One moment when he could have kept moving and he stopped instead. His phone buzzed. A text from Burr, not in his contacts, but he recognized it immediately from the context. I heard you went to the building today. Patricia texted me.
She said, and I quote, he actually listened. I want you to know that is the highest compliment she gives. Marcus read it twice. He knew who it was before he scrolled up to confirm Clare's number, which he'd put in his phone Saturday morning when she'd texted to check in, and he'd responded, and they'd had a brief, easy exchange, the kind that felt like the start of something that didn't need to announce itself. He texted back.
"She's going to be the reason this works. I just need to stay out of her way enough to let her," Clare replied in under a minute. "That's exactly what she needed to hear. Did you figure out the thing yet? " Marcus looked at the question. What thing he texted back though he already knew?
The thing you said you couldn't name Friday night. The thing you left the restaurant with. He held the phone, thought about it. The building in front of him solid and real. Deshawn at school right now explaining terosaurs to whoever would listen.
Renee, who called too much because she loved him. Patricia with her whiteboard and her eight-year contractor relationship and her Saturday labor. Viven, who had looked at him across a restaurant and seen something she recognized, and Clare, who had grabbed a stranger's arm and changed everything. He typed back, "Getting closer. " She sent back a single word. "Good. " He put the phone in his pocket, started the car, drove home through the Atlanta afternoon to pick up his son and tell him over dinner quietly and without making it too big that things were going to be okay, that the hard part was almost over, that they were going to be fine.
Deshawn listened with the seriousness he brought to everything that mattered, and then he said, "Does this mean we don't have to move? " "Not if things go the way I think they're going to go," Marcus said. Deshawn nodded, went back to his food, then without looking up. I didn't want to move again. I know, bud. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to feel bad.
Marcus set down his fork, looked at his son, 8 years old, eating his dinner, protecting his father from his own worry. Desawn, Marcus said. His son looked up. You can always tell me things, all of them. Deshawn considered this with the seriousness it deserved.
Even when you're already stressed, "Especially then," Marcus said. "That's what I'm here for. " His son held his gaze for a moment. Then he nodded once, a small certain nod, and picked up his fork again. Marcus picked up his own, and the evening moved forward, ordinary and irreplaceable, the way evenings do when you're finally truly beginning again. The first 30 days were the hardest.
Not because Marcus couldn't do the work. He could do the work. He'd been doing versions of this work his whole adult life, showing up before anyone else, staying later than he needed to learning the systems nobody had bothered to document because the person who knew them had just always known them. That part he understood. That part felt like home.
What was hard was the silence from people who had already decided what he was before he walked through the door. It started the second week. He'd called a vendor meeting exactly as he'd promised Patricia and brought in the four main contractors who serviced the building. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, general maintenance. Four men, all of them experienced all of them with long relationships with the building that predated Marcus entirely.