Yeah, bud. We can do that. They went to the library. Deshawn found three books about terasaurs. Marcus sat in a chair nearby and read exactly zero pages of the novel he'd brought because he spent the whole time looking at the card he'd set on top of the book and running the numbers in his head.
He wasn't a man who made decisions impulsively. He was a man who worked through things methodically. The way you work through an unfamiliar engine, identifying each component, understanding how it connected to the next one, building the picture before committing to any diagnosis. But the numbers kept coming back the same. 11 weeks of job searching, 47 applications, 12 call backs, 3se secondond interviews, zero offers, 2 months until the landlord's patience ran out completely.
One son who did not yet know how bad things were and who Marcus intended to protect from knowing as long as possible and one white card. He picked it up, turned it over, one side, the other side. Then he put it in his pocket and took Deshawn to lunch. Sunday came and went the same way. Sundays did laundry groceries bought carefully.
Deshaawn's homework checked twice. His sister Renee calling in the afternoon and Marcus giving her a version of Friday night that was accurate but incomplete because Renee worried easily and he didn't have energy to manage her worry right now on top of his own. A woman grabbed your arm in a restaurant. Renee repeated that's what happened. And you sat with her for 2 hours more or less and her grandmother offered you a job.
She offered me a conversation. I don't know what it is yet. Marcus. Rene's voice had that specific quality it got when she was choosing her words carefully. Are you going to call?
He looked at the card on the kitchen counter. Deshawn was at the table behind him doing homework, narrating quietly to himself, the way he did a running commentary on his own thoughts that Marcus had long ago stopped trying to decode. I'm going to call, Marcus said. Good, Renee said. Because the alternative is staring at that stack of bills until they start talking back.
He called Sunday night at 8:15 after Deshawn was asleep. The phone rang twice. Mr. Reed, Vivian Bennett said. No preamble, no pretending she didn't know who it was.
I was wondering if you'd call or not. I wondered the same thing, Marcus said. A short silence, then something that might have been the ghost of a sound on her end. Not quite a laugh, not quite approval. Something in between.
Monday at 10:00, she said. Do you know where the Bennett Property Group offices are on Peach Tree? I'll find them. Good. Another pause.
Get there a few minutes early. I don't like to be kept waiting, and I assume you don't either. No, ma'am. Good night, Mr. Reed.