Not that day, but something had changed. Marcus could feel it the way you feel a shift in temperature before the weather actually changes. Something had moved. He went home that evening and made dinner for his girls chicken and rice. The reliable dish, the one that stretched far enough when the budget was tight and still tasted like something he'd actually made with intention.
They ate together at the kitchen table. The three of them and his older daughter Nadia told a story about something that happened at school that he only half understood but listened to completely. And Zoe kept interrupting with corrections that were usually wrong, but delivered with total confidence. He looked at his daughters across that table and thought about Robert sitting in that house alone with an unopened envelope and a photograph on a garage wall. He thought about his own daughters years from now.
Would they write to? Would he have done enough by then? Would they remember the chicken and rice and the way he listened even when he was exhausted? Or would they remember something else, some version of him that failed them in a way he couldn't see yet? He washed the dishes after the girls went to bed and stood at the sink for a long time after the water was off.
He made a decision. The next morning, he went back to Robert's house. He knocked this time. Front door, not the side gate," Robert answered in his robe. Coffee already in hand, giving him the look of a man who both expected this and was mildly annoyed by it.
"You should open that letter," Marcus said. "Today. Not tomorrow. " "Today," Robert said. "Good morning, Marcus. I'm serious.
I know you are. " He stepped back from the door. "Come in. " Then, before you wake up the whole block, Marcus went in. Robert's house was the way houses get when a man has lived alone in them for a long time. Clean but not warm. Everything in its place, which was mostly a practical place, a tool near where it was used, a book near where it was read, no clutter, no decoration that wasn't functional, the kind of house where you could see the shape of who the person was just by looking at what they'd kept and what they'd let go.
Robert went to the kitchen. Marcus followed. The envelope was on the kitchen table. Robert must have moved it from the porch last night. "You going to stand there until I open it? " Robert said, pouring a second mug.
"I might. " Robert set the mug down in front of Marcus's usual chair. Then he sat down across from him. He looked at the envelope. He looked at Marcus. Then he picked up the envelope.
His hands weren't shaking the way they sometimes shook when he was doing physical work. They were still. He opened it. He read it slowly. Marcus watched his face.
He didn't watch the letter. He watched the man. He watched Robert's jaw tighten and then release. He watched something move behind those blue eyes that might have been grief or relief or both at the same time. The way those two things sometimes arrive together.
Robert set the letter down. He sat back. He pressed his hand flat against the table like he needed something solid. She wants to see me. Marcus said nothing.