Ava processed this without ceremony. What was wrong with your car? Victoria set down the knife. I'm not entirely sure, she said, which was technically accurate. My dad fixes cars, Ava said.
I know. He fixed mine. He fixes everything, Ava said. Then can you braid hair? Victoria blinked.
I'm sorry. My friend Maya's sister can do the kind of braid that goes in three directions at once. I've been trying to learn it from a video, but it keeps falling out. Ava, Marcus said from the kitchen. Give the woman 5 minutes.
I'm just asking, Ava said deeply injured. I've never done a braid like that, Victoria said. But I'm a reasonably fast learner. Ava looked at her with new interest. Then she dropped her backpack by the couch with a crash that should have broken something inside it and went to the kitchen.
Dad, I'm hungry. Dinner's in 20. Chicken and rice. Do we have the sauce? We have the sauce.
Okay. She picked up a banana from the counter with the casual authority of someone who has negotiated this particular negotiation many times before. Can I watch one show? One short one? She disappeared around the corner.
20 seconds later, the television came on. Victoria stood in the kitchen with diced vegetables on the cutting board and something happening in her chest that she couldn't quite categorize. It was too warm for happiness and too quiet for joy. And it had been too long since she'd felt it to immediately put a name on it. Marcus came to take the vegetables.
"She's a lot," he said. "She's wonderful," Victoria said. He looked at her. Something in what she'd said, either the word or the way she meant it registered in his face. He looked back at the pan.
Yeah, he said quietly. She is. Dinner was rice with chicken thighs in a sauce that was built on something Marcus had learned from his grandmother in Savannah. He mentioned this without preamble. The way people mention things that are foundational.