Was it ever him? No, but my body didn't know that. She wrapped her hands around the mug. That's the thing nobody tells you about being scared of somebody. Your body stops trusting the quiet.
You lie there and every normal sound turns into him. Marcus sat down across from her. He understood that better than she knew. For 3 years after Denise died, every ring of the phone had put ice in his stomach because the last call he'd ever gotten had been from a hospital. "You're safe here," he said.
I checked the doors twice. "I know that's not the same as feeling safe, though. You know that better than anybody, I think." She looked at the photograph on the mantle. You lost somebody. You know what it does to a person feeling like the floor can drop out from under you at any second.
Marcus didn't answer right away. She was right, and it caught him off guard how fast she'd seen it. "Yeah," he said finally. "I know what that does." They drank their coffee in the quiet for a minute. Then Ava's alarm went off down the hall, a tiny electronic beep, and Marcus was on his feet.
"That's my girl. I've got to get her up and fed and to school. You can stay here, rest, use whatever you need. I'll be back around 7:00. Then I've got to get to the site.
Marcus. Emily stopped him. What do I tell her, your daughter, if she sees me? Marcus thought about it. The truth.
That you're a neighbor who had a hard night and needed a place to stay. Ava's age. She's not going to interrogate you. She's mostly going to want to know if you've seen her other shoe because she loses one every single morning. That got a small laugh out of Emily.
It steadied her a little. He was right about Ava. When the little girl padded into the kitchen 20 minutes later, dressed for school with her hair half done, she stopped and looked at the strange woman at the table with the frank open curiosity of a child. And then she said, "Are you the lady from across the street?" "I am," Emily said carefully. "My name's Emily." "Your car is gray," Ava informed her as though this were important information.
"It is gray. That's exactly right." Ava nodded satisfied and climbed into the chair next to her without any of the awkwardness the adults were carrying. "Daddy, have you seen my other shoe?" Marcus caught Emily's eye over his daughter's head and something passed between them. Something that was almost a smile. He found the shoe under the couch.
He made Ava eat her cereal. He signed a permission slip and packed a lunch. And the whole time, Emily watched him move through the small, ordinary machinery of a single father's morning. And Marcus could feel her watching, and neither of them said anything about it because there was nothing to say. It just was what it was, a man taking care of his kid.
She told him last night that nobody did anything without an angle. He figured letting her watch a plain, unglamorous Tuesday morning was as good an argument against that as anything he could say out loud. He dropped Ava at school and came back and found Emily had washed the breakfast dishes and was standing in his kitchen with her overnight bag packed and her phone in her hand and a look on her face that told him something had shifted. He called, she said six more times since I got up and he texted. She turned the phone around so Marcus could see.
Read it. Marcus took the phone. The text was long. He read it twice. It started soft all apology and longing, saying he'd been out of his mind with worry that he'd only come by last night because he loved her and was scared for her.
And then halfway through, the tone changed the way Emily had described the night before, the way it always did with men like this. It got cold. It reminded her of everything he'd supposedly done for her. It told her she was being dramatic, and it ended with a line that made the back of Marcus' neck go tight. The line said, "I know he's letting you stay there across the street." "You think I don't see Marcus?
Set the phone down very carefully on the table. He was watching the house this morning." He said, "It wasn't a question. He knows I'm here. He knows about you." Emily's voice was shaking again. But underneath the fear, there was something new this morning, something harder.
Marcus, I'm not going to bring this to your door. I won't. You have a daughter. I'll go to a hotel. I'll go somewhere he doesn't.
Sit down, Marcus said. Marcus. Emily, sit down, please. She sat. Marcus pulled out the chair across from her and sat too.
And he folded his hands on the table and looked at her. And when he spoke, his voice was calm and level in a way that somehow carried more weight than shouting ever could. "You're not going to a hotel," he said. "You want to know why?" Because a hotel is a room with a door and nobody behind it. And this man has already shown you he'll come to a door.
So the question isn't whether you're safe at a hotel. The question is whether you're alone at a hotel, and you would be, and I'm not going to let that happen. You barely know me. I keep hearing that from you. A hint of a smile touched his mouth.
You keep saying it like it's going to make me change my mind. It's not going to make me change my mind. Why? Her voice cracked on the word. Why would you take this on?
Be honest with me. Nobody's this kind for no reason. And there it was again. Ryan's poison working under her skin, making her distrust the one clean thing in front of her. Marcus heard it for exactly what it was.
You want a reason? He said. All right, I'll give you a reason. 3 years ago, I sat in a hospital and watched the only woman I ever loved slip away from me. And there was not one single thing I could do about it.
Not one thing. I'm a man who fixes things, Emily. That's what I am all the way down. And I couldn't fix that. I couldn't fix her.