Both of them knew it. Emily was the first to speak. I should go, she said, not nervously, just practically. It's late and I have a 7 a.m. call with the board tomorrow. Okay, Marcus said.
She started for the door. At the threshold, she turned back and the porch light came through the window behind her and caught her face in a way that was not dramatic. Just clear the way honest things looked when you stopped managing the light around them. Marcus, she said. Yeah.
Saturday, she said. Bring Lily. He looked at her. The project's done. There's no reason for you to come out Saturday.
I know. She said, "Bring Lily anyway." She left. He heard her car start and crunch back down the gravel drive and then the sound faded into the Georgia night. He stood in the kitchen alone for another few minutes. Then he turned off the porch light, locked up the farmhouse, and drove home.
He checked on Lily asleep sprawled sideways across the bed with one arm hanging off the edge in the way she slept when she'd had a full day. He straightened her arm, pulled the blanket up, stood in the doorway for a moment. He thought about the word okay and what it had held inside it. He thought about Clare the way he still did at moments like this. Not with grief exactly.
Not anymore, but with the specific awareness of someone who carried a person with them and knew it. He thought about what Clare would have said standing in that kitchen watching what had just happened. She would have said, "Well, finally." He smiled at the dark hallway. Then he went to bed and slept soundly for the first time in three weeks. Saturday arrived and Marcus loaded Lily into the truck at 9:00 in the morning without explanation and drove to the farmhouse.
Lily asked zero questions about where they were going, which meant she already knew or had guessed, which Lily were often the same thing. Emily was already there. She was standing on the rebuilt porch with three cups of coffee and a paper bag from the Atlanta bakery, which meant she'd driven 40 minutes out of her way again, and was still not going to admit it was deliberate, and Marcus had decided that this was simply a part of who she was. This insistence on doing generous things, as if they were logistical, and he found it completely disarming every single time. Lily climbed out of the truck and walked directly to Emily and said, "You came back.
The project's done." I know, Emily said. So why are you here? Emily looked at Marcus briefly, then back at Lily with the full direct attention she gave everything. Because I wanted to be, she said. Lily processed this with her internal calculator running.
Then she nodded once, accepting it the way she accepted things that were honest and direct and didn't try to be more complicated than they were. Okay, she said. Is one of those coffees a hot chocolate? It is," Emily said. Lily took it, sat down on the porch, started drinking it like she'd always been there, like the three of them on this porch on a Saturday morning was simply the natural order of things, and she was pleased everyone had finally figured it out.