Clare laughed. A full one this time. Unself-conscious. The kind that you can't manufacture. He sounds wonderful, she said.
He's the best thing I ever did," Marcus said by a long shot. The honesty of it sat between them simply without decoration. Then Marcus' phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it. A text from his sister Renee Desa's asleep.
"Take your time. You okay? " he texted back quickly. "Fine. Weird night. Tell you later," Renee replied in under 10 seconds.
"Weird how? " Marcus put the phone face down. Your sister? Clare guessed. She worries. That means she loves you.
Yeah. He looked across the table. You have siblings? No. Only child.
A beat. My parents. My mother and father. They divorced when I was seven. My mother moved to London.
My father remarried and has a family in Charleston. I see them both occasionally. She said it without drama the way you describe geography. My grandmother was the constant. Marcus heard what was underneath that.
So losing her support isn't just about money. Clare was quiet. "No," she said. "It's not. It's about being left again. " She pressed her mouth into a thin line and nodded once, "Just barely. " Like the nod itself cost something.
Marcus felt the full weight of that land on him. He didn't try to move it or manage it or make it better with words. He just let it be real the way it was. Then here's the thing, he said slowly. The thing she doesn't understand your grandmother.
She thinks she's protecting you by keeping you close, by arranging things so nothing can go wrong. He turned the coffee mug in his hands. But what she's actually doing is making sure that if something goes wrong anyway, and something always goes wrong, you'll have no idea how to survive it because she never let you practice. " Clare stared at him. "She loves you," Marcus continued. "I'm not saying she doesn't, but there's a difference between loving someone and trusting them, and she's never trusted you to fall down and get back up on your own. " Clare's voice was barely above a whisper.
How do you know she loves me? Because she came over here, Marcus said. Angry people come over. Indifferent people stay at their tables. A pause.