Who was constitutionally incapable of shyness? "I'm seven. Are you a police officer? " "I am," Elena said. "Do you have a gun? " Zoe, Marcus said. Elena laughed.
The real one and stood back up. "Smart kid," she said to Marcus. "She's something," he agreed. The niece was pulling Elena's arm toward the car. The way children pull with their whole weight, uninhibited by any social awareness.
Elena let herself be pulled a step, then stopped, looked at Marcus directly. "There's a diner," she said. On Maple Street, Plet's. "You remember it? " "I remember it. " Marcus said they still have the pie, she said. The sweet potato pie.
Still the best thing in Cedar Falls. Probably the best thing in Georgia, she paused. I go on Thursday evenings sometimes. After 6, Marcus held his daughter's hand and looked at Elena Brooks. "Okay," he said.
"Okay," she said. She let her niece drag her toward the car. Marcus stood in the parking lot for a moment before Zoe said. Daddy, let's go. I'm hungry.
And pulled him back into the present. He drove home on Route 9. This time his hands were steady on the wheel, but his chest was doing the thing that no system he had ever built could quite account for that specific ungovernable terrifying thing it had been doing since he was 17 years old and a girl with a pen cap in her mouth had told him he was wrong and argued it well. That thing that didn't have a clean name. That thing that had no correct fix.
That thing that simply sat there inside him, patient as a road, waiting for him to decide if he was going to keep driving away from it or finally for once in his life pull over. Thursday came the way difficult things always come faster than you're ready for and slower than you can stand. Marcus changed his shirt three times. He would not admit this to anyone. Not to Ranata, not to his coworker Dion.
Not to a single living soul in Cedar Falls, Georgia. But the first shirt was too formal, which felt like he was trying too hard. The second shirt was too casual, which felt like he wasn't trying at all. The third shirt was the blue one Ranata had given him for his birthday 2 years ago and told him made him look like someone worth talking to. And Marcus put it on with the particular resignation of a man who has run out of better options.
Zoe watched him from the bathroom doorway with seven-year-old eyes that missed absolutely nothing. "You're being weird," she announced. "I'm not being weird," Marcus said. "You combed your hair twice. "My hair needed combing. " You combed it and then you uncombed it and then you combed it again. " Marcus turned from the mirror and looked at his daughter.
She was leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, her mother's eyes in her face, that particular combination of intelligence and patience that seven-year-olds should technically possess, but Zoe had been born with in full. I'm having dinner with an old friend, he said. "The police lady," Zoe said immediately. Not a question. Marcus paused.
"How did you—" "You looked at her weird in the parking lot. " "I didn't look at her weird. " "Daddy. " Zoe tilted her head the way she did when she was explaining something obvious to someone she loved anyway, despite their limitations. "You looked at her the same way you look at the Thanksgiving pie before you're allowed to eat it. " Marcus opened his mouth, closed it, pointed at his daughter. Go put your shoes on. Ranata's picking you up in 10 minutes. Zoe smiled with every tooth she had and disappeared down the hall.
Marcus turned back to the mirror. He didn't know what he was looking for in his own reflection. Reassurance, maybe some sign that the man staring back at him was adequate for whatever tonight was going to be. He had faced difficult things in his life, a lot of them. He had sat in hospital waiting rooms.
He had raised a child alone. He had made himself get up on mornings when getting up felt like lifting the entire world off the floor. He had never successfully figured out how to walk back into the life of someone he'd hurt and make it mean something real. Ranata arrived at 6:15, picked up Zoe, and left with the specific restraint of a woman who had approximately 47 things she wanted to say and was choosing for once to say none of them. She kissed Marcus on the cheek at the door and said, ""Only be honest with her. "" And then she was gone.
Marcus drove to Plet's Diner. He arrived at 6:28. Elena was already there. She was sitting in the booth by the window, not the booth they used to take as teenagers, which had been the one in the far back corner where the light was bad and nobody bothered you. This was a different booth, a more open one, a booth that said without saying it that she was not hiding from this conversation.
She was wearing her hair down, dark jacket, no badge, no uniform, just a woman at a table with her hands around a coffee mug and her eyes watching him walk through the door with an expression he couldn't fully read from that distance. He walked toward her. She didn't look away. He slid into the booth across from her. And for a moment, they simply looked at each other across the table.
Two adults, 35 years old, in a diner they'd both known since they were children. Separated by 4 feet of laminate tabletop and 15 years of everything that hadn't been said. "You came," Elena said. "You invited me," Marcus said. ""I wasn't sure that was enough. "" A waitress appeared young, maybe 19, completely indifferent to the emotional weight at table 7 and asked if Marcus wanted coffee. He said yes.
She disappeared. The coffee arrived 30 seconds later with the mechanical efficiency of someone running on autopilot. Elena watched him add cream. She'd always noticed small things. "You still take too much cream," she said.
"You still notice things that aren't your business," he said. She almost smiled. "Almost. " "How long have you been back? " Marcus asked. "8 months," she said. 8 months, 2 weeks, and about 4 days if you want the exact number.
"Why the exact number? " Because moving back to the town you grew up in is something you count, she said. Every day feels like a decision you're either confirming or reconsidering. Marcus wrapped both hands around his coffee mug. "You could have called," he said carefully. When you got back, the almost smile disappeared.
"Could I have? " she said. It was not a question. You didn't leave me a number, Marcus. Her voice stayed level. This was clearly something she had prepared for the levelness itself was the preparation.
You left me nothing. I woke up on the morning after graduation and called your house and your mother told me you were gone. Gone. That was the word she used. Like you evaporated.