I have to talk to her tonight. Clare said, "I know. I have to tell her no. I know. And I don't know what happens after that. " Marcus set the mug down.
"No," he said. "You don't. " He held her gaze. "But you know what happens if you say yes. " A long still pause. "Yeah," Clare said quietly. "I do. " They sat together for another hour.
Outside Atlanta moved through its rainy Friday night, indifferent and beautiful and ongoing. Desawn was home with the babysitter, probably fighting sleep over a dinosaur book. The bills on Marcus' table weren't going anywhere. The job interview on Monday was still Monday. Nothing had been fixed.
Nothing had been resolved. And yet Marcus Reed, who had walked into this restaurant alone, exhausted, nearly invisible to the world, felt something he hadn't felt in a very long time. Like he was exactly where he was supposed to be. He didn't understand it. He didn't need to.
Some things you don't analyze. You just receive them. And across the table, Clare Bennett was sitting up a little straighter than she had an hour ago. Her tea was half finished. Her hands were still on the table, but they weren't pressing down anymore.
They were just resting there. She looked like a person who had remembered something important. And across the restaurant, Vivien Bennett and Thomas Whitmore and Andrew in his expensive gray suit were still at their table, still waiting, still watching. And none of them not. One of them could see what had actually just happened.
In the two hours that Marcus Reed and Clare Bennett had sat across from each other in this ordinary restaurant on this rainy Friday night in Atlanta, something real had begun. The question was, "What would happen when it met the world outside that window? " "The moment. " Viven walked back to her table. Marcus watched her sit down and leaned toward Thomas Whitmore and say something low and brief. Thomas nodded once. Andrew didn't react at all.
He just lifted his water glass and drank from it slowly. His eyes moving back toward Clare and Marcus with an expression that was hard to read from across the room. Not angry, not jealous, something closer to curious, maybe even relieved. Marcus filed that away. He'd been reading people his whole life in the shop.
Customers would come in telling him one thing was wrong with their car, and he'd figure out in the first 60 seconds that they were describing a symptom, not the problem. The problem was always something else, something deeper. And right now, looking at Andrew Whitmore sitting at that corner table in his expensive gray suit, Marcus was getting the distinct feeling that the problem in this room was not what anyone thought it was. Clare hadn't noticed. She was looking at her tea.
"He didn't look angry," Marcus said quietly. She glanced up. "What, Andrew? When your grandmother came back to the table, he didn't look angry. Clare frowned slightly and turned just enough to look, then turned back.
He never looks angry. He's very controlled. I don't think that's what that is, Marcus said. What do you mean? I mean, he looked like someone who just watched a door open in a wall he thought was solid.