And also, no. It's more complicated than that. But I'm not going to try to explain the complicated part right now because you don't have any reason to believe me yet. And I know that. She met his eyes.
All I want to say is thank you for last night, for the room, for not for not throwing me off the porch. James looked at her for a moment. There are some things, he said slowly, that I'm eventually going to need to understand about why you left, about what happened. There are questions that I let go because I didn't have a choice, but they're still there. And at some point, we're going to have to sit down and go through them.
I know, not today, he said. Today, you're going to eat something and let that baby sleep and figure out your next steps. But sometime soon, she nodded. Her eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with happiness. Can I make eggs?
She asked. He looked at her. I'm a better cook than I used to be, she said. Like, that mattered right now. Like she was searching for something, anything she could offer.
James stood up from the table. Yeah, he said. Make eggs. He picked up his coffee and walked to the back door and stepped outside onto the porch where the morning was cold and the neighborhood was just beginning to wake up. And he stood there with both hands wrapped around his mug and told himself very firmly that he was not going to read anything into the fact that the smell of coffee and eggs coming through the door of his house was the most like home the place had felt in a very long time.
He was not going to read anything into that at all. The eggs were good. James didn't want to admit that, even to himself, but they were. Sophia had found the peppers he kept in the back of the refrigerator, the ones he bought every week with good intentions, and never got around to using, and she had diced them fine and mixed them into the scrambled eggs with some onion and a little something she found in his spice cabinet that he couldn't identify from the smell alone. She'd also found bread and toasted it without asking.
And she'd set his plate in front of him when he came back inside from the porch with the quiet efficiency of someone who understood that the kindest thing she could do right now was not make a production of it. He sat down and ate. She sat across from him with Noah on her lap, feeding him something from a small jar she'd heated in a bowl of hot water sweet potatoes. From the color of it, and the baby ate with the serious focus of a person who had decided that this was the most important job in the world. They didn't talk much.
The kitchen was quiet the way it gets between two people who have too much to say and have agreed without saying so to say none of it yet. When James finished, he put his plate in the sink and turned around. I'm going into the shop for a few hours, he said. Sophia looked up. Not running, he said before she could say anything.
I've got a car I promised a customer by Monday. I'll be back by noon. She nodded. Okay. There's food in the refrigerator.
Ava's not home until Sunday evening, so you won't have to explain anything to her today. Help yourself to whatever you need. He picked up his keys from the counter. James, he stopped. Thank you, she said again differently this time, like she meant something larger by it than the words themselves could hold.
He looked at her and at Noah and at the kitchen that suddenly felt occupied in a way it hadn't in years, and he said, "I'll be back by noon." And he left. He drove to the shop. He didn't go inside immediately. He sat in his truck in the parking lot for 6 minutes. He checked the clock with his hands on the steering wheel and the engine off doing the breathing thing.
The in-n-out thing. The thing he did when something was happening in his chest that he needed to keep from reaching his face. Then he got out, unlocked the shop, and went to work. Marcus showed up at 9:00 the way Marcus always showed up on Saturdays when there was unfinished business. Because Marcus had the work ethic of a man who had been poor enough long enough to never take an open shop for granted.
He walked in, took one look at James, and said, "Who died?" "Nobody died," James said from underneath the vehicle he was working on. "You got the face," Marcus said. "I don't have a face." "Everybody's got a face. Yours right now is the one you had when that transmission blew in the Hernandez fleet account." and you had to call them at 7 in the morning on a holiday. Marcus pulled up the rolling stool and sat on it backwards, arms crossed over the top.
What happened? James rolled out from under the car, sat up, looked at Marcus. Marcus was 53 years old, had been working cars since before James was born, and was one of exactly four people on Earth whose opinion James actually trusted. He was also constitutionally incapable of pretending not to notice things which was both his greatest quality and his most aggravating one. Sophia showed up last night.
James said the shop went very quiet. Marcus blinked. Sophia. Sophia. Yeah.
The Sophia who? Yeah. Marcus. Marcus was quiet for a moment which for Marcus was remarkable. Then he said she alive.
She's alive. She okay? She's James looked at his hands. She lost her job. Lost her apartment.
She's got a baby. Eight months old little boy named Noah. She showed up at my door with nowhere to go. Marcus absorbed this. And you?
She's in my guest room. Marcus made a sound that wasn't quite a word. Say what you're going to say. James told him. I'm not going to say anything.
Marcus, I'm not. He held up both hands. That's your house. That's your life. You do what you feel like you need to do.
He paused one beat too long. She say why she left 6 years ago? Not yet, but she's going to eventually Marcus looked at the car, looked at James, looked at the car again. You need to be careful, man. I'm always careful.
No, you're always strong. That's different. Marcus stood up, grabbed a rag off the workbench. Strong means you handle everything and you don't complain. Careful means you watch out for your own heart.