"Three years and you've already replaced us. In an apron. In my kitchen." Noah had been at the kitchen table doing math homework. He slid out of the chair and moved behind Darius's leg the way he had done when he was five.
Darius felt the small hand grip the back of his jeans and recognized the grip. It was the same one. The exact same one. Three years had changed the hand size but not its meaning. Elena set down the wooden spoon and took a step back from the stove.
"I'm not in the way." She said quietly. "I can leave the room." "You can leave the house." Chanel said.
"That's enough." Darius's voice had gone low. He turned and looked at Chanel in a way Noah had never seen him look at her before. The person who walks out of a home does not get to come back and decide how the people left behind are putting themselves together. "You went.
You went of your own choosing. You don't get to stand in this kitchen and tell me how to heal." Chanel's face changed. The anger held for a second longer and then something underneath it broke and her eyes filled. She did not cry.
She turned, walked back through the kitchen, let the screen door bang behind her, and got in her rented car. They heard the engine start. They heard the gravel crunch. They heard the sound get smaller down the road. Noah was still holding the back of his father's jeans.
Darius reached down without looking and put his hand on the boy's head and kept it there. That night, Elena came out to the porch after Noah was asleep. She did not sit in the rocking chair this time. She sat on the top step and looked out at the dark and Darius sat near her and after a long while she began to talk. His name was Marcus, she said.
He was 12 years older than her. He had been charming at first the way men like that always are. He had told her she was beautiful. He had paid her rent when she lost her waitressing job. By the time she understood what was happening he had her bank card, her phone passcode, the keys to her apartment and a way of saying her name that made her flinch before he finished the word.