Three years, he said. I have been the person who carries things. I carry Lily. I carry the house. I carry Meridian.
I carry all the things that need carrying. He stopped. And somewhere in those three years I stopped even remembering that I was allowed to want anything for myself. That wanting something for myself wasn't selfish or dangerous or something I'd have to apologize for. He met her eyes.
You walked into my office and asked me who saves me. And I didn't have an answer, but I thought about that question every day for weeks. What's the answer? She asked. I'm working on it, he said.
But you're part of it. And I don't say that because you appeared at the right moment, or because I'm grateful, or because you needed something, and I happened to be there. He paused. I say it because when I picture what I actually want my life to look like, the version where I stop making myself small, you're in that picture. Not saving me, just there.
She looked at him. Nashville is 4 hours, she said. I know, that's not nothing. No, he said, it's not. But it's also not impossible.
His jaw shifted. The same slight tension she had learned meant he was deciding something. And I have spent enough of my life letting the distance between what I want and what's convenient be the reason I don't reach for it. Something broke open in her chest quietly and completely. Okay, she said.
Okay, he said. That was it. That was the whole conversation. No promises, no plans, no neat resolution, just two people who had been broken in entirely different ways looking at each other and deciding, with full information and no illusions, that the other person was worth the difficulty. It was not the most romantic moment of either of their lives.
It was in some ways better than that. The last week of the month moved with the particular speed of time you don't want to lose. Marcus began packing. Lilly supervised with the focused authority of someone who has strong opinions about box labeling and does not hesitate to enforce them. Mrs. Patterson came over three times, ostensibly to help, actually to sit in the kitchen and be present in the way that people who love you are present when something is ending, not sadly, but with the weight of knowing it mattered.
Clare came on the last Saturday, not to help pack, Marcus had professionals coming on Monday, but because Lilly had asked her to, via text, in the particular direct way Lilly communicated everything. Dad's place looks weird with boxes everywhere. Can you come Saturday? I'm making him let me put a bow on Mrs. Patterson's chair when she leaves because she won't let him, but she'll let me. She came at noon and stayed until 6:00.
They ordered pizza. Lily put a bow bright yellow enormous on Mrs. Patterson's kitchen chair, and Mrs. Patterson made a sound that was half protest and entirely love. They watched half a movie before Lily fell asleep on the couch with her head on a throw pillow and her library book face down on her stomach. Marcus carried her to bed. He came back out.
Claire was washing the pizza plates, not because it needed to be done that moment, just because her hands needed something to do. He came and stood next to her. They washed dishes in silence for a while. "I'm going to miss this," he said. "Not the dishes." "Not the house." "Me too," she said.
"I'll be back in 3 weeks," he said. "For the Meridian transition handoff." "I know. And Nashville's not." "4 hours," she said. "I know that, too." He turned off the faucet. He turned to look at her.
Right there. No distance between them. In the kitchen of the house that had the horse drawing on the refrigerator and the mismatched mugs and all the ordinary extraordinary evidence of a life built on love and stubbornness and showing up every single day. "I'm scared," he said. Just that.
Flat and honest and real. "Of Nashville?" she asked. "Of all of it," he said. "Nashville. You wanting things I'm not used to letting myself want." His voice was low.
"I've been strong for so long I don't know what it looks like to need something." She looked at him. "You told me once that being strong doesn't mean carrying everything alone." "I say that to Lily. You should say it to yourself." He was very still. "You're allowed to need things," she said. "You're allowed to be scared.
You're allowed to want a life that's yours." She looked at him directly. No softening. No buffer. "And you're allowed to let someone stand next to you while you figure out what that looks like. That's not weakness.
That's just being a person. He looked at her for a long moment. Then something changed in his face, not dramatically, not with theatrics, just a very quiet release of something he had been holding for a very, very long time. "Okay," he said. She nodded.
Neither of them moved for a moment. Then she dried her hands on the dish towel and hung it back on the oven handle the same way she'd seen him do it a hundred times. And she looked at the kitchen that was almost not his anymore and felt the particular bittersweetness of something good beginning and something else gently closing. "Get some sleep," she said. "Big week." "Yeah," he said.
At the door she paused. "Marcus." "Yeah." "When Lily wins something someday, and she will, and you're sitting in the audience watching her, and you're proud in that way that doesn't have words." She looked back at him. "I want to be there for that. Not as someone you saved and not as someone who saved you. Just as someone who gets to be there." He held her gaze.