The way children do when they're asking something they don't quite have the words for yet. Does Jaylen's dad braid his hair every morning? Marcus asked. Amara thought about it. Jaylen's a boy, right?
Does Jaylen's dad make him scrambled eggs with real butter? I don't know. Does Jaylen's dad know what pulpy means without being told? The corner of her mouth moved. Daddy, that's not I'm just asking questions.
She picked up her orange juice. I'm not saying I want a Tesla. I know you're not. I'm just saying Jaylen said it. I know.
He turned back to the eggs and lowered the heat a little. Jaylen's dad sounds like he's doing fine. We're doing fine, too. Different kind of fine. Amara was quiet for a moment.
Then our fine is better. Marcus smiled, face still toward the stove. Yeah, it is. He dropped her at school at 78. Walked her to the door even though she was 8 and had told him last month that he didn't have to walk her to the door anymore.
And he had nodded seriously and then walked her to the door anyway. She hadn't complained since. He suspected she didn't actually mind. He kissed the top of her head in the doorway. Good day, he said.
It wasn't a question. It wasn't a command. It was just what he said. Every morning, good day. The way other people said goodbye.
Amara nodded. Good day, Daddy. And then she was inside and he was back in the truck and Marcus Carter drove toward his first job of the day. The truck was a 2009 Ford AF 150, the color of old rust and determination, 187,000 mi. The heater worked fine.
The air conditioning worked fine as long as you hit the dashboard firmly twice right below the vent on the passenger side, which Marcus had explained to Amara, and she had accepted as completely normal because she'd never known the truck to be any other way. He drove with the radio off most mornings. He used the time to think, to plan, to calculate, to run through the day's work in his head, the way a surgeon might run through a procedure before picking up the scalpel. Marcus was not a surgeon. But he was a craftsman and he took it just as seriously.
Carter Restoration, that was the company, him and two other guys, Deshaawn, who'd been with him for 4 years and could read a damaged structure the way other people read a book, and Tommy Younger, 26, still learning, but fast and willing and honest, which Marcus valued more than almost any other quality in a worker. They did restoration work. Old homes, old buildings, old things that had been let go or damaged or forgotten that Marcus brought back to what they were. He was good at it. Not famous, not well-known outside a certain circle.
But the people who knew knew. There were contractors in Atlanta who would quietly refer clients to Marcus Carter for jobs they didn't trust themselves to do right. That meant something. It didn't mean enough to keep the bills comfortable. That was the honest truth.
The contracts came and went. The overhead was constant. And somewhere in the last year, a larger firm, Coastal Development Group, based in Savannah, flush with private equity money, had started aggressively under bidding him on jobs he needed. They cut corners. Marcus had seen their work.