She tilted her head. The curtains are open. He looked through the window behind her. The charcoal linen curtains he'd hung months ago on a Saturday afternoon that had changed everything were pushed wide to each side. The living room was lit warm behind them.
Any neighbor who looked could see straight in. "I know," she said. "I always leave them open now." He looked at her. Because I stopped needing them for what I bought them for, she said.
He thought about the first day, the drill that hadn't been charged. The crooked anchor holes in the wall. Standing on a ladder with a screwdriver while she argued about whether the rod was level. The moment before everything shifted when she'd looked at him directly and said four words that had sat in his chest like a stone for months. And then he thought about tonight, about walking back through those doors, about saying her name in front of people and not making her smaller to make himself comfortable, about the 30 ft between their houses that had gone from uncrossable to ordinary.
I'll see you tomorrow, he said. You will, she said. She went inside. He stood on her porch for one more second. Through the window, her curtains framed the warm light of her living room, open to the street, open to whoever looked.
No hiding, no apology. He walked back across the 3 ft to his own front door. And inside at the kitchen table with a math worksheet and a glass of water was Maya, who was absolutely supposed to be asleep. Maya, I heard you pull in and then you took forever. I was saying good night.
She looked at him over her worksheet. 9 years old and full of her mother's particular clarity. You okay? He thought about the question. He thought about parking lots and the word neighbor used as a retreat and a man named Patterson and his supervisor's handshake and the specific sensation of holding someone's hand in a room full of people who were watching and choosing not to care.
Yeah, he said. Actually, yeah. Maya looked at him for one more second with those clear, complete eyes. Good, she said, and went back to her math. He sat down at the table across from her.
She slid a pencil toward him without looking up. "You're doing it wrong," she said. "I haven't touched it yet. I can tell by your face." He picked up the pencil.
They sat at the kitchen table under the overhead light. Father and daughter working through Long Division at 9:30. On a Saturday night, outside across 30 ft of driveway and lawn, Clare Bennett's curtain stayed open, like they belonged there, like there was nothing in the room that needed hiding. The Monday after the fundraiser, Darius went to work and something was different. Not in the world.
In him, he drove the same route, parked in the same lot, pulled his work order for the day, and clocked in at 658 the same as always. But when Richard Colt passed him in the hallway near the service bay, and said, "Good to see you Saturday, Whitaker." Clare seems like good people. Darius didn't feel the old internal scramble, the rapid calculation of what his supervisor knowing about his personal life meant for his professional standing. He just said, "She is" and kept walking.