Talk to somebody. Marcus, you keep everything inside and it's going to calcify. Claire didn't push. She just appeared. Meaning, there'd be coffee on the workshop windowsill on mornings he forgot to make his own.
There'd be a Tupperware container on his front step on a Tuesday with a note, "Made too much jambalaya. Hate waste." See, Malik mentioned once casually, the way kids drop information like they're throwing seeds and walking away, that Claire had helped him find three different rocks in a reference book she just happened to have. Where'd she get a rock book? Marcus asked.
Malik shrugged. She said she used to collect them when she was little. Huh. Dad. Yeah.
She asked if you liked coffee or tea. He looked at his son. What did you tell her? Coffee black two cups before he's a real person. Malik delivered this with complete deadpan accuracy.
Is that right? Marcus rubbed the back of his neck. That's right, he said. The coffee showed up every morning after that. It was his dog Bruno who really betrayed him.
But Bruno was a 9-year-old black lab who had been through the divorce right alongside Marcus and Malik and had therefore in Marcus's opinion earned a certain lifelong loyalty. He was a good dog, a steady dog. A dog who barked at strangers and tolerated family and loved exactly three people and that was that. The Wednesday after the zipper incident, Marcus came home to find Bruno sitting on Claire's front porch. Just sitting there.
Head up. Tail doing that slow satisfied wag of a creature who is exactly where he wants to be. Claire was beside him on the steps with a book, one hand absently resting on Bruno's back. Marcus stood on the sidewalk. He came over, she said not looking up from the book.
Bruno doesn't go to people, Marcus said. He came to me. He doesn't like strangers. Maybe he decided I wasn't a stranger. She turned a page.
He's been here about 40 minutes. I didn't want to just send him back in case that wasn't the right thing to do. Marcus stared at his dog. Bruno looked back at him with the utterly serene expression of an animal who has made a decision and is at complete peace with it. Bruno, Marcus said flatly.
Come here. Bruno looked at him. Looked at Claire. Looked at Marcus. May, and then with the slow dignified deeply unbothered movement of a creature who is choosing to comply only because he has decided to and not for any other reason.
He stood up, stretched, walked across the lawn, and sat down beside Marcus's left leg. Traitor, Marcus told him quietly. He's sweet, Claire said. He's disloyal. She laughed, and it was a real laugh, not performed, not polished, just a laugh, and it moved through the evening air toward him and landed somewhere he hadn't been ready for.
He walked back to his house. He fed Bruno. He sat at the kitchen table for a long time with his hands around a mug of coffee that went cold. And somewhere around 9:00, he admitted to himself very quietly, the way you admit something when no one is listening, not even yourself, that his house didn't feel quite as empty as it had last week. He didn't know what to do with that.
He didn't know what to do with any of this. But for the first time in 4 years, Marcus Johnson found himself wondering what would happen next. And he wasn't sure anymore whether that feeling was something to be afraid of or something he'd been waiting for longer than he knew. He told himself he wasn't watching for her. But every morning that week without making any conscious decision about it, Marcus found himself glancing toward the blue house while he waited for his coffee to brew.
Not staring. Just glancing. The way you glance at something you've convinced yourself you're not thinking about and the glancing itself proves that you are. Malik saw her. Monday, she was up early, gone before 7:00.
Tuesday, he heard her car pull out around the same time. Wednesday, she was on the porch when he left. Same mug, same bare feet on the painted steps and she lifted two fingers in a small wave without looking up from whatever she was reading like she'd known exactly when he'd come out the door. That bothered him more than it should have. He didn't wave back.
He told himself his hands were full. He had his own mug in one hand and Malik's backpack in the other, so technically that was true. But Marcus Johnson had never been particularly good at lying to himself and he knew it was not entirely true. Malik noticed. Of course, Malik noticed.
The boy was 8 years old and observed the world with the focused intensity of someone who had decided very early that adults were a species worth studying. You didn't wave at her, Malik said from the passenger seat matter-of-fact buckling his seatbelt. I had my hands full. You could have done the head nod. Marcus looked at his son.
The head nod? Yeah, like this. Malik demonstrated a small upward chin lift brief but deliberate. That's what you do when your hands are full. Where'd you learn that?
Malik shrugged. From you. Marcus pulled out of the driveway and said nothing. She was looking at you, Malik added helpfully. Eyes on your rock, son.
Malik had a small bag of specimens in his lap, which he examined with the same seriousness other children gave to video games. He was quiet for a moment, turning a piece of quartz over in his fingers. Then, I like her. Two words, clean and simple, and landing right in the middle of Marcus's chest like a stone dropped into still water. I know you do, Marcus said.