***
Earl arrived at ten past four, earlier than he had threatened and later than he had promised.
The rain had quit. The sidewalk smelled like wet concrete and the neighbor's dryer vent. Marcus was in the garage because Denise had called, and he had stepped out there from habit, and the call had run long. She was between a man with chest pain and a woman who wanted to know why the copay had changed. She had ninety seconds.
"Is he there?"
"Not yet."
"Marcus."
"I have the speech."
"Say it at the door. Not after Owen sits on his lap. After Owen sits on his lap you turn into a photograph."
"I know."
"You knowing is not—" She stopped. A voice behind her called a name that was not his. "I have to go. I love you. Do not make her be brave for you today."
"I love you too."
He stood with the phone in his hand after she hung up. The garage smelled like cold metal and the orange soap he used on his knuckles. His leather jacket was on the hook by the door, black, worn pale at the wrists, the jacket Denise said made him look like he was about to collect a debt. He wore it over a black T-shirt because the garage was cool and because some foolish part of him wanted, on this particular Sunday, to look like a man with a spine already installed. He heard the storm door slap.
He was three steps too late. Earl was already in the living room, already saying, "There he is," already occupying the brown sofa as if the cushion had been waiting specifically for the shape of him.
Marcus put the phone in his pocket. He told himself he would go in after he moved the recycling bin that did not need moving. He told himself thirty seconds. The thirty seconds were a kind of prayer he no longer believed, and he said them anyway.
***