Lying awake at 2:00 in the morning, he'd meant to just say, okay, thanks, bye. He'd meant to be gone. But something in him, the part of him that couldn't stop caring even when caring had cost him everything, made him ask about a man he'd never met. The woman's smile flickered. We don't know yet.
That's kind of how it always goes with my dad. She wiped her hands on her apron leaving another blue smudge. I'm Elena by the way. Elena Brooks, Daniel's sister. Marcus, he said, and then uselessly, but you knew that.
I did. There was a silence then. Not an awkward one, exactly. More like the silence right before weather changes. Marcus looked down at the box again.
The photo was on top, staring up at him. Two men, sunburned, grinning, holding up a bass that neither of them could remember who'd actually caught. He remembered that day. He remembered the sound of Daniel's laugh echoing off the water. He remembered thinking, this is what having a brother feels like.
He'd been an only child. Daniel had been the closest thing to family he'd ever chosen for himself. And now, here he was returning the man's charger. "Well," Marcus said, and cleared his throat. I should get going.
My daughter's with the neighbor, and I don't like to leave her too long. How old? Eight. Nia. Her name came out softer than he intended.
Pretty name. Her mama picked it. He didn't know why he'd said that. He hadn't planned to. The words just fell out, and once they were out, they hung there in the cold air between them, and Marcus felt his throat go thick.
Elena didn't miss it. He could tell she didn't miss it. But she didn't pounce on it, either. Didn't do that thing people did where they got a hungry, sympathetic look, and started asking questions to feed their own curiosity, dressed up as concern. She just nodded slow, like she was filing it away somewhere gentle.
"You want to come in a minute?" she asked. "I've got coffee on. You look like you drove a long way to stand on a porch." Marcus almost laughed. "It's not that far. 15 minutes." "I didn't mean the miles." That stopped him.
He looked at her, really looked at her this time, and there was nothing in her face but plain, unhurried kindness. No agenda. No pity. Just an open door and a woman offering coffee to a man who was very obviously coming apart at the seams and doing a bad job of hiding it. I bent down to grab this box off my kitchen floor this morning.
Marcus heard himself say, "And I threw my back out, not even lifting it, just bending down." He shook his head. 40 lb of a man's old junk and it about put me on the floor. "Maybe," Elena said, and here her voice changed, dropped into something quieter and more deliberate. "If carrying that box hurts this much, maybe you've been carrying far more than what's inside it." Marcus stared at her. For a long moment, he didn't say anything at all.
The words had landed somewhere deep, somewhere he'd bricked up a long time ago, and he could feel the mortar cracking. "That's" He stopped, started again. "That's a hell of a thing to say to a stranger." "Probably." She stepped back and held the door open wider. "Coffee's still on, though." And Marcus Bennett, who had driven over here specifically to drop off a box and drive away, who had told himself no fewer than a dozen times that he wanted nothing to do with the Brooks family ever again, picked up the box he'd just set down and walked inside. The house was warmer than he expected.
Not the temperature, the feel of it. There were kids' drawings taped to the walls of the front hallway, dozens of them. Crayon suns and lopsided houses and stick figure families holding hands. Marcus slowed as he passed them. "Your kids?" he asked.
Elena laughed from the kitchen. "God, no. I don't have any of my own. Those belong to about 40 different children. 40.
I run a community center over on Pointsett, The Bright Corner. She appeared in the kitchen doorway with two mugs. We work with kids from single parent homes. Art, music, mentoring. Some of them just need a place to be, honestly.
Somewhere that isn't empty when they get out of school. Marcus took the coffee she offered. It was hot and strong and exactly what he needed, and he wrapped both hands around the mug like he was trying to thaw something. Single parent homes, he repeated. Mhm.
She leaned against the counter and watched him over the rim of her own mug. It's harder than people think. Not the money part. I mean, the money part, too. But that's not what breaks people.
It's the being alone with it. A kid falls apart at bedtime and there's nobody to tap out to. Nobody to say, "I've got this one, you rest." She shrugged. That's the part that grinds you down. Marcus set his mug on the counter very carefully.
"You're describing my whole life," he said, and he didn't quite believe he'd said it out loud. I figured. You figured? You've got the look. She said it without cruelty.
My dad had the look back when it was just him and me and Daniel after our mom passed. That flat kind of tired where you keep moving, but there's nothing behind your eyes anymore. She set her own mug down. You lost your wife. It wasn't a question.