Slowly, quietly, like a door that's been locked a long time. Finally, almost silently giving. The question didn't go away. That was the thing about what Emily had asked him on the river crossing. It didn't fade the way most things did, the way Marcus had trained himself to let things fade, to let feelings wash through and out without leaving a mark.
He'd gotten very good at that over the past 3 years. Feelings came and he acknowledged them the way you acknowledge a car alarm. going off down the street distantly briefly, then back to whatever you were doing. But when's the last time somebody asked if you were okay that one lodged somewhere it couldn't get out? He thought about it on the walk from Backbay station to the maintenance yard. He thought about it while he ran diagnostics on a switching panel that had been misfiring all week.
He thought about it at lunch, sitting alone at the far end of the breakroom with his turkey sandwich and its scrolling without seeing anything. He thought about it at 3:47 p.m. when Devaru walked past his station, stopped, looked at him, and said nothing, just looked and kept walking, which was Devou's way of saying, "I see you, and I'm not going to push." He thought about it that evening when Amara asked him to read her a chapter from her book and he sat on the edge of her bed and read three pages before realizing he hadn't absorbed a single word. Daddy Amara said, "Yeah, baby, you read that part already." He looked down at the page he had. "Sorry, are you tired?" "A little." She studied him with those eyes, Renee's eyes, dark and sharp and catching everything. and she said with the unnerving directness of an eight-year-old who had grown up faster than any child should have to. Are you sad tired or just tired tired?
Marcus set the book down. What's the difference? Sad tired is when your eyes don't move right? She said like they're looking at something that isn't there. He stared at his daughter for a long moment.
Where did you get that from? He asked. She shrugged. Mrs. Patterson says it about you sometimes. He didn't say anything.
He pulled Amara close, kissed the top of her head, and held on a second longer than usual. She let him. She always let him in ways that broke his heart and rebuilt it simultaneously. The most emotionally intelligent person in his life. I'm okay, he told her.
She didn't argue, but she didn't completely believe him either. He could tell. He finished the chapter the right one this time and turned off her light and stood in the hallway outside her room for a full minute just breathing. The apartment was quiet in that particular nighttime way that had taken him 2 years to stop hating. Silence used to mean Renee was asleep beside him or in the kitchen or somewhere close.
Now, silence just meant he was the only adult in the building, the only person holding everything together, the last line between his daughter and the world. He went to bed. He did not sleep. He thought about a woman with a camera around her neck who had looked at him on a train and asked a question nobody else had remembered to ask. The next morning, something was different about Emily.
He noticed it before she even sat down. She boarded at 6:19 as usual. He had stopped pretending he wasn't timing it, but her step was lighter. Her shoulders were up instead of curved forward. She had the camera as always, but today she was actually shooting with it, lifting it to her eye as the train moved, and clicking off small moments, an old man doing a crossword, two teenagers sharing earbuds.
The way morning light hit the scratched up window glass. She dropped into the seat beside Marcus and immediately said, "Okay, I need to know something." "Good morning to you, too," Marcus said. "Do you ever take anything for yourself?" He looked at her. "What?" "On the train in the morning. Do you ever just take something?