It was marginally more comfortable. He said nothing. She said nothing, but there was something underneath the nothing that was doing considerable work, something warm and tentative and real. And both of them could feel it. And neither of them was quite ready to name it.
That was the state of things when Marcus' phone rang at 7:12 a.m. He looked at the screen. Mrs. Patterson, he picked up immediately. What's wrong? Mrs. Patterson's voice was measured but tight. Marcus, honey, Amara fell at the house.
She was running and she went down on the front steps. I don't think anything's broken, but she's crying hard and there's a cut on her knee and she's asking for you. He was already standing. I'm on the train. I'll be there. and he calculated rapidly 45 minutes.
Can you I've got her. She's okay. She's okay. But she wants her daddy. Tell her I'm coming.
Tell her I'm coming right now. He hung up and looked at Emily who had heard enough to understand. Go, she said. I'm going. He was already moving toward the door.
She's okay. She's just Marcus. Her voice stopped him. He turned. She was looking at him with that direct clear gaze. the one that saw through the system and the walls and the maintenance man exterior to the actual man underneath.
She has the best dad, Emily said. Go. Something landed in his chest when she said it. Something small and solid and unfamiliar. Not quite relief.
Not quite gratitude. Something older than both of those things. Some need he hadn't acknowledged in years. He nodded once. He got off the train.
But on the platform, waiting for the next train back toward Brockton, he found himself thinking not just about Amara, though Amara was the primary thing, the everything. The reason he was standing on this platform at 7:14 a.m. moving in the wrong direction, but about the way Emily had looked at him when she said it, like she meant it, like she knew something about him, that he was still in the process of learning about himself. Amara was fine. The cut was shallow, the knee was bruised, and by the time Marcus arrived, she had been cleaned up and bandaged and was sitting at Mrs. Patterson's kitchen table eating a biscuit and regarding her injury with the solemn pride of a child who has sustained a wound and found it interesting. "Daddy," she said when he walked in and crouched down to look at her.
"I have a real cut. I see that." Mrs. Patterson put a bandage with stars on it. "Dars are the right call. Can I go to school late?" Yes. She seemed satisfied with this outcome.