Interior walls stripped to the original plaster and repaired. kitchen floor relayed with reclaimed lumber that Marcus had sourced from a demolition site in Mon and hauled back himself because it matched the original boards exactly in grain and age. The porch rebuilt from the frame out the new boards treated and fitted with the precision that made Marcus' work recognizable to anyone who knew what to look for. Emily came out on Saturdays, sometimes Sundays. She stopped pretending to be there, only to check the project's progress sometime in the third week when she arrived with a paper bag containing two coffees and a specific pastry from a bakery in Atlanta that Marcus happened to have mentioned once off-handedly that he liked. She'd driven 40 minutes out of her way for it.
She set it on the porch rail without ceremony and sat down in the folding chair she'd started keeping in the back of her car. Marcus looked at the pastry, looked at her. You went to Atlanta first, he said. I had a morning meeting, she said in the tone of someone closing a discussion. Marcus did not close it.
Emily, she looked at him. Don't make it strange, she said. I'm not making it strange. I'm making it accurate. She held his gaze with that expression, the one that was trying to be composed, and was losing ground on it.
I know what it is, she said. Her voice was quieter. I'm not I'm not confused about what this is. What is it? He said, not pressuring, genuinely asking the way he asked construction questions because he needed to know the actual answer in order to do the work correctly.
Emily looked at the restored porch, the new boards, the clean lines of work done right. Something I haven't done in a long time, she said. Something I decided I wasn't going to do again. and she looked at him and apparently I was wrong. Marcus picked up his coffee, took a sip, set it down. "All right," he said.
"All right," she repeated. "All right," he said again. "That's enough for now." She looked at him for a long moment. Something worked its way through her expression. "Surprise, and then something else, something more complicated. the particular relief of someone who had been braced for a conversation to move faster than they were ready for and discovered it wasn't going to.
"You're not going to push," she said. "No," he said. "Why not?" He looked at the work in front of him at the house that was coming back to itself slowly in the right order. Each piece waiting for the piece before it to be solid before adding more weight. "Because some things can't be rushed," he said.
You push before it's ready and you compromise the whole structure. He picked up his tools. I know how to build things, right? She was quiet. I know, she said softly.
That's the whole problem. He looked at her. How is that a problem? Because it makes it very hard to stay scared of you, she said. He held her gaze for one long moment.