Patterson heard me say stupid, and I had to apologize, but Mrs. Patterson also told Maya she should think more carefully about what success means. So I think I kind of won." Marcus pulled out of the lot. "You probably shouldn't call things stupid."
"I know," Amara said. "But it was, though." "It was," Marcus agreed. "But we find better words." She considered this.
"Guided?" "Better," he said. She nodded, satisfied, and reached into her backpack for her water bottle. Then she looked at him sideways with the searchlight eyes. "You got the job," she said.
It wasn't a question. Marcus glanced over. "How do you know that?" "Because you're early," she said simply. "You're only early when something good happened."
He stared at her for a second. 9 years old. Searchlight eyes and a mind like a steel trap and a heart that had somehow remained completely open despite having a front row seat to 2 years of watching her father lose things and rebuild things. And hold his ground when holding his ground cost him. He did not know how she had managed to stay that open.
He suspected it was not something he had taught her. He suspected she had been born with it and had been quietly persistently teaching it back to him ever since. "Yeah," he said. "I got the job." She grabbed his arm with both hands and squeezed.
"Hard. I knew it," she said. "I knew it. I knew it." "I knew it."
Then she let go and sat back and looked out the windshield with the satisfaction of a person whose worldview has just been confirmed. "Good things happen to people who don't lie," she said. As if announcing a law of physics. "That's not always true," Marcus said honestly. "I know," she said.
"But it should be and for you it was." He had nothing to answer to that. So he just drove. They went for ice cream. Not because it was a special occasion, because Amara asked and he said yes.