She's careful, Henry said. She's more than careful, Marcus said. She built herself into someone who doesn't need anyone, which is impressive. And also, he stopped. Lonely, Henry said quietly.
Yeah, Henry breathed once audibly. Her mother left when Emily was 11. Not dramatically. Not for another man or a great catastrophe. She simply decided that the life she had wasn't the one she wanted, and she built a different one. a pause.
She was not cruel about it, which in some ways made it harder. You can make sense of cruelty. You can find reasons for it, but someone leaving calmly with explanation while you're standing there at 11 years old trying to understand why you aren't enough reason to stay. He stopped. Emily decided that day that she was never going to need anyone so much that losing them would do that to her again.
The words sat in the Georgia night air like something solid. She's been very successful at it, Henry said. And the sadness in his voice was enormous and quiet and completely controlled the way old grief becomes when you've carried it long enough that it's just part of how you're built. Until recently, Marcus said a long pause. Until recently, Henry agreed.
Marcus didn't say anything else about that. Neither did Henry. Some conversations reached the true thing and then properly stopped. The farmhouse will be done by March, Marcus said. I'm going to start on the exterior this week.
Good, Henry said. Take your time. You keep saying that because I mean it. A pause. And then something shifted in Henry's voice became lighter, almost ry.
Also, because Emily keeps going out there on weekends, and the longer the project takes, the more weekends that is. And I'm a patient man when patience is working in the right direction. Marcus laughed. Actually laughed. Not the controlled exhale he usually managed, but a real one.
You're not as subtle as you think you are, Marcus said. I'm considerably more subtle than you think I am, Henry said with great dignity. Good night, Marcus. Good night, Henry. He hung up.
He sat in the dark for a while longer. Then he went inside, checked on Lily, stood in the doorway of her room for a moment watching her sleep with that sprawled complete abandonment that children brought to sleep and adults spent their whole lives trying to find again and went to bed. 3 weeks passed. The farmhouse came back in sections. East wing re-roofed.