"Yeah, a pause. Something in the pause was weighted. I want to tell you something, and I don't want to make it bigger than it is," she said. "But I also don't want to pretend it's smaller. " He turned to face her. I haven't felt like I belonged somewhere in 4 years, she said.
Not in the house in Greensboro. Not anywhere I went after. Not anywhere, she paused. Tonight I felt like I belonged. He looked at her.
At your table, she said, "With your family? With you? " The word hung in the cold air. "That's not small," Marcus said. "No," she said. "It's not. " He reached over and took her hand.
They stood like that on the back porch in the November dark, holding on, and from inside came the sound of Darius and Maya arguing happily about something, and Kesha's voice rising above it, and the clatter of Miss June washing dishes, because Miss June always washed dishes, no matter whose kitchen it was, and the ordinary, irreplaceable sound of a house full of people. Marcus thought, "This is what I was protecting. All that time, all that careful management. This is what I was protecting and this is what I almost let atrophy trying to protect it. He held her hand tighter.
She leaned into him slightly. Not dramatically, just a degree or two. Just enough to close the last of the distance. The shoe box, she said quietly. He looked down at her.
You said someday, she said. Is today someday? He thought about it. Yeah, he said. I think today is someday they inside the box was where it always was back of the closet top shelf behind the extra blankets.
He got it without ceremony and brought it to the bedroom and they sat on the edge of the bed together and he opened it. Three things, the birthday card, the ticket stubs, the blue hair tie. He picked up the birthday card first. It was from the last birthday before the diagnosis. She had drawn something in the margin, a small sun with a face, which was not artistic and was not meant to be, and had written inside, "You are the steiest person I know.
That's not ordinary. Don't you dare think it's ordinary. " Marcus held the card for a moment. Then he handed it to Clare. She read it, set it carefully back in the box. He picked up the hair tie, held it in his palm.
"I don't know why this one," he said. Out of everything, but this is the thing I couldn't throw away. Clare looked at it. Because it was hers on an ordinary day, she said. Not a special day, just a day.