And then she went inside. Marcus sat in the truck for 30 seconds. Then he pulled out and drove home. Maya was at the kitchen table when he got in. Doing homework again or pretending to because she looked up the instant the door opened with the alert speed of someone who had been waiting.
"How was your friend?" she said. "Good," Marcus said. Maya looked at him the way she always looked at him. "That's the face," she said. "What face?" "The face you make when something good happened and you're trying not to make it a big deal." Marcus put his keys on the counter.
"I don't have a face, Dad. You absolutely have a face." He looked at his daughter, 11 years old, pencil in hand, reading him with the accuracy of someone who had spent 11 years studying one subject intensively. Her name's Olivia, he said. Maya looked at him for a moment. Then she looked back at her homework.
Is she nice? Maya asked. Yeah, Marcus said she is. Does she know about me? Yeah, she does.
Mia wrote something on her paper. Then she said without looking up. Okay. Marcus stood there. Okay, he said.
Okay, Maya said again, like it was simple, like it was the obvious conclusion. She knows about me and she still said yes to whatever today was. That's a good sign. She turned a page. Also, you made a picnic.
Marcus stared at his daughter. How do you know about the picnic? Maya said nothing. Maya, I saw you packing the bag this morning, she said. Entirely without guilt.
You were being weird about it. I wasn't being weird. Dad, you checked the chips twice. He stood there for for a long moment. Then he went to the refrigerator, pulled out the container of leftovers from Thursday, and started heating dinner.
Dine, because that was what you did when your 11-year-old had just successfully interrogated you and you needed something to do with your hands. She sounds okay, Maya said from the table. She is, Marcus said. Okay, Mia said again with the air of a judge issuing a ruling. And then she went back to her homework and Marcus stood at the stove and something in the apartment felt different from how it had felt this morning.
Lighter, like a window had been opened. 2 Days later, Olivia called while he was closing the shop. "Can I ask you something?" she said. "Yeah. When you were going through everything with Renee," she said carefully.