They're right, Marcus said quietly. It does change shape. Are you in a better shape now than you were? He thought about it honestly. Some days today, today is a better day than most of the days were 18 months ago.
He exhaled. That's real progress. Even if it doesn't feel like much, she said nothing for a moment. Then thank you for answering, Emily. I mean it.
You didn't have to pick up at 10:00. Yes, I did, he said simply without drama. She didn't respond to that. But he heard something in the silence. A kind of settling, like a question being quietly answered.
Try to rest, he said. You can't help him if you're running on nothing. I know. I'll be on the train tomorrow. I know, she said again.
And this time there was something in it. Something almost warm. Something that sounded the way it feels when you realize you can count on something. When a thing that you'd been holding tentatively in your hands proves it can bear weight. Good night, Marcus.
Good night, Emily. He held the phone after the call ended, sitting in the dark for a few minutes, not thinking in any organized way, just feeling the weight of the conversation and noticing that it hadn't been a burden. It had been the opposite of a burden. It had been the thing that at 9:52 p.m. on a Thursday had made him feel most like himself in recent memory. He sat with that for a while.
Then he went to bed and for the first time in longer than he could clearly remember, he fell asleep quickly. Friday morning, Emily boarded at 6:19 and she looked tired in the way that a long night earns. But underneath the tiredness, there was something else, something easier in her face, some tension that had been there so long he'd stopped noticing it, now slightly loosened. She sat beside him and immediately said he was awake this morning for an hour. We watched baseball highlights.
Yeah, he told me everything wrong with the current bullpen in detail for 45 minutes. Classic. It was the best 45 minutes I've had in 2 months. She smiled real and private. Thank you for last night.
Don't mention it. I'm going to mention it. Emily, Marcus, you picked up a phone call at 10 p.m. from a woman who was barely keeping it together, and you talked to her for half an hour, and you made her feel like a person instead of a crisis. She looked at him steadily. That deserves a thank you.
He held her gaze. You'd do the same. I hope I would, she said. I'm trying to be the kind of person who would. Before he could respond to that, his work phone buzzed.