I think she liked the attention. Smart kid. She gets it from her mother. He sent it before he thought about it. Then he stared at the screen, wondering if he'd said too much, given away too much, opened a door he wasn't ready to walk through.
His thumbs hovered. Emily's response came in under a minute. She sounds like someone worth knowing. Something in Marcus's chest turned over quietly, like a page. He typed, "She really is." Then he put the phone down and went to make pancakes.
And he was still thinking about it. When Amara looked up from the batter bowl and said, "Daddy, why are you smiling like that?" Like what? Like when you're thinking about something, but you don't want to say what it is. He looked at his daughter, 8 years old, and already she read him better than most adults. I'm thinking about breakfast.
You're not thinking about breakfast. I'm thinking about how much butter you're about to put in that pan. She looked at the pan, then back at him. She let it go, but her eyes said she knew and she filed it away the same way her mother used to file things away. Quietly, carefully for later.
The following Monday morning, Marcus got on the train and felt at the moment the doors opened the particular weight of a space that was missing someone who should have been there. He sat down, checked his watch. 6:17 a.m. He rode all the way to Back Bay without seeing Emily and told himself there was a reasonable explanation. He texted her at 8:30 from the break room. Just you okay?
No answer until noon then. Sorry. Dad had a bad night. I'm at Mass General. I'll be at work tomorrow.
He typed back, don't apologize. Take what you need. He stared at it, then added, I'm here if you need anything. I mean that he almost deleted the second part. He sent it anyway.
She came back the next morning looking like she'd been through something she couldn't fully describe. And Marcus, who knew exactly what that looked like, had seen it in his own mirror for months after Renee died, did not ask if she was okay. He already knew she wasn't. Instead, when she sat down beside him, he held out a coffee cup. She looked at it.
"Oat milk," he said. The complicated order. I watched the machine twice to make sure. She took it. She held it in both hands and didn't say anything for a full minute.