The room held that statement for a moment. Robert, Marcus said carefully. I'm not saying anything, Robert said. I'm not making any suggestions. I'm 80 years old and I've made enough bad for one lifetime.
He picked up his coffee mug. I'm just observing. Marcus looked at him across the table. Robert drank his coffee. She's been through a hard thing.
Marcus said her last relationship. I know. She's not looking for. I said I wasn't making any suggestions, Robert said mildly. Marcus let it go.
But the words sat in him the rest of the day, turning over the way things do when they're not actually finished, even after you stop talking about them. The permit for the done woody job came through on Thursday. Marcus got the call at 7:15 in the morning while he was making breakfast, and he stood in the kitchen with the phone pressed to his ear and felt something loosen in his chest that had been tight. For so long, he'd forgotten what it was like for it not to be there. He called his mother.
She cried a little. He told her not to. He told his daughters at dinner that night. Nadia said, "That's great, Daddy. " With the kind of genuine relief that meant she'd understood more about their situation than he'd tried to let her see. Zoe said, "Does that mean we can get pizza? " "Yes," Marcus said.
"That means we can get pizza. " Zoe made a sound that suggested pizza is was the only news that truly mattered. He went across the street that evening to tell Robert. Robert opened the door before he could knock. "You look different," the old man said. "Come in. " He told him about the job.
Robert listened. When Marcus finished, the old man put out his hand, and Marcus shook it, and the grip was firm and meant something in the way handshakes between men sometimes do when neither of them is going to say what they actually mean in words. Olivia called me today," Robert said. Afterward, still standing in the doorway, Marcus waited. She asked about you, Robert said.
About how long you'd lived here. Whether you had family nearby, whether your situation had changed at all. He stopped. "What did you tell her? " I told her you'd just gotten a job. He paused.
And I told her you were one of the most decent men I'd ever had the misfortune of not knowing longer. Marcus looked at the old man for a moment. He didn't know what to do with that exactly. You're building up to something, Marcus said. I'm not building up to anything, Robert said.
With the practiced patience of a man who had given orders for decades. I'm an old soldier with bad knees and a daughter. I wasted too many years being too proud to call. I don't build up to things. I observe and then I tell you what I observed.
And what did you observe? Robert looked at him steadily. That she's going to invite to lunch next Saturday, that she's going to pretend it's about making sure I'm eating properly, and that if you have even a grain of common sense left in you after everything life has handed you, you'll say yes. Marcus stood there on that porch and thought about the letter Robert had been afraid to open, still sitting on his kitchen table for 6 weeks. He thought about his daughters, about that contractor in Dunwy, about the 3 hours on a Saturday morning when Olivia had sat at his kitchen table and asked about Zo's fears like the answer actually mattered to her.