Cretaceous period, she announced. This is where things get complicated. Victoria looked at the array of carefully placed figures and felt something she hadn't expected. Gratitude, full and genuine for a dirt road and a raised hood and a man who stopped because stopping was just what you did. For a child who rebuilt her castle every time someone knocked it down and wrote formal complaints and named her brachiosaurus after the person she missed most.
For the particular mercy of finding yourself in a place where being real was the only currency that meant anything. Marcus made lunch. She helped the way she'd helped before under instruction. Following his lead, getting the cabinet placement right on the first try this time, which he noticed without commenting on, which was itself a comment. They ate at the table with three chairs and talked about nothing important and everything real.
Ava announced that she intended to be a paleontologist and also possibly a judge because she had been thinking about her skill set and both seemed like good fits. Marcus said that was an unusual combination. Ava said the world probably needed more paleontologist judges. Victoria said she could not argue with that logic. Marcus shook his head and ate his soup.
After lunch, after Ava was settled with a book, Marcus and Victoria sat on the porch. First time outside in the actual air. He had his coffee. She had hers. The Saturday afternoon was doing what October afternoons in Georgia do.
Going golden and generous with the light. The kind of light that makes everything look like it's worth keeping. You didn't book the birchwood, he said. It wasn't a question. No, she said.
Where are you staying? I haven't figured that out yet. She said, I drove down this morning and I'll drive back tonight. I have a meeting tomorrow at 9:00. He looked at her.
That's 10 hours of driving in one day, he said. I know because you wanted to come for a Saturday. I wanted to come, she said simply. The Saturday was what was available. He was quiet for a moment.
Then you drove 5 hours to eat biscuits and look at dinosaurs and to see you, she said. Without qualifier, without performance, he looked out at the yard. There's a conversation we should have, he said. I know, she said. About what this is, he said.
About what it can realistically be between somebody who's here and somebody who's 482 mi away, she said. He looked at her. I checked, she said. He almost smiled, then didn't because the conversation they were having was real and deserved to stay real. I have Ava, he said.
Her school is here. Her life is here. Everything she has left of her mother is here. I can't. He stopped.
Started again. I need you to understand what I can and can't move. I'm not asking you to move anything, she said. Then what are you asking? She thought about it honestly.
She thought about everything she'd said in his living room 3 weeks ago about wanting to come back as herself and everything that had happened since then. The board call, the framework she'd written, the way her apartment felt when she was cooking the waffles, the way it felt different now from how it had feltful before. I'm asking for the chance to show you that 482 mi is a number, she said, not a verdict. Marcus looked at her for a long time. I've been hurt, he said quietly.
No drama in it. Just fact. Not recently. Not the way you'd think. I don't mean Dana.
He looked down at his hands. I mean the years after. The way people look at a widowed father with a little girl and decide what the story is before they ask. I've had women who wanted to rescue us. I've had women who wanted the idea of us and not the reality.
He looked up. The reality is early mornings and parent teacher nights and a child who staples things together and has opinions about geological eras. It's not glamorous, Marcus, she said. I'm serious. I know you are, she said.
And I need you to hear this the same way. He waited. I ran a company for 14 years. She said, I made hundreds of decisions that affected thousands of people. I built something from nothing in a field where most people said I'd fail.
I am not without resources, without patience, without the ability to commit to something difficult and see it through. She held his gaze. I am telling you that I want to try not to rescue anything. Not because this is an idea, because you are the first person in a very long time who made me feel like it was safe to be exactly who I am. Marcus was very still.
And Ava, she said. Ava, she stopped, found the words. Ava is not a complication. She's a reason. Something shifted in his face.
He didn't say anything for a long moment. He looked out at the yard. He looked at his hands. He looked at some middle distance that had a lot in it. Then he said, "Okay. " Not a declaration, not a promise, not a resolution to everything complicated and uncertain and logistically improbable about two people who lived 482 mi apart with entirely different lives.
Just okay, which in Marcus Carter's language she had learned was the first word of something rather than the last. She sat with it. She let it be what it was. At 3:45, she said she needed to start driving if she was going to make it back before midnight. He didn't argue.
He walked her to the car the way he'd walked her from the truck to the shop on a Friday morning that felt both 2 days ago and two decades ago. She opened the car door. She stopped. Marcus, she said. He looked at her.
The business card, she said. The three words. Yeah. He said. When did you write them?
Friday morning, he said. Before you told me anything, before I looked anything up, he put his hands in his pockets. I just I didn't want you to leave without knowing that somebody wanted you to stay. She looked at this man standing in his driveway in the October light. This honest, unhurried, entirely himself person who had written three words on a business because he thought she might need to know that she was wanted.
Not for her company or her money or her board seat. Just wanted just as a person standing in the world, she said. I'll call you Wednesday. I'll pick up, he said. She got in the car.