Really looked at it without the practice distance he'd kept between himself and everything good for so long. Full, he said finally. I feel full. Marcus looked at him. Yeah, he said.
I know exactly what you mean. They ate at 1:00. All five of them around Robert's table with extra chairs pulled in from the kitchen. There was too much food, which was correct. Zoe knocked over her juice in the first 10 minutes, which was also correct.
Robert told a story from his military service that he'd never told before. A small one. A funny one about a navigation mistake in the Meong Delta that had ended with three men lost for 4 hours in the wrong country. And everyone laughed and Marcus noticed that the telling of it didn't cost Robert anything. It came out easy.
The way things come out when they finally been released from the place where shame was keeping them. After lunch, while Olivia and Nadia washed up and Zoe had fallen asleep on the couch with the full confidence of a child who sleeps wherever she is when sleep arrives. Robert and Marcus sat on the back porch. December cold, coffee, the fence. They looked at it.
It had been standing properly for 2 months. The concrete had cured. The post was solid. It would stand through whatever came. You know what I think about when I look at that fence?
Robert said, "What? " "The morning you came through that gate without asking," Robert said. You just came in like it was obvious, like it was the only thing to do. He paused. Most people would have watched from the window and felt bad about it and gone back to their coffee. I almost did, Marcus said.
But you didn't. No, Marcus said. Why not? Marcus thought about it honestly. Not the version he'd tell someone casually.
The real version because he looked like my dad, Marcus said quietly. An old man struggling alone with something heavy and too proud to ask for help. And I didn't get to help my dad. He was gone before. He stopped.
I couldn't walk away from that twice. Robert sat with that for a long moment. Your father, he said carefully. He would have been proud of you. Marcus looked at the fence.
I hope so, he said. I'm not speculating, Robert said. I'm telling you. He turned and looked at Marcus directly. He raised a man who crosses the street.