Yeah. She looked at their hands. Then up at him. I opened the letter. She said, I can handle whatever this is.
I know you can. But not tonight, she said. Not tonight. No, Marcus agreed. Not tonight.
She tightened her grip on his hand. He tightened his grip back and they sat there in the quiet of his living room while something waited just outside the boundary of this evening. Something that had Ryan Whitmore's voice and four years of David's papers behind. And an urgency that Marcus couldn't explain away. It was coming.
Whatever it was, it was coming. But tonight for this hour in this room with their hands locked together and the porch light burning outside and a 12-year-old boy asleep upstairs who had eaten chili and talked about basketball and looked comfortable in a way he hadn't in years. Tonight Marcus Reed chose this. He chose to stay right here and so did she. Sunday came in cold and gray and Marcus woke up knowing the day was going to demand something from him before it was over.
He couldn't have said why he knew. Nothing in his morning was different. He made the coffee. He heard Darius moving around upstairs. He stood at the kitchen window and looked at Clare's house and saw that her car was still there and the porch light had finally gone off, which meant she'd slept, which was the only thing he'd actually been hoping for when he finally went to bed at midnight.
But something was sitting on the day like weight on a beam. The kind of weight that doesn't announce itself, but that a man who works with his hands learns to feel before anything cracks. Darius came downstairs and read the kitchen the way he always read rooms. He looked at his father's face, looked out the window at Clare's house, and said something happened last night, not a question. Ryan Whitmore called Marcus said.
Darius was quiet for a second. The guy from the driveway. Yeah. What did he want? Says he found something in her husband's papers.
Wouldn't say what Darius poured himself a glass of orange juice and stood at the counter and about with that 12-year-old serious of his. Is Miss Clare okay? She was when she went home, but Marcus looked at his son, but we don't know what Ryan found yet. Darius drank his juice. Set the glass down.
You're going to find out today, probably. And you're going to be there when she finds out. Marcus didn't answer. Didn't need to. Darius nodded like a decision had been confirmed rather than made.
Okay, I'm going to Jordan's after church. You don't need to pick me up until 5. He said it the way someone's a thing they've decided is useful without wanting to make a big thing of the usefulness. Marcus looked at his son for a moment. You're a good kid, Marcus said.