She was giving him just enough truth to seem genuine, maybe even more than enough, maybe actual truth, while keeping the frame wide enough that she could be anyone asking it. "I might know some people," Marcus said carefully. "Would any of them talk to me?" "Probably not to a stranger," he said. "This community's been talked to before.
Studied, surveyed, researched, and then nothing happens. And they're still in the same place, and the researchers go write their papers." She absorbed that. "What if I wasn't a researcher?" "What would you be?"
"Someone trying to fix something," she said. Her voice dropped slightly on those last two words, not for effect, because she meant them. He studied her for a long moment. The wool cap, the worn shoes, the slight pallor that came from not sleeping well, the hands that were soft in the palms, the hands of a woman who'd never worked in a shop, but currently bitten down at the nails in the way of someone deeply, genuinely anxious. "Before I point anyone toward anyone," Marcus said slowly, "I need to know something."
"Okay," she said. "Whatever you're trying to fix," he said, "is it for you or for them?" The question landed. He watched it land. Her eyes moved with something complicated guilt defensiveness and beneath that something surprisingly like grief.
"I'm still figuring that out," she said. He nodded. "That's an honest answer," he said. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out one of the Marta maintenance issued to all employees just name and work number, nothing fancy. He set it on the table between them.
"I'm off Sundays," he said. "If you want to talk more, call that number Saturday afternoon." She looked at the card, looked at him. "Why are you helping me?" she asked.
He thought about the right way to answer that. Not the easy answer, not the careful answer, the accurate one. "Because somebody should have helped a long time ago," he said, "and they didn't. And maybe if they had, things would have been different for a lot of people." He put on his jacket, left money on the table for both their meals.
"Good night, Eve," he said. He walked out into the rain. Evelyn Brooks sat in the corner booth of Loretta's Diner and stared at the plain Marta card on the table in front of her. And for the first time in a very long time, she did not feel like the most powerful person in a room. She felt like someone who had a great deal to answer for.
She picked up the card. She held it for a moment, then she put it in her jacket pocket very carefully up next to her heart. He didn't let go of her wrist right away. That was the part Evelyn would remember later, not the words, not the accusation, not even the fact that he knew who she was. What she would remember was that his grip wasn't violent.
It wasn't aggressive. It was the grip of a man who had waited 5 years for something to be still long enough to look at it clearly, and he was not going to let it move until he was ready. "Evelyn Brooks," he said again, slower this time, like he was reading a name off a gravestone. She stopped pretending. That was the only way to describe what happened in her face.