"I'm glad you came," she said. "To dinner and today." He thought about what to say. He landed on the true thing. "Me, too," he said. He drove away.
He did not look in the rearview mirror this time. He was making progress. Two weeks into the farmhouse project, Cedar Falls began to talk. It started the way small town talk always starts, not with a conversation, but with an observation. Someone saw Marcus's truck at the Caldwell property two days running.
Someone else mentioned seeing Emily Caldwell at the hardware store on the east side of town, the one Marcus used buying specific materials and asking specific questions. By itself, none of this was remarkable. But Cedar Falls was a town that operated on the connection of dots, and the dot that stood out most was simple and unmistakable. A struggling black single father was spending significant time with the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state. People began to form opinions the way they always did, quickly, firmly, and without much information.
At the barber shop on Tanner Street, the consensus arrived within a week. Marcus Williams was working an angle. Nobody said it cruy. Exactly. Some of them even said it with a kind of admiring acknowledgement.
The way people talk about cleverness, they wouldn't have thought of themselves. But the implication was clear. Marcus had seen an opportunity and taken it. His friend Darnell, who ran the hardware store and had known Marcus for 15 years, heard these conversations and reported them back to Marcus on a Thursday afternoon with the tone of someone delivering bad news they'd rather not be delivering. "People are talking," Darnell said.
Marcus was loading cedar planks into his truck. He didn't stop. "People always talk," Marcus said. "About you and the Caldwell girl." Marcus kept loading. She's 35, Marcus said.
She's not a girl. Darnell leaned against the truck bed with his arms folded. Marcus, you hear what I'm saying? I hear you. You don't look like it bothers you.
It doesn't. Darnell was quiet for a moment. It should a little because it's going to reach her. These things always do. Marcus sat down the last plank and stood up straight and looked at his friend.
Not angrily, just steadily. Darnell, he said, I took a job. I'm doing the job. Everything else is people with too much time deciding what my motives are. And if she hears the rumors and believes them, Marcus said nothing for a moment.