David laughed genuinely, and Marcus felt the floor shift slightly under him, that particular disorientation of being in a joke whose structure you can't see. "I walked into her house by accident," Marcus said flatly. "And yet you stayed," David said, still amused. Marcus had no answer to that. Elena had already moved on.
He spent the next 40 minutes trailing half a step behind her, which he recognized was not a dignified position, but couldn't seem to change. She moved through that room like she had a map of it, stopping exactly long enough with each person saying something specific and real instead of something general and polite, then moving on before the conversation could turn into the kind that needed escaping. He watched her work. That was the right word for it. It was work.
The way his hands on wood were work, practiced, intentional, nothing wasted. At some point, she stopped beside a large canvas, dark blues and grays, abstract, with one vertical line of pale gold running the full height of the piece. She stood in front of it for a long moment without speaking. Marcus stood beside her. "What do you see? " she asked.
"A wall with a crack in it. " he said. "Light coming through. " She turned and looked at him. Something changed in her face, not dramatically, not in a way that would read from across the room, but something quiet and definite shifted. "Most people say they see loneliness. " she said. "Loneliness doesn't have light coming through it. " Marcus said.
She held his gaze for a moment, then she turned back to the painting. "No. " she said quietly. "I suppose it doesn't. " They stood there together for maybe a minute, not speaking, and it was the most comfortable Marcus had felt all evening. Then her phone buzzed and she stepped away, and the moment closed like a door. On the drive home, his truck, because she'd asked without asking, simply walked toward it in the parking lot like it was already decided.
They didn't talk much. The city moved past the windows and the radio was on low, and Marcus kept his eyes on the road and tried not to think about the painting. He was pulling onto Oleander Street when she said, "You're different out of your workshop. " "Different how? " "More careful. " she said. "Like you're measuring everything before you touch it. " He didn't answer. "You do the same thing with wood. " she said.
"I watched you. " "You touch it before you work it, like you're reading it. " "Wood will tell you what it needs if you listen, he said. So will people. He parked in front of her house. Neither of them moved immediately. I haven't been in a room like that in a long time, Marcus said.
It came out quieter than he meant it to. I know. She reached for the door handle. You did fine. I didn't do anything.
That's not true. She pushed the door open and stepped out, then leaned back in for a moment, just her face in the doorway, the porch light behind her. You stood next to me. That's not nothing, Marcus. She was gone before he could figure out what to say.
He sat in the truck for a while. Hank was waiting on the other side of the front door, and when Marcus came in, the dog pressed his whole body against Marcus's legs the way he did when he understood that something had happened, even if he didn't know what. I have no idea what's going on, Marcus told him. Hank licked his hand. Yeah, Marcus said.
Me neither. He went to bed and stared at the ceiling for 2 hours. He was not thinking about the painting. He was not thinking about what she'd said in the truck. He was not thinking about the way she'd looked at him in front of that canvas, like he'd accidentally said the truest thing in the room.
He was not thinking about any of it. He failed completely at not thinking about any of it. Three days passed. Marcus worked. He finished the cabinet doors, started a new project, a pair of Windsor chairs from an estate in Charleston that needed full joint restoration and a careful strip and restain.
He sanded and fitted and measured and moved through his days the way he always did. He did not go next door. He told himself there was no reason to. Then on Thursday evening, he heard footsteps on his porch, not a knock, just footsteps. Then the particular sound of someone sitting down in the old wooden chair he kept by the front door because he'd never gotten around to moving it.
He waited, 30 seconds maybe. Then he opened the door. Elena was sitting in the chair with a book open in her lap, a real book hardcover worn at the spine, and a cup of something in her other hand. She looked up when the door opened. "You have a good porch," she said.
Marcus stared at her. "You're sitting on my porch. " "I am. " "Why aren't you on your porch? " She considered this. "Your porch faces west, better light this time of evening. " She looked back at her book. Marcus stood in the doorway. Hank pushed past his leg and went directly to Elena and put his head in her lap.
She scratched his ears without looking up from her page. "He's a traitor," Marcus said. "He's practical," she said. "He knows who has the better porch. " Marcus looked at her for a long moment. Then he went inside and got his coffee and came back out and sat in the other chair, the one he kept for no clear reason since he never had visitors and they sat on his porch together while the evening went gold and then gray and neither of them said much.
It was the most natural thing that had happened to Marcus in 3 years. That was what scared him. She came back the next evening and the one after that. No announcement, no explanation. Just the sound of footsteps on the porch and Hank's tail beginning to move before Marcus even got to the door.
It became without any discussion, without any agreement Marcus had consciously made a thing that happened. She was there the evening his ex-wife called. He was inside when the phone rang and he almost didn't answer when he saw Diana's name on the screen. Almost. But there was a voice in the back of his head, the same voice that had kept him from walking away from difficult things his whole life.
The voice that sounded like his father that said, "Answer it, Marcus. " So, he did. "Diana," he said, "I need to talk to you. " Her voice was the same as it always was, certain, forward-moving, with the particular edge she got when she'd decided something in advance and was informing rather than discussing. "Are you free Saturday? " "Depends on what for. " "I want to come by. I'm going to be in Savannah. There are some things we need to close out, properly. " Something tightened in his chest.
Not grief, exactly, something older and heavier. The sensation of being handled. "What things? " "Just loose ends, Marcus, adult things. Can you be available Saturday or not? " He almost said no. He said, "Yeah, fine, Saturday. " When he came back to the porch, Elena was still reading.
She didn't look up immediately, but after a moment she said without looking at him, "You tensed up. " "I'm not tense. " She turned the page. "Your jaw's been tight for 4 minutes. " He sat down. Hank moved to his side and leaned against his leg with all his weight, which was the dog's version of checking on him. Marcus put his hand on Hank's back. "My ex-wife is coming Saturday," he said.
He didn't know why he said it. He hadn't planned to. Elena looked up then, not with pity, not with the particular female calculation he'd seen in people's faces when they heard the word ex-wife and started running projections. Just attention. "Okay," she said.
"Just I'm saying it in case you see a car in the driveway. " "Okay," she said again. "We're not It's not anything. " She said, "Loose ends. " "Marcus," her voice was quiet and direct, "you don't have to explain it to me. I'm not explaining. You are, a little. She wasn't unkind about it.