It was crazy. It was too fast. A grown man didn't rearrange his Saturday because a stranger on the side of the road wanted to play matchmaker. And yet, the paper was still on his table. He hadn't thrown it away.
That had to mean something, didn't it? A man threw away things he didn't want. He kept the things he wasn't sure about. "Dad." Marcus turned.
Ava was standing in the kitchen doorway in her pajamas, hair everywhere, squinting against the light. "Baby, it's Saturday. What are you doing up?" "I heard you moving around." She patted over and climbed onto a kitchen chair, folding her legs underneath her.
"You've got the wrinkle again." Marcus reached up and sure enough felt the crease. "You need to stop keeping track of my face," he said. "Somebody has to." She yawned and looked at the paper in his hand.
"What's that?" He hesitated. Then he told her the truth because he'd never once lied to his daughter, and he wasn't going to start over a piece of paper. "It's the old man's address from yesterday. Harold." Marcus turned the paper over in his fingers.
"He asked me to come by today." Ava studied him with those clear brown eyes. "Are you going to go?" "I don't know." "Why not?"
And there it was. The simplest question in the world, the one only a child would ask so directly. And Marcus found he didn't have a clean answer for it. "It's complicated," he said. "That's what grown-ups say when the answer is yes, but they're scared," Ava said.
Marcus stared at her. Nine years old. "Where do you even hear this stuff?" he said. "You. I hear it from you."
She shrugged and reached for a triangle of the sandwich he hadn't finished packing, taking a bite out of it before he could stop her. "You always say being scared isn't a good enough reason not to do something. You said it to me when I didn't want to go to swim class." "That was different." "How?"
"Because—" Marcus opened his mouth, closed it. She had him, and she knew it. And worst of all, she wasn't even gloating about it. She was just eating his sandwich and waiting. Marcus set the paper down on the table.
"Finish my breakfast," he said. "I got to think." "You think too much," Ava said around a mouthful of turkey. "That's your whole problem." By 9:00, Marcus was in his truck driving toward the old part of town, telling himself the entire way that he was only going to say hello.
That was it. He'd stop by, make sure Harold hadn't collapsed again, thank the man for the kind thought about his daughter, and politely decline. Fifteen minutes in and out. A neighborly thing to do. It didn't have to mean anything.
He almost believed it. He found the house at the end of a quiet street, a two-story place with white siding gone a little gray with age, and a wraparound porch that had clearly been somebody's pride once. The blue pickup was in the driveway, and behind the house Marcus could see the bones of something being built. A frame going up, fresh lumber pale against the green of the backyard, the garden house. He parked.
He sat there for a second, hands on the wheel. Then he got out. He didn't make it to the front door because as he came around the side of the house toward the sound of hammering, he stopped short. It wasn't Harold building. It was a woman.
She was up on a step stool at the corner of the frame, a hammer in one hand, driving a nail into a joint with three clean strikes. A woman who clearly knew how to hold a hammer, which Marcus noticed the way a man in construction notices these things. She had her sleeves pushed up and her hair pulled back and a pencil tucked behind one ear, and she was frowning at the joint like it had personally offended her. Marcus stood there, not sure whether to announce himself or back away quietly and pretend he'd never come. He chose wrong.
He shifted his weight, and a board under his boot creaked. The woman spun around, hammer still in hand. For a second, they just looked at each other. "You're not my father," she said. "No, ma'am. I am definitely not."
Marcus put his hands up slightly, unthreatening. "I'm—I'm looking for Harold. He around?" She came down off the step stool, slowly sizing him up. The hammer lowered, but not put down. She had sharp eyes, the kind that took a man's measure in about 2 seconds and filed the results away.
"He's inside getting more nails." She tilted her head. "Who's asking?" "Marcus. Marcus Johnson." Something shifted in her face.
Recognition. And then something that was almost, almost a smile held back. "Oh," she said. "You're him." "I'm him?"
"You're the man my father found on the side of the road yesterday." She set the hammer down on the frame, now wiping her palm on her jeans and crossing her arms. "He wouldn't shut up about you at breakfast. Marcus this, Marcus that. The one man left in America with any decency."
"I was starting to think he made you up." Marcus felt his face get warm. "He's—he exaggerates." "He does," she agreed. "About everything. Once told me he built the tallest building in Savannah."
"It's four stories." She studied him a beat longer, and then finally the held-back smile got loose. "Emily. Emily Bennett." "Emily." Marcus nodded.
And because he couldn't help himself, because there was something about the way she'd been standing on that stool with a pencil behind her ear that made the joke come out before he could stop it. "So you're the daughter he didn't warn me about." Emily laughed. It surprised both of them how easy it came. "He warned you about me?"