You keep saying that like it means I don't notice things. She twirled pasta around her fork with the specific deliberateness of someone who has timed a conversation carefully. Jada's mom asked me about it at pickup today. Darius was very still. What did Jada's mom ask you?
She asked if the lady next door was around a lot. What did you say? I said Clare is our friend and she comes over sometimes and also she has good taste in curtains. Maya finally looked up. Was that okay?
He looked at his daughter, 9 years old, careful and cleareyed, navigating questions about her father's life with more grace than most adults, and felt something move through him that had no clean name. Gratitude, protectiveness, the specific ache of loving someone this much. That was perfect, he said. Maya nodded and went back to her pasta. So, are you getting serious?
He picked up his fork. Yes. She nodded again like this confirmed something she had already filed under known information. Okay. Are you happy?
The question was so direct it almost made him laugh. Yeah, baby. I am good. She reached for her water glass. Then Jada's mom can mind her business.
He did laugh at that. Really laugh. Maya, what? It's true. You can't say that.
I didn't say it to her. I said it to you. She looked at him seriously. There's a difference between thinking something and saying it to the wrong person. You taught me that he had he had taught her exactly that.
The fact that she had applied it in this direction was something he chose not to examine too carefully. Finish your pasta, he said. She finished her pasta. He cleared the table and washed the dishes nations and thought about Jada's mom and the question at pickup and the fact that the neighborhood's awareness of his l had graduated from Gerald Walsh on the sidewalk to secondhand inquiries through his daughter's classmate's parent and he measured his reaction to that information and discovered it was substantially smaller than it would have been 4 months ago. Not zero, but smaller.
Progress, he thought actual progress. He texted Clare after Maya went to bed. The neighborhood has officially taken an interest in our situation. Clare responded fast. I know.
Sandra texted me today. Darius stared at that. Sandra from the fundraiser. Clare. Sandra from the fundraiser.
She wanted to know if we were quote an item. Darius, what did you say? A pause long enough to be deliberate. Clare. I said yes.
Was that okay? He sat with that for a second. The word yes sitting in his phone in her handwriting. Clean and certain. He typed more than okay.
Then Jada's mom also conducted an inquiry through Maya. Clare. Oh no, Darius. Maya told her to mind her business. Clare, I love that child.
Darius, don't tell her that. Her head's already the right size. He put the phone down and sat in the quiet of his living room and let himself feel without immediately managing it. The fact that two people had confirmed they were together within the same evening through completely separate channels and the world had not ended and in fact the world had texted back warmly and asked follow-up questions. He thought about Renee.
He thought, "I'm okay. We're okay. I'm still here." The way he sometimes spoke to her in his head, not from grief anymore, but from the simple continuity of having loved someone and always carrying them. He thought she would have liked Clare, not because they were similar, because they were similarly unbothered by the things that required bothering.
He fell asleep on the couch. First time in months he'd done that. Fallen asleep somewhere other than his bed, the way you do when your nervous system has finally decided the house is safe. He woke up at 2:00 a.m. With a stiff neck and a feeling of general peace and went to bed.
The next twist came not from outside but from inside. And it arrived on a Thursday evening in the form of a phone call from Renee's mother. Diane Whitaker Darius had kept her last name after Renee passed because she'd asked him to. Because she said it was the only way she knew how to stay connected to what her daughter had left behind. Called at 7:45 while Darius was helping Maya with her ecosystem poster.
He saw the name on the screen and felt the old reflex and the tightening. The preparation, the gathering of himself into the careful version. He answered on the third ring, Diane, Darius. Her voice was the same as always warm in the specific way of a woman who had experienced the worst thing a parent can experience and had chosen to keep being warm anyway, which was a kind of courage he had immense respect for. How are you, baby?
Good, good. Maya's right here. She's been asking about Thanksgiving. I know. I talked to her yesterday.
She told me about her science project. A pause, the kind that means when deciding how to approach what they actually called about. She also told me about Clare. There it was. Darius sat back in his chair.
He glanced at Maya who was very carefully cutting out leaf shapes from green construction paper and absolutely listening to every word. "Let me move to the other room," he said. "You don't have to. Give me one second." He walked to the hallway, leaned against the wall.
"Okay, she didn't say much," Diane said quickly. "Just that she's your neighbor and she's been coming around and that she has good curtains. Of course, she mentioned the curtains." Darius. Dian's voice shifted, still warm, but with the weight of a woman who had earned the right to say what she was about to say.
"I'm not calling to interfere. You know, I'm not that person. I know. I just I needed to hear you tell me yourself that you're doing okay, that this is good. He thought about how to answer that.
He thought about the diner and the porch light and the fundraiser and the word neighbor and the word girlfriend and the distance between them. He thought about Clare's curtains always open. It's good, Diane, he said. It's actually good. A long pause.
She makes you laugh? Diane asked. Yes, Mia likes her. Maya evaluated her based on her curtain taste and gave her a passing grade. Diane laughed.