And Malcolm Reed, who had spent six years building a world where love had managed terms and conditions and carefully maintained borders, sat alone in his kitchen and felt the borders shifting underneath him. And for the first time in a very long time, he was not completely certain he wanted to stop them. Week three began with a question from Ava that neither Malcolm nor Clare had seen coming. It was a Sunday morning. They were all three at the kitchen table.
Ava eating cereal. Malcolm with his coffee and the newspaper he rarely had time to actually read. Clare, who had come by to return a community event binder she'd borrowed and had somehow stayed for breakfast, which was also becoming a pattern neither of them had formally acknowledged. Ava looked up from her cereal bowl with the particular focus she deployed when she was about to say something she had been considering for a while. She looked at her father, then at Clare, then back at her father.
"Daddy," she said. "Are you finally letting somebody take care of you, too?" The kitchen went completely still. Malcolm looked at his daughter. Clare set her coffee mug down.
Ava looked between them with the patient expression of someone who had asked a reasonable question and was simply waiting for an answer. "What do you mean, baby?" Malcolm said finally. "You take care of me," Ava said. "And you take care of everything at work."
And grandma says, "You used to take care of mommy even when it wasn't working. And Miss Clare takes care of everybody at work, too." She picked up her spoon, but nobody takes care of you and I can't do it because I'm eight. The kitchen stayed quiet. So, "I was just wondering," Ava finished, "if you were going to let somebody."
Malcolm did not look at Clare. He looked at his daughter and he felt something move through him that he could not have named in any language. Something that was simultaneously pride and grief and recognition and the particular specific ache of being truly known by another person in a way you hadn't expected. "I'm working on it," he said. Ava considered this.
Then she nodded apparently satisfied and went back to her cereal. Clare picked up her coffee mug. Her eyes were bright in a way that she was controlling very carefully. Malcolm finally looked at her. She didn't say anything.
Neither did he, but the question was still in the room and it would stay in the room and both of them knew that the six weeks were already answering themselves one Sunday morning at a time. Ava's question lived in the apartment for days after she asked it. Malcolm didn't bring it up again. Neither did Clare, but it was there in the way Malcolm caught himself doing things differently without consciously deciding to. In the way Clare stopped preemptively stepping back from moments that she would have previously let pass.
The question had named something and once a thing is named, it doesn't go back to being nameless. The third week started on a Monday and it started badly. Malcolm got to work at 7:15 and found a message from the executive director of Cornerstone, Gerald Hayes, waiting in his email. The subject line said, "Urgent funding situation. My office 8:00 a.m.