Keep producing. Keep being useful or you have no right to take up space. Weekends were for his daughter." Saturday mornings they made pancakes badly, enthusiastically, with too much butter and not enough patience. Saturday afternoons they went wherever Amara decided which could mean the library or the park or on one memorable occasion three different pet stores because she wanted to look at the fish. Sunday evenings Marcus helped with homework and they watched whatever movie Amara selected and he always fell asleep before the end and she always woke him up with the same words.
Daddy, it's not over yet. That was the rule. He'd broken it 43 times in the past 2 years. He'd counted each time. The extra shift felt necessary.
The money was real. The bills were real. The gap between what he made and what it cost to raise a child alone in greater Boston was very, very real. But 43 mornings that belonged to Amara had gone somewhere else instead, and he'd made it up to her in small ways and told himself that was enough. It was a Saturday morning in mid December when Emily texted him for the first time.
He'd given her his number two weeks earlier in a moment that he'd frame to himself as practical in case something comes up at work in case she needed someone to know her train schedule and which Devou who had been standing 12 ft away when it happened had described later as the most elaborate thing I have ever watched a man do to avoid admitting he wanted a woman to have his number. The text said, "My dad is having a good day. First one in 3 weeks. I'm at the hospital now and he wants to watch the Reds spring training highlights and complain about the pitching rotation. I just wanted to tell someone who might understand why that matters.
Marcus read it twice, then he typed that matters a lot. A good day is a whole thing. Enjoy every minute of it. 3 minutes passed. Then how am she already asking for a new one?
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?