She said honest not helpful. He closed his mouth. He thought about it with the honesty she had asked for a while. He said she nodded. Stirred the soup.
I want you to know something. She still didn't look at him. You're a good father. Not the kind of good that people say because they don't know what else to say. The kind of good that takes everything every day and you do it without keeping score.
She paused. Whoever told you that you had to do it completely alone got it wrong. His jaw tightened. You didn't ask for my opinion, she said. I know.
No. He said it quietly. I didn't. But he stopped. Started again.
I stopped believing someone could actually want to be in this. This much responsibility, this much weight. She turned around then she looked at him. The way she looked at things she was deciding to keep. Then someone lied to you.
She said about what people are capable of wanting. He held her eyes. For the first time in four years, Marcus Reed could not argue with what someone was saying about his own life. Not because she was wrong. Because she was completely right.
And the rightness of it landed somewhere behind his sternum and stayed. He said nothing. She turned back to the soup. It'll be ready in 20 minutes, she said. Go check on Zoe.
He went upstairs. He stood in the doorway of his room and looked at his daughter in the armchair. The good blanket, the water on the nightstand. Zoe looked back at him with the glassy eyed patience of a sick child who had decided to cooperate with her illness instead of fighting it. "Is Avery making soup? " Zoe asked.
She is real soup or canned soup. Real soup. Zoe closed her eyes. Good. Marcus sat on the edge of the bed closest to the chair.
You okay? I feel terrible. I know, but not as terrible as before. Because of the ibuprofen. Because someone else is here, Zoe said, eyes still closed.
Then with the directness that Marcus had never successfully talked her out of, "I like Avery. " He looked at his daughter. I know you do, he said. Do you? He was quiet for a moment. Yeah, Zo.
He said, I do. She settled deeper into the blanket. Okay, she said. That's good. He sat there until her breathing evened into sleep.
Then he went back downstairs and stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Avery at his stove and understood with the complete clarity that arrived after you stopped fighting the obvious that the wall was not cracked anymore. It was down. He just hadn't told her yet. That was when his phone rang. He looked at the screen.
Daniel. He looked at Avery, who had not turned around, who was tasting the soup and reaching for the pepper, who had no idea that the one name that could complicate everything that had happened in the last 7 days, was calling. He stepped into the hallway. "Hey," he said. "Marcus, how's it going?
How's Avery settling in? Zoe's sick. Aver's been helping this morning. Wait, she's still there? I thought she was moving Tuesday.
She is. A pause. She's been there a week. Man, how is it? Tell me the truth.
Marcus stood in his hallway. The soup smell from the kitchen. The sound of Avery moving in the space that had been exclusively his for 4 years. It's been good, he said. Good like good, Daniel.
A longer pause. Longer than Daniel's pauses usually were. Marcus had known this man for 16 years, and he knew every grade of Daniel Collins's silence. This one was the thinking kind, the adding up kind. Marcus, yeah, talk to me.
Marcus looked at the kitchen doorway, looked at the hallway wall, looked at his own hands. What do you want me to say? I want you to tell me what's actually happening in that house. Nothing is happening. I know you, Marcus Reed.
I have known you for 16 years and I know the specific way you say nothing when something is happening. That was that tone. Marcus said nothing. She's my sister, Daniel said. Not as an accusation, as a fact.
Laid down the way you laid down the terms of something important. She's been through it. The divorce, the rebuilding, all of it. She's just starting to be okay. I know that.
And your Daniel stopped. When he spoke again, his voice was different, tighter. What are you doing, Marcus? I'm not doing anything. Are you sure?
And there it was. The question under the question, the one that Marcus had been asking himself for seven days in various forms, at various hours of the night, at the kitchen sink, and in the hallway, and standing in the park watching his daughter talk to a chess player. "No," Marcus said. "I'm not sure. " The silence that followed was the longest one Daniel Collins had produced in 16 years of friendship. I need to think, Daniel said finally.
Okay, I'm not I'm not saying no. I'm not Marcus. You're my best friend. I'm not doing that. But this is He exhaled hard.
This is a lot. I know it is. She doesn't need complications right now. I know that, too. So, what are you going to do?
Marcus looked at the kitchen doorway. I don't know yet, he said honestly. Okay, another pause. Okay, I'll Daniel stopped started. Don't do anything dumb.
I never do anything dumb. You do occasionally do things that look responsible and turn out to be dumb despite everything. Marcus made a sound that was almost a laugh. Fair. Call me later.
Yeah. He hung up. He stood in the hallway for 30 seconds. Then he went back into the kitchen. Avery was ladling soup into two bowls.
She looked at him over her shoulder and read something in his face immediately because that was what she did. She read rooms and people and true things and she set the ladle down slowly. Who called? She said. He looked at her.
Daniel, he said. She went very still. What did he say? He asked what was happening in this house. She turned around fully.
She looked at him with the direct undefended look that was her operating state. And underneath it was something that had not been there before. A thread of something careful, something braced. "What did you tell him? " she said. "I told him I wasn't sure. " She held his gaze.