.
Her eyes were bright. "I don't know what to do with you," she said quietly so as not to wake Ava. "You don't have to do anything with me," he said. "She's got a fever of 101." Nurse said strep confirmed prescription called in to the Walgreens on 5th. Naomi's jaw was working.
Marcus. She had two lozenes and about a cup of soup. He said she didn't eat much, but she kept it down. She's been asleep about 40 minutes. Naomi walked to the couch and crouched down and touched Ava's forehead with the back of her hand.
Ava stirred, opened her eyes, saw her mother. "Hi, mama," she said in the blurry voice of someone waking up in a warm, safe place. "Hi, baby," Naomi said softly. How do you feel? Better, Ava said.
Then Marcus has a picture of his wife on the mantle. She has good eyes. Naomi looked at Marcus over Ava's head. He glanced at the mantle. His wife's photo, the one from their anniversary trip to Savannah, her laughing at something he'd said the afternoon light on her face.
He'd looked at it so many times it had become part of the room's furniture. He'd stopped really seeing it. Now he saw it. She does, he agreed. Naomi gathered Ava up coat shoes paper bag and carried her out to the Corolla.
She came back in for the blanket which Ava had apparently declared was coming home with them and stood at his front door for a moment. I owe you, she said. You don't, he said. I do, she said. And I pay my debts even when the person I owe refuses to acknowledge them.
She held his gaze. Thank you, Marcus. Genuinely, he nodded once. She left. He stood in the living room in the quiet of his house, which felt different now.
Felt like it had been occupied in a way. It hadn't been in years, like the rooms had remembered. They were supposed to have people in them. And he looked at his wife's photo on the mantle. "She has good eyes," he said.
He stood there for a moment, then he went to bed. December came the way. December always comes in South Carolina. Gentler than most of the country but still carrying that particular quality of change. The way the air shifts and the light goes golden earlier and everyone seems to be moving towards something whether they know it or not.
Marcus found himself moving too. He started leaving the shop 30 minutes earlier on the days he knew Ava would be there so she wasn't sitting alone with Terry. He started stocking a second brand of juice box because Ava had mentioned once in the completely off-hand way she mentioned everything that she preferred apple over grape. He put it in the small refrigerator by the back workbench without making a thing of it. She found it on a Tuesday and said without turning around.
You got apple. Someone drank all the grape. He said nobody drinks grape. She said flatly and opened the apple juice. In December, Damen's legal pressure increased and then suddenly collapsed.
Gerald Watkins called Naomi on a Wednesday morning with the news. Damen's lawyer had withdrawn the visitation filing. Gerald suspected it was because the actual investigation into Damian's circumstances, his current address, his employment history, his absence of any contact attempt in 5 and 1/2 years had made the case look considerably worse on paper than Damian had apparently been told it would. The lawyer had likely advised him that a court appearance would cost money. He didn't have to produce an outcome that wouldn't go his way.
Naomi called Marcus right after she hung up with Gerald. He was under a Jeep Cherokee at the time. He heard her voice and knew from the first syllable that the news was good. "It's done," he said. "For now," she said.
"Careful." Gerald says he could refile, but it would have to be with a much stronger basis, which he doesn't have, and it would cost him more than I think he's willing to spend on something that isn't actually about Ava. Good, Marcus said. Yeah. A pause. Are you busy Friday night?
Marcus considered the Jeep Cherokee above him. Not after 7. I want to cook you dinner, she said. Me and Ava. Ava already decided the menu, which means it's going to be spaghetti because she can make spaghetti herself and she wants you to know that.
Something warm moved through him. Ava's cooking. Ava is supervising. Naomi said there's a difference though she won't acknowledge it. I'll be there at 7:00, he said.
How was there at 6:53? Dinner was spaghetti, which was actually quite good, and Marcus said so, which Ava received as her due without excessive modesty. They sat at Naomi's kitchen table, the small round one with the mismatched chairs that Naomi had explained came from three different yard sales, and ate and talked. And Ava told a story about something that had happened at recess that required considerable theatrical reenactment. And Marcus found himself laughing twice without planning to and looked up at one point to find Naomi watching him with an expression he didn't have a name for yet.
After dinner, Ava was sent to do homework and Marcus and Naomi sat at the kitchen table with the second cups of coffee. That meant the evening wasn't over yet and the house was quiet around them. And Naomi said, "Can I tell you something?" "The real reason I asked you that day." Marcus looked at her. It wasn't about the school event, she said. She was looking at the coffee cup.
I mean, it was, but that wasn't the whole truth. The real reason was. She stopped, started again. Her last consistent male figure was my uncle. He used to pick her up from daycare when she was four or 5 years old.