I know." And something passed between those two women that Marcus couldn't fully see but could feel. Some acknowledgement exchanged in the frequency that only people who have lost a spouse can transmit. Darius talked about basketball. Kesha argued with Marcus about whether his cornbread dressing had enough sage.
Miss June ate two helpings of the greens she had improved and said nothing. Was high praise. And Clare sat at Marcus Reed's Thanksgiving table and passed the sweet potatoes and laughed at Darius play-by-play of the season's best game and asked Kesha about her work and listened to Miss June's story about the first Thanksgiving after Aaliyah was born and she was not performing. She was not trying. She was just there fully genuinely there and the table felt different because of it.
Fuller, more complete. After dinner, while the kids Kesha had brought her daughter, Marcus' 10-year-old niece Maya disappeared into the living room and Kesha and Miss June occupied the kitchen in the way older women occupy kitchens at family gatherings. Marcus and Clare stood on the back porch cold, clear the November sky doing what it does when night comes in early. "How do you feel?" Marcus said.
"Like I just ran a marathon," Clare said in a good way. He looked at her. Miss June doesn't offer second helpings to people she doesn't like. She didn't offer them. She served them without asking.
"That's better," Marcus said. Clare smiled, looked at the porch light, "Marcus," she said. "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.