Another pause. Then Marcus. Yeah. Did you talk to Daniel? He stared at the message.
Yeah. He typed. The longest pause yet. Almost a full minute. Then Olivia Coleman sent him a message that was just three words.
And those three words were not dramatic and not a declaration and were not a declaration and and were not anything that would sound significant if someone read it out of context. But in context, in the full real complicated two people who had both been through things context of what was building between them, those three words meant everything. She said, "Thank you, Marcus." He read it twice. Then he started the truck, pulled out of the parking lot, and drove back to his shop where a Tahoe with a broken alternator was waiting, and Don was standing next to it with his arms crossed. And Reggie was somewhere in the back with his own opinions about what was taking so long.
Marcus walked through the bay door. Deshawn looked up. "Thought you got lost," Deshawn said. "I didn't get lost," Marcus said, grabbing his work gloves off the bench. "Let's look at the Tahoe." He pulled the hood.
He ran the diagnostic. He worked. And for the first time in a very long time, the background noise in Marcus Williams' head was not the sound of a man who was barely holding things together. It was something quieter than that. Something he hadn't heard in years.
It was the sound of a man who was finally not alone. Saturday came the way Saturdays do when you've been watching the week too closely slower than it should have. And then suddenly it was there. Marcus had told Maya he was meeting a friend for the afternoon. He hadn't elaborated.
Maya had looked at him over her cereal bowl with those eyes that processed information slightly faster than any 11-year-old should be able to. And she had said, "What kind of friend?" And Marcus had said, "The kind you have coffee with." And Maya had said, "You don't drink coffee with your regular friends. You and Uncle Daniel just drive around and complain about traffic." And Marcus had looked at his daughter who had just dismantled his deflection in under 6 seconds and said, "Go finish getting dressed." And Maya had gone. Looking satisfied with herself that suggested she already knew more than she was letting on. He picked Olivia up at 1:00.
She came out of her apartment building before he could even get out of the truck, which he noticed, and filed away because that was a thing people did when they were nervous. When they didn't want the other person standing at the door with time to think about what they were doing. She got in the passenger seat. She smelled like something clean and warm and he did not think about that. Where are we going?
She asked. You'll see. He said. She looked at him sideways. That's a concerning answer.
It's a 15-minute drive. That's still not an answer. No, he agreed and pulled out of the lot. She laughed despite herself that short real laugh he was already learning was her default response when he caught her off guard. And then she settled into the seat and looked out the window and they drove.
And the silence between them was not the silence of two people who had run out of things to say. It was the other kind, the kind that doesn't need filling. He took her to Piedmont Park, not to the crowded main entrance, not to the festival grounds, to the east side where there was a walking path that curved away from the main areas and got quiet faster than most people expected. Where there were under actual trees, and the sound of traffic dropped off enough that you could hear yourself think. He had a bag in the back seat.