"I haven't found the catch yet," she said. And I don't stopped regrouped. I think that might mean there isn't one. "There isn't one," he said simply. "I know," she said.
I know that now. And it terrifies me more than any of the other things. "Why? " Because the catches were the thing I was sure of. If you leave because I'm too much, that confirms what I believe about myself. And it's painful, but it's familiar.
If you stay because I'm worth it, then I have to completely rebuild what I believe about myself. "And that's scarier. " Daniel said. "So much scarier. " She said he was quiet for a moment. Then Alyssa, "I need to tell you something, too. " Something shifted in his voice enough that she straightened. I've been waiting too, he said.
Not for you to fail. For me, too. For the part where I realize I've forgotten how to do this, how to actually be in something with another person. How to let someone matter without. He stopped.
After Renee, I told myself I was protecting Marcus, that putting all my energy into him was the responsible choice. And that was true, but it was also the easier choice because Marcus couldn't leave me. Marcus couldn't decide I was too much. Marcus was just mine permanently, unconditionally. Alyssa was very still.
And you, Daniel continued, are the first person in 4 years who I've allowed to be in the position of choosing. And it's terrifying. Is the right word. You're absolutely right about that. She looked at him for a long moment.
"So, we're both terrified. " "Completely," he said. "And we're doing it anyway, apparently. " She almost smiled. "That seems like either wisdom or insanity. " "Could be both," he said. "Could absolutely be both," she agreed. The almost smile became a real one.
Small, but there. And Daniel looked at that smile at 11:59 at night in her kitchen with Dominique's photographs on the counter and thought that whatever fear lived in him about this, about opening up again, about the specific vulnerability of loving someone who could leave was not bigger than this, was not bigger than the specific irreplaceable rightness of this woman. This moment, this kitchen, he thought, I am not going to waste this being afraid. What happened happened 3 days later and neither of them saw it coming. Marcus met Alyssa on a Saturday afternoon.
Daniel had agonized over the timing for 2 weeks. Not because he doubted Alyssa he'd passed that particular threshold sometime around the night of the photographs, but because Font Marcus was not a variable he could control. And Daniel's son had the specific social power of a child who said exactly what he observed with no filter between observation and output. He'd given Marcus minimal briefing. Her name is Alyssa.
She's someone I like. She's a counselor, which means she helps people who are going through hard times. Be yourself, Marcus. Predictably, head nodded with the expression of a person who doesn't need the briefing. Alyssa arrived at 2:00 in the afternoon with a slight tightness around her eyes that Daniel recognized as controlled anxiety.
She was wearing a blue sweater, sleeves at her wrists, hands slightly stiff at her sides. "Hey," Daniel said at the door. "Hey," she said. "How bad is the briefing? " I should expect. I told him to be himself.
That's either very reassuring or deeply alarming. Bit of both, he admitted. Marcus appeared from the hallway with the timing of someone who had definitely been waiting just out of sight. He was 9 years old and approximately 4 ft of unmanaged perception. And he walked up to Alyssa and stopped at a respectful distance and looked at her with the uncurated assessment of who has been raised by a man who thinks honesty is a form of respect.
"Hi," he said. "Hi," Alyssa said. "You must be Marcus. " "You must be Alyssa," Marcus said. ""My dad talks about you. "" Daniel closed his eyes briefly. "Does he? " Alyssa said. Not like a lot.
He doesn't say much, but he smiles at his phone. "He didn't use to do that. " A beat of silence. "Marcus," Daniel said. ""What? " It's true. " Marcus looked back at Alyssa. He says you help people who are going through hard times. I try to.
Alyssa said, ""My dad went through a hard time. "" Marcus said, "Matter of fact, no cruelty in it. Just the observation. " "When my mom died, he was really sad for a long time. " "I know," Alyssa said. He told me about her. Marcus seemed to evaluate the significance of this. He doesn't usually talk about her to people he doesn't know.
I know that too. Another evaluation. Then Marcus said in the tone of someone drawing a conclusion based on sufficient evidence. "You must be important. " The silence that followed was the most loaded silence Daniel had witnessed in recent memory. He watched Alyssa's face receive those four words, you must be important, and absorbed them.
Not the compliment of them, the logic of them. A 9-year-old's clean, undecorated reasoning. If my father, who doesn't talk about the most important person he's ever lost, talked about her to you, then you are important. Q. Alyssa opened her mouth, closed it.
Her eyes were doing the thing. "Thank you," she said finally. Quietly. That's a really kind thing to say. Marcus shrugged.
"It's just true. " And then with the instantaneous subject change, that is the exclusive privilege of children. "Do you like dinosaurs? " She blinked. "Yes, I think so. " "Good, because I have a whole presentation about the Cretaceous period if you want to see it. Marcus, Daniel said. She just got here.
It's okay, Alyssa said, and she looked at Daniel and she had an expression in that since that was still processing the important thing while the surface of her was already moving forward. The way people do when something hits them too squarely and they need a moment before they can look at it directly. "I would genuinely love to see the presentation. " Marcus' face lit up with the specific illumination of a child who has found a willing audience. He turned and led Alyssa down the hallway already talking and Daniel stood in the doorway and watched the back of his son's head and the profile of this woman and something in his chest did something he didn't have a word for. The presentation lasted 45 minutes.
Daniel brought them both juice and sat in the corner and watched his son explain the Cretaceous period to Alyssa Carter with the same comprehensive rigor he brought to everything that interested him and watched Alyssa listen not politely, not performatively, but with the complete quality of attention she brought to everything. The quality that had stopped Daniel cold at a charity event two months ago and had not let go of him since. She asked questions, real ones, not adult talking to child questions, but actually curious questions, and Marcus answered them with the barely contained enthusiasm of someone whose expertise is being correctly recognized. At some point, Daniel noticed Alyssa's sleeves had pushed back slightly. He noticed Marcus notice.
He noticed Marcus look at the scars for exactly one second, the way children do when they see something unexpected, honest, brief, unembellished, and then look back at the dinosaurs diagram and keep talking. He hadn't asked, he just kept going. Daniel didn't know whether to attribute that to instinct or to something larger, but it sat in his chest like something warm. After the presentation, Alyssa helped Daniel make dinner, which mostly meant standing in the kitchen doorway talking while he cooked because she had assessed the jarred sauce situation honestly and declared herself a liability in the construction phase. Marcus sat at the kitchen table doing homework with the particular concentrated frown of a person who is working hard but will not admit it.
Occasionally interjecting into the adult conversation with corrections or commentary that Daniel privately found hilarious and publicly treated with appropriate parental gravity. It was ordinary. That was the thing he kept coming back to. It was profoundly specifically ordinary in a way that nothing had been ordinary for four years. Not special occasion ordinary, not managing the grief ordinary, but just a kitchen on a Saturday with his son and a woman he cared about and the pasta water boiling and someone's homework spread on the table.
Just life. Just the regular texture of a life that has people in it. After dinner, Marcus, who was apparently operating without the social filter that usually tells human beings to slow down, looked across the table at Alyssa and said, "Are you going to keep coming over, Marcus? " Daniel said, "I'm just asking. " Alyssa looked at Marcus. She looked at Daniel. And in that half second, in the gap between the question and the answer, Daniel watched something happen in her face that he would describe later to himself as a door finally opening from the inside.
"I'd like to," she said, if that's okay with you, Marcus considered this with the same earnest gravity he'd brought to the Cretaceous evaluation. "Yeah," he said. "It's okay. " And then you can come to my soccer game if you want. Dad has nobody to sit with. Marcus Daniel started.
"What? " It's true. Alyssa was looking at the table. Her shoulders were doing a thing, a slight motion that Daniel recognized as the physical equivalent of composing yourself. When composing yourself is the only option available. She looked up.
"I'd like that," she told Marcus. I'd really like that. Marcus nodded satisfied and returned to his homework. And that was that. The verdict of a 9-year-old delivered with the efficiency of someone who saw no reason to complicate something that was, in his assessment, quite simple.
Daniel met Alyssa's eyes across the table. She looked like a person who had just been handed something she'd stopped expecting to receive and didn't entirely know what to do with it yet. Not overwhelmed, not tearful, just held. The way you look when something real reaches you. He reached across the table and covered her hand with his.
She turned her hand over, held his. Marcus didn't look up from his homework. Daniel thought, "This is it. This is the thing I forgot was possible. Not the perfect version of it.