Then can Emily come for dinner sometime? You want her to? Gerald wants to meet her properly. She said he's been shy, but I think he's ready. Marcus drove the rest of the way home without saying much.
But something in the architecture of his life had shifted quietly. Finally, the way things shift when they've been resisting the right shape for a long time. and then all at once stop resisting. The system was the same. The morning routine was the same. The work, the train, the maintenance, and the motion all the same.
But the man inside it was not the same man he'd been in November. And he was no longer pretending otherwise. Emily came to dinner on a Thursday. Not a weekend, not a carefully planned occasion a Thursday because Amara had decided Thursday was fine. And what Amara decided was generally what happened.
She'd told Marcus on Monday with the administrative authority of someone who had checked the calendar and found it acceptable. Thursday, tell Emily 6:00. I'm making the salad. Marcus had relayed this information to Emily verbatim. Her response, she's making the salad, Marcus.
Apparently, Emily, I'll be there at 6. She arrived at 5:58, which Marcus noted and appreciated. Not early enough to catch anyone unprepared. Not late enough to cause Amara to check the clock, which she had been doing since 5:45. She brought flowers, which surprised him, and a small wrapped thing for Amara, which surprised him more.
He didn't ask. Amara tore into the wrapping at the kitchen table and found a photography book pictures of ocean animals, vivid and large format with a note inside the front cover in Emily's handwriting that said, "For Amara and Gerald and the rest of the tank, Emily." Amara read the note twice. Then she looked up at Emily with an expression Marcus could only describe as formal approval. "Gerald is going to like this," she said. "I hope so," Emily said.
He's shy, but he's intelligent," Amara said. He responds to quality. Emily pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Marcus turned back to the stove. Dinner was pasta and garlic bread and Amara's salad, which was aggressively dressed and contained cherry tomatoes and what appeared to be every green thing in the refrigerator, and which both Marcus and Emily ate without comment or complaint.
Amara talked through most of the meal about school, about the book club, about a disagreement she'd had with a classmate over whether dolphins or octopuses were smarter, a debate she had clearly not let go of despite it apparently occurring the previous week. What's your position? Emily asked. Amara pointed her fork. Octopuses.
Three hearts, nine brains. They can open jars. The dolphin people are not being rigorous. Three hearts? Emily looked at Marcus.