He wasn't laughing at me. He was laughing because he said he'd done the exact same thing at 15 and nobody had told him it was normal. he said. Emily, every person who can drive today once ran over a cone and panicked. You're exactly on schedule. Marcus smiled in the dark.
He sounds like someone who knew how to make things feel okay. He made everything feel okay, she said softly. He was very good at that. Is he is good at that, she corrected herself. But the correction cost her.
He could hear it. He still is, Marcus said firmly. Yeah, she cleared her throat. How's Amara asleep dreaming about fish? Probably.
She's been very focused on fish lately. A small laugh. Why fish? I genuinely don't know. We went to the aquarium 2 weeks ago and something clicked.
Yesterday, she asked me if we could get a tank. What did you say? I said we'd think about it, which is parent code, for I'm going to look up the cost and the commitment and have a real answer in a week. You're going to get the fish, aren't you? I'm going to get the fish, he confirmed.
I'm powerless against that kid. Emily laughed again. A little longer this time. A little more real. She sounds amazing.
She is. Marcus said, "She keeps me honest." He paused. She said something last week. She said, "I have sad, tired eyes sometimes, like I'm looking at something that isn't there. She's 8 8 and 1/2." She would specify.
Marcus, that child is not 8 and 1/2. She's 45 and she is wise and she is watching you very carefully. I know. He said she gets that from Renee. He stopped then kept going because somehow at 9:52 p.m. in a dark apartment, it was easier than it had ever been in daylight.
Renee was like that. She didn't miss things. She'd look at you and just know before you said a word, like uh she was reading something written on you that you didn't know was there. The line was quiet. She sounds like she was extraordinary.
Emily said she was. He let it sit. I don't talk about her enough. I think I've been protecting her, keeping her private. But I think it's also just if I talk about her, I have to feel it again.
And if I feel it again, I don't know how long it'll last. The grief. The grief. Yeah. It lasts exactly as long as it needs to, Emily said.
And then it changes shape. It doesn't go away. It just becomes something you can carry differently. a pause. At least that's what I'm being told. By people who have been through it.
They're right, Marcus said quietly. It does change shape. Are you in a better shape now than you were? He thought about it honestly. Some days today, today is a better day than most of the days were 18 months ago.
He exhaled. That's real progress. Even if it doesn't feel like much, she said nothing for a moment. Then thank you for answering, Emily. I mean it.
You didn't have to pick up at 10:00. Yes, I did, he said simply without drama. She didn't respond to that. But he heard something in the silence. A kind of settling, like a question being quietly answered.
Try to rest, he said. You can't help him if you're running on nothing. I know. I'll be on the train tomorrow. I know, she said again.
And this time there was something in it. Something almost warm. Something that sounded the way it feels when you realize you can count on something. When a thing that you'd been holding tentatively in your hands proves it can bear weight. Good night, Marcus.
Good night, Emily. He held the phone after the call ended, sitting in the dark for a few minutes, not thinking in any organized way, just feeling the weight of the conversation and noticing that it hadn't been a burden. It had been the opposite of a burden. It had been the thing that at 9:52 p.m. on a Thursday had made him feel most like himself in recent memory. He sat with that for a while.
Then he went to bed and for the first time in longer than he could clearly remember, he fell asleep quickly. Friday morning, Emily boarded at 6:19 and she looked tired in the way that a long night earns. But underneath the tiredness, there was something else, something easier in her face, some tension that had been there so long he'd stopped noticing it, now slightly loosened. She sat beside him and immediately said he was awake this morning for an hour. We watched baseball highlights.
Yeah, he told me everything wrong with the current bullpen in detail for 45 minutes. Classic. It was the best 45 minutes I've had in 2 months. She smiled real and private. Thank you for last night.
Don't mention it. I'm going to mention it. Emily, Marcus, you picked up a phone call at 10 p.m. from a woman who was barely keeping it together, and you talked to her for half an hour, and you made her feel like a person instead of a crisis. She looked at him steadily. That deserves a thank you.