It was a Saturday in late October. The garden house was almost done. Real walls now, a real roof, a door that closed clean because Emily had been right about the level. They were painting the trim, the three of them, plus Ava. When Emily's phone rang, she looked at the screen.
Something changed in her face. "I have to take this," she said, and walked to the far end of the yard. Marcus kept painting, but he watched her out of the corner of his eye, watched her free hand come up to her mouth, watched her start to pace, watched her whole posture change into something taut and electric. She was on the phone for 10 minutes. When she came back, she was pale and she was smiling in a way that didn't reach anywhere near her eyes.
"Everything okay?" Marcus asked. That was—Emily stopped, looked at her father, looked at Marcus. "That was a firm in Chicago. A big one. One of the biggest design firms in the country."
She said it carefully, like the words might break if she dropped them. "They want me to run their new division. Director. It's—Marcus, it's the job. It's the actual job."
"The one I've been working toward my whole career." For a second, nobody said anything. Harold set down his paintbrush very slowly. "Chicago," Harold said. "Chicago," Emily said.
And Marcus felt something drop in his stomach, cold and fast, like the floor had just tilted underneath all of them. Because Chicago was not the old part of town. Chicago was not a 20-minute drive on a road he never used to take. Chicago was a thousand miles away, and it was Emily's whole life's work handed to her on a phone call. And there was no version of the next sentence that didn't hurt somebody.
"That's—" Marcus made himself say it. Made himself be the kind of man who said it. "Emily. Emily, that's incredible. That's—you should be proud. That's huge."
But Emily wasn't looking at him like it was huge. She was looking at her father, who had gone very quiet. And then at Ava, who had paint on her nose and was watching all of them with a child's radar for grown-ups saying one thing and meaning another. And then she was looking at Marcus, and there was something breaking behind her eyes. Some old wound Marcus couldn't see the shape of yet.
"Yeah," Emily said faintly. "Huge." She set down her paintbrush and walked into the house. Marcus started to follow. Harold caught his arm.
"Let her go," the old man said quietly. "There's something you don't know about my daughter's son. Something that's going to come up now, whether any of us are ready for it or not." Marcus looked at him. "What?"
Harold watched the door his daughter had disappeared through. And for the first time since Marcus had known him, the old man looked genuinely afraid. "The last man who loved her," Harold said, "asked her to give this exact thing up, this exact dream. Told her he'd support her. Told her he loved her."
"And then when the moment came and she had a chance like this one, he asked her to stay, to be less so he could be more." Harold's jaw tightened. "She said no. Broke her heart to do it, but she said no. And she promised herself she'd never let another man put her in that position again."
"Never let herself get so attached to somebody that they could ask her to shrink her whole life down to fit inside theirs." Marcus felt the ground shift again. "That's why she pushes so hard," Harold said. "That's why she doesn't let anybody in. She's not cold, Marcus."
"She's the warmest person I know. She's just been burned by the exact thing you two have been building out here all fall. And now the exact thing that burned her is sitting on the other side of that door, waiting for one of you to say something." He looked at Marcus, and his eyes were wet. "So think real hard about what you say next, son."
"Because whatever is growing between you two, it's about to get tested, and most things don't survive this test." From inside the house, Marcus could hear Emily on the phone again, her voice low and tight. And beside him, in a small voice, Ava tugged his sleeve. "Dad," she whispered. "Is Miss Emily going to leave?"
Marcus looked down at his daughter's face. His daughter, who he'd sworn he would never let get attached to someone who might disappear, who he'd brought out here anyway, who now had paint on her nose and hope in her eyes, and a question he didn't know how to answer. He looked at the closed door. He looked at Harold, who was watching him, waiting. And Marcus realized with the cold clarity of a man who's just understood the size of what he stands to lose that everything, his daughter's heart, Emily's dream, the careful walls both of them had spent years building, all of it, now came down to what happened on the other side of that door.
Marcus knelt down so he was level with his daughter's face. "I don't know, baby," he said. "Honestly, I don't know if she's going to leave. That's a grown-up thing she has to figure out." "But whatever happens, that's not something you did."
"Okay? You hear me? Grown-ups have hard choices sometimes, and it's never because of you." Ava nodded, but her chin was trembling, and Marcus knew with a father's terrible certainty that the exact thing he'd spent 5 years trying to prevent had already happened. His daughter had gotten attached. She'd let someone into her heart who might disappear.
And there was nothing he could do about it now except stay and see it through and hope the landing wasn't as bad as he feared. "Go help Mr. Harold clean the brushes," Marcus said, squeezing her shoulder. "I need to talk to Miss Emily for a minute." Ava went, glancing back once. Harold caught Marcus's eye and gave a small nod.
"Go on," and steered Ava toward the paint cans with a gentleness that told Marcus the old man understood exactly how much was riding on the next few minutes. Marcus walked into the house. He found Emily in the kitchen, standing at the counter, phone face down beside her, both hands flat on the surface like she was bracing against something. She didn't turn around when he came in. "You can say it," she said, her voice tight.
"Whatever you're about to say, just say it." "I wasn't going to say anything," Marcus said. "Everybody says something." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "This is the part where you tell me how happy you are for me."
"And then it's the part where your face doesn't match your words. And then it's the part a week from now, two weeks from now, where you sit me down and explain, real gentle, real reasonable, all the ways it would be better if I just stayed." Marcus stood very still. "Who did that to you?" he asked quietly. Emily's shoulders went rigid.
"It doesn't matter." "It matters," Marcus said. "Because you're standing there talking to a version of me that hasn't said a single word yet. You're arguing with a ghost, Emily. And I'd like to know who put it there before I get blamed for what he did."