Mr. Caldwell mentioned that as well. He said to bring her if you'd like. Marcus took the envelope. He stood there for a moment after Daniel left, turning it over in his hands without opening it. "Doris Hendersonson, who had apparently been listening from the other side of the screen door this entire time, chose that moment to push it open." "Was that a man in a suit?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am." Driving a black SUV. "Yes, ma'am." Doris narrowed her eyes. "Marcus Williams, what did you do?" "I helped somebody load a truck." She stared at him. yesterday," he added. "In the rain." She looked at the envelope. "Back at him.
Back at the envelope." "You going to go?" she said. Marcus looked down at the porch boards. "Two more sections to replace before the weekend." "Probably shouldn't," he said. "But you're going to," he tore open the envelope. Inside was a card on thick cream paper with an address printed in clean dark ink. and below the address in handwriting that pressed firmly into the page.
Come as you are, HC. He told Lily that evening while he helped her with her math homework. We're going to dinner, he said. She looked up from her worksheet. Where?
With the old man from yesterday. The one I helped with the truck. She processed this. He invited you to dinner and you if you want to come, she tilted her head. Why does a stranger want to have dinner with us?
Good question, Marcus said. Did you figure out the answer? Not yet. She chewed the end of her pencil, a habit he kept telling her to stop, and looked at the math problem in front of her, then back at him. Is it safe?
I think so. You think so? I think so. Yes. She returned to the worksheet.
I'll come, she said, in case you need backup. Marcus looked at his daughter for a moment. this small, serious person who carried her mother's eyes and her own particular brand of courage and felt something move in his chest that he didn't quite have a word for. "All right," he said. "Back up it is." The Caldwell estate was located 12 mi outside of Cedar Falls on a private road that Marcus' GPS found on the second try. He drove his truck, the same one he'd had for seven years, with the rust spot above the rear left wheel and the sticker in the corner of the back window that Lily had put there when she was six and that he'd never removed because removing it felt like admitting time was moving faster than he wanted.
He thought briefly about apologizing for the truck when they arrived and then decided he wouldn't. Come as you are. He came as he was. The estate was large, not ostentatiously so from the road, but the kind of large that reveals itself gradually, the way the truly wealthy often prefer. The house itself was brick two stories older in its bones than its maintained exterior suggested.