He thought about it at lunch, sitting alone at the far end of the breakroom with his turkey sandwich and its scrolling without seeing anything. He thought about it at 3:47 p.m. when Devaru walked past his station, stopped, looked at him, and said nothing, just looked and kept walking, which was Devou's way of saying, "I see you, and I'm not going to push." He thought about it that evening when Amara asked him to read her a chapter from her book and he sat on the edge of her bed and read three pages before realizing he hadn't absorbed a single word. Daddy Amara said, "Yeah, baby, you read that part already." He looked down at the page he had. "Sorry, are you tired?" "A little." She studied him with those eyes, Renee's eyes, dark and sharp and catching everything. and she said with the unnerving directness of an eight-year-old who had grown up faster than any child should have to. Are you sad tired or just tired tired?
Marcus set the book down. What's the difference? Sad tired is when your eyes don't move right? She said like they're looking at something that isn't there. He stared at his daughter for a long moment.
Where did you get that from? He asked. She shrugged. Mrs. Patterson says it about you sometimes. He didn't say anything.
He pulled Amara close, kissed the top of her head, and held on a second longer than usual. She let him. She always let him in ways that broke his heart and rebuilt it simultaneously. The most emotionally intelligent person in his life. I'm okay, he told her.
She didn't argue, but she didn't completely believe him either. He could tell. He finished the chapter the right one this time and turned off her light and stood in the hallway outside her room for a full minute just breathing. The apartment was quiet in that particular nighttime way that had taken him 2 years to stop hating. Silence used to mean Renee was asleep beside him or in the kitchen or somewhere close.
Now, silence just meant he was the only adult in the building, the only person holding everything together, the last line between his daughter and the world. He went to bed. He did not sleep. He thought about a woman with a camera around her neck who had looked at him on a train and asked a question nobody else had remembered to ask. The next morning, something was different about Emily.
He noticed it before she even sat down. She boarded at 6:19 as usual. He had stopped pretending he wasn't timing it, but her step was lighter. Her shoulders were up instead of curved forward. She had the camera as always, but today she was actually shooting with it, lifting it to her eye as the train moved, and clicking off small moments, an old man doing a crossword, two teenagers sharing earbuds.
The way morning light hit the scratched up window glass. She dropped into the seat beside Marcus and immediately said, "Okay, I need to know something." "Good morning to you, too," Marcus said. "Do you ever take anything for yourself?" He looked at her. "What?" "On the train in the morning. Do you ever just take something?
A song? A view? 5 minutes where it's just about you." She turned the camera over in her hands because I've been watching you for 3 weeks. And every morning you look like a man who is somewhere else, like your body is on this train, but the rest of you is running through a checklist. Marcus opened his mouth, closed it, then said, "How long have you been watching me?" That's not an answer to my question, Emily.
Marcus. He exhaled. I'm a single father. Everything I do in the morning is for someone else. That's not a complaint.
It's just that's what it is. I know, she said. But you're also a person. I know that. Do you?
She said it plainly, not an accusation, almost gently, which was somehow worse. Because you looked at me yesterday like no one had ever said that to you before. The train rocked slightly on the track. Marcus looked away from her. I have a system, he said.
The system works. Sure, Emily said. But does the man running the system work? He didn't answer. She didn't push, but she raised the camera and before he could object took a photograph.
He turned sharply. She was already lowering it, a small unrepentant expression on her face. Emily, you weren't performing, she said simply. That's the point. Delete it.
Absolutely not. I'm serious. I know. She tucked the camera against her chest. So am I.
He stared at her for a moment. She looked back at him with exactly the kind of calm that drove men like Marcus men who needed to be in control, who had built control into a survival mechanism completely sideways. He wasn't used to people who didn't back down from him. He wasn't used to people who found his resistance interesting. Instead of intimidating ou she looked back out the window.
Probably 3 days later she was gone. No text, no warning, no explanation. She just wasn't on the train. Marcus got on at 6:15. Sat in his seat.
Watched every door opening until Back Bay and Emily Carter didn't appear. He told himself it was nothing. People missed the train. People got sick. People had appointments, emergencies, reasons.
It was one morning, but the next morning she wasn't there either. And the morning after that, by the fourth day, Marcus was doing something he hadn't done in years. He was distracted at work in a way he couldn't attribute to grief, couldn't chalk up to exhaustion, couldn't fold into the system and process and set aside. He was distracted because he was worried. and worry in Marcus' life had always been reserved for two categories, Amara and Amara's future. He had no framework for worrying about anyone else.
Dvu noticed on the second day, "Of course he did." The man had radar. "You eating?" Devou asked, setting a vending machine sandwich on Marcus' workbench without being asked. "I ate when?" Marcus checked his watch. It was 2 p.m. He had not in fact eaten. He picked up the sandwich.
There's this woman on my train," he said without preamble. Dearu sat down on the stool across from him. He did this the way a man settles in for a story he's been waiting a long time to hear slowly, deliberately with the full allocation of his attention. "Go on," he said. "She's been out for a few days.