The silences between father and daughter less loaded. Marcus watched from across the street without trying to watch. The way you can't help noticing when something broke starts to repair itself. It had its own kind of motion. He didn't ask Robert about the visits.
Robert volunteered what he wanted to share, which wasn't much, and Marcus accepted that. He knew enough to know that some repairs are private. What he didn't expect was for Olivia to knock on his door one Saturday morning when Robert wasn't home. He opened the door and she was standing there with a brown paper bag and two coffee cups from the place two blocks over that he'd driven past a hundred times but never gone into because it was the kind of coffee shop where everything cost too much. Robert had a doctor's appointment.
She said I got here early. I thought she stopped held up the bag slightly. I brought katches. The girls like kalatches. Marcus stared at her for a second.
Zoe will eat anything. He said, "Come in. " She came in. That morning was different without Robert as the center of gravity between them. The conversation found its own direction. Olivia asked him about construction, about the job market, about what it was like to be doing what he was doing in a city that moved as fast as Atlanta.
She asked about his daughters, not politely, but with real curiosity. What Nadia was like, what Zoe was afraid of what they did on weekends when the money was tight and the weather was bad. She asked like she wanted to know, not like she was making conversation. Marcus noticed that. He noticed it and then told himself not to read into it because she was Robert's daughter and Robert was his friend and reading anything into anything was the kind of thing that turned a good situation into a complicated one.
But she stayed for 3 hours and when she left she said this was nice. Simple as that. This was nice. Like she was surprised by it. Marcus stood in his kitchen after she was gone and thought about that for longer than was probably reasonable.
The following Tuesday, Robert came over unannounced. Marcus was on the phone with the contractor from Marietta who had finally called back. So he held up one finger and Robert sat down at the kitchen table and waited. When Marcus got off the phone, Robert looked at him and said, "Was that work? " "Maybe," Marcus said. "A 3-week project in Dun Woody, if the permit comes through.
When will you know end of the week? " Robert nodded. Then he said, "Without any particular leadup. " Olivia mentioned she came by Saturday. Marcus sat down across from him. She did. She brought katches.
She likes to feed people, Robert said. Always has. Even as a little girl, whenever she was uncomfortable in a situation, she'd bring food. Like food could solve it. Marcus was quiet for a moment.
Is she uncomfortable? Robert looked at him. Those blue eyes were very clear. With me? Yes.
Still working through that? He paused. With you? I don't think so. No.