He asked me after you left that Sunday. He waited until you were out of the room and then he said does he know how lucky he is? And I said I wasn't sure. And he said make sure he knows. She paused.
So Marcus Hayes, do you know? He looked at her in this corridor at 6:51 in the morning, the worst morning of her year. She was asking him if he knew how lucky he was. He thought about November. He thought about 32 minutes and three words that had followed him through the winter like a compass pointing somewhere he hadn't been allowed to go.
He thought about Amara and Gerald, the shy fish and pancakes, and the sketches in the margins of his notebook, and a photograph of a man fixing a zipper who didn't know anyone was watching. "Yeah," he said. "I know," she nodded like the matter was settled, like Richard had in the end gotten his answer. She closed her eyes and leaned against Marcus's shoulder, and he held on, and the hospital corridor was quiet. 3 days later, Marcus did something he hadn't done in 3 years.
He called in a personal day, not because of a family emergency, not because of a medical appointment. He called in a personal day because he was a person and persons needed days sometimes and he was 34 years old. And that was a thing he was still slowly, imperfectly learning to believe about himself. He took Amara out of school 2 hours early. They went to the aquarium.
Amara's choice, predictably, she'd been asking since October. They spent 3 hours working through every exhibit. Amara asking questions Marcus couldn't always answer, which she found both disappointing and funny in equal measure. They had terrible overpriced clam chowder in the cafe, and Amara declared it the best soups she'd ever had, which Marcus knew was not true, but accepted as the truth of the specific afternoon. On the drive home, Amara was quiet for a while.
Then, is Emily sad? Yes, Marcus said she lost her dad. like I lost my mom. He gripped the wheel. Yeah, like that. Amara looked out the window for a moment.
I was sad for a really long time, she said. I know, baby. But then it got not smaller. Exactly. More like I got bigger around it.
She turned to look at him. Does that make sense? Marcus looked at his daughter. This child, this person, he said, and his voice was not entirely steady. That makes perfect sense.
You should tell Emily that, Amara said. So she knows it works that way. I will. She seemed satisfied. She turned back to the window.