The honest answer always does quietly. Before you can stop it, something shifted in her expression. Not softening exactly, more like recogni like he'd said a password she hadn't expected anyone to know. I'm Clare, she said. Marcus.
She didn't reach over the fence to shake his hand. He didn't offer his. They just stood there on opposite sides of the boards he'd been hammering back into place. And for a moment, for just a moment, the ordinary world around them felt slightly different, like the volume had been turned down on everything else. Then she said, "I'll let you get back to your fence."
And she walked back to her porch, picked up her mug, and returned to her book. Marcus stood there for another 5 seconds. Then he went back to work, but he drove that last nail in wrong, and he had to pull it out and start again. He didn't think about it that night. He told himself he didn't think about it.
He made dinner chicken and rice, the simple kind, nothing fancy, and called Darius in from his room, and they ate at the kitchen table the way they always did. Marcus asking about school and Darius answering in the careful slightly evasive way of 12-year-old boys who simultaneously want to talk to their father and have very little idea how to actually do it. How was math? Fine. You get that quiz back?
Yeah, good. Decent. What's decent mean? 83. That's not decent.
That's solid. Good work. Darius shrugged in the way that meant he was pleased but wasn't going to show it. They did the dishes together, Darius washing, Marcus drying, the two of them working side by side in the easy silence that had become their native language. And Marcus kept his eyes on the plates and the cups and the small ordinary tasks of their evening.
And he did not think about the woman next door. He didn't think about the sound of her footsteps in the grass. He didn't think about the way she'd looked at him level, steady, completely unafraid. He didn't think about what she'd said. Or were you watching the light?
He put the last cup in the cabinet and closed the door. Dad Darius said, "Yeah, you're quiet. I'm always quiet. You're more quiet." Marcus looked at his son.
Darius was looking back at him with those eyes, his mother's eyes. And Marcus felt that familiar combination of love and exposed helplessness that his son managed to produce in him on a near daily basis. "I met the neighbor," Marcus said. Darius raised his eyebrows. The lady with the porch light.
Marcus paused. You notice the light? You can see it from my window. Darius said like this was the most obvious thing in the world. It's always on even late.
Marcus nodded slowly. Is she nice? Darius asked. Marcus thought about it. I don't know yet, he said honestly.