For a moment the room became quiet.
Then her eyes drifted toward the hallway wall.
Photographs covered it.
Most were of a Black girl with long braids, an enormous smile, and enough missing front teeth to place several pictures around first grade.
One showed her standing on Marcus’s boots while he tried to walk.
Another showed the two of them at a Diamondbacks game.
One showed the girl asleep across his chest.
“That’s your daughter.”
Marcus nodded.
“Amara.”
“How old?”
“Eight.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“She knows.”
Caroline smiled.
Then her eyes moved farther down the wall.
There was another woman in the photographs.
Black.
Dark curls.
Bright smile.
Laughing in nearly every picture.
Holding newborn Amara in a hospital bed.
Standing beside Marcus at their wedding.
Sitting on a camping chair with her feet in his lap.
Caroline’s expression changed.
“Your wife?”
“Renee.”
She heard the tense.
“I’m sorry.”
Marcus looked at the photograph.
“Three years.”
Caroline lowered her eyes.
“I’m still sorry.”
“Yeah.”
The quiet that followed was different.
Not awkward.
Heavy, but clean.
Marcus eventually stood.
“You can sleep here.”
Caroline looked up.
“What?”
“Couch.”
“No.”
“It folds flat.”
“Marcus, I cannot spend the night in the house of a man I barely know.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You’re already in the house of a man you barely know.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It just is.”
Marcus glanced toward the front window.
“It’s still over a hundred outside.”
“I can get a hotel.”
“At midnight during the biggest heat wave Phoenix has had in six years?”
“I’ll find something.”
“You’re overheated and exhausted.”
He pointed toward the couch.
“This is something.”
Caroline sat there staring at him.
Marcus understood the look because he had worn versions of it himself for years.
It was the face of somebody trying to turn accepting help into a moral failure.
He had no patience for it in other people.
Only himself.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“That isn’t why.”
“Then what is?”
Caroline looked toward the floor.
“I don’t do this.”
“Sleep?”
“Need people.”
Marcus was quiet.
Caroline gave a brittle laugh.
“I realize how stupid that sounds while I’m sitting in your living room.”
“It doesn’t.”
Her eyes lifted.
Marcus shrugged.
“I don’t do it either.”
“You have a daughter.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“She needs me.”
Caroline studied him.
“That wasn’t my question.”
Marcus stood.
“I’m getting you a blanket.”
It was answer enough.
He returned with a pillow, sheet, and thin cotton blanket.
Caroline thanked him again.
He showed her the bathroom.
Then he pointed down the hall.
“Amara’s room is the second door.”
“I won’t bother her.”
“She sleeps hard.”
Marcus paused.
“But she’s had enough changes.”
Caroline understood immediately.
“I won’t scare her.”