Jerome was Marcus' cousin. And big laugh. Easy warmth. The kind of person who made you feel within 4 minutes like you'd known him for years. His wife, Tamara, pulled Victoria into the kitchen immediately on the grounds that anyone who didn't know the layout was on vegetable duty, and Victoria found herself dicing sweet potatoes next to a woman she'd met 7 minutes ago, talking about the school system in Mil Haven versus Atlanta with the ease of a conversation that had been waiting to happen.
At some point, she looked up and found Marcus watching her from the doorway. Not. He was not watching the conversation. He was watching her the way she'd settled into the kitchen. The way she was laughing at something Tamara had said, the way her shoulders had come down from wherever she kept them on ordinary days.
She caught his eye. He looked away first. She smiled and went back to the sweet potatoes. Ava spent most of Thanksgiving attached to Victoria's left side in a way that was not clingy. It was proprietary, which was different.
This was Ava's person. Ava had decided. The rest of the family could get acquainted at their own pace. Ava had already completed the evaluation process. At dinner when they were all around Celeste's table and plates were being passed and three conversations were happening simultaneously and Jerome was making a case for his sweet potato pie being superior to Celeste's which Celeste rejected with the confidence of someone who had been winning this argument for 15 years.
Ava leaned over to Victoria and said in a voice that was meant to be quiet but was not. Do you like it here? The table didn't go quiet, but Marcus heard it. She saw him hear it. "I love it here," Victoria said.
Ava nodded with supreme satisfaction. "I thought so," she said. "You have the face. " "What face? The one people get when there's somewhere they want to stay," Ava said and went back to her sweet potatoes. Celeste, who had caught all of this, looked across the table at Victoria with an expression that communicated that the two of them were going to have a full conversation at some point, probably over dishes, and that Celeste was looking forward to it.
They did over dishes while the men were in the living room and the children were doing something involving couch cushions that Celeste was strategically not investigating. He hasn't been like this in 4 years, Celeste said. She was washing. Victoria was drying. The choreography had been established without discussion.
After Dana, I watched him close himself up like he was winterizing a house. Put everything valuable inside and boarded the windows. Victoria dried a plate and put it where Celeste pointed. He never stopped being a good father. Celeste said that part he kept open for Ava.
He kept everything but for himself. She shook her head. I'd stopped thinking he was going to let anyone back in. He didn't let me in easily, Victoria said. No, Celeste said he made you earn it.
She passed another plate. That's how he does things. Slow, careful, real. It takes what it takes. She looked at Victoria sideways.
You didn't push. I didn't want to push, Victoria said. I know, Celeste said. That's why it worked. She handed Victoria a serving dish and said, "You're good for him.
I've been watching you all day. You don't try to fill the space Dana left. You're building something different. " She turned off the water and dried her hands. That's the only way it can work. The only way he'd let it.
Victoria stood in Celeste's kitchen holding a serving dish and thought about what it meant to build something different rather than trying to fill a shape that already existed. She thought about what Marcus had said on the porch in October. I can't afford to let something into this house that's going to leave a hole bigger than the one it filled. She had not tried to fill Dana's hole. She hadn't known how.
She'd just shown up and brought herself and let that be what it was. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the whole thing. She was still thinking about it when Marcus found her in the hallway 20 minutes later putting on her coat because it was nearly 9 and the drive was 5 hours. You don't have to leave tonight.
He said I have a 7:30 tomorrow. She said you could call in from here. He said it was the first time he'd said anything like that. The first time he'd suggested the 5 hours of highway could be managed differently. She went still.
He looked at her carefully. I'm not saying, he paused. I'm saying you don't have to drive 5 hours at 9:00 at night every time. Marcus, there's a room, he said. There's always been a room.
I just wasn't saying it. She looked at him in the hallway of his sister's house with the sounds of his family behind them and said, "Why are you saying it now? " He thought about it honestly, which was the only way he did anything because Ava told Celeste she was pretty sure you were going to be around for a long time. He said and Celeste told me and I thought about it and I think Ava's right. He looked at his own hands for a moment. She usually is.
Victoria said nothing. I'm not asking you to rearrange your life, he said. I'm asking you to stop pretending the drive is manageable so you can give yourself an excuse to keep your distance. The accuracy of it was bracing. She felt it land and she didn't flinch.