Don't apologize for that. She looked up. "You're talking about the reason you do the work," he said. "Don't apologize for that." She held his gaze for a moment, and something passed across her face that was vulnerable in a way he hadn't seen from her before. Not weak, Olivia Bennett was not a weak woman, not by any measure he could see, but open.
The way a person looks when they've been carrying something alone for a long time, and someone has just offered to acknowledge the weight. My mother's letter this year," she said quietly. She said it was time to let someone save me. She let out a breath. I think what she really meant was it was time to stop acting like needing help is the same thing as failing.
Marcus sat down his tools, sat back on his heels, looked at her. "You've been fighting this alone," he said. It wasn't a question. "I'm good at fighting alone." "I know," he said. "So am I." A pause.
Doesn't mean it's the right strategy. She held his gaze for a beat too long to be casual and not quite long enough to be something named. Then Ava's voice came over the fence. Dad, Mrs. Patterson says lunch is ready and you better come eat because she made her cornbread and it won't stay warm forever. Marcus pressed his eyes closed for exactly 1 second.
Olivia covered her mouth with her hand, but her shoulders were shaking. "Go," she said. "Don't disrespect Mrs. Patterson's cornbread. This conversation isn't over, he said, standing and picking up his tools. I know, she said, and the way she said it, like she meant something broader than just the conversation, like she was talking about something that had started and wasn't going to stop.
Stayed with him all the way through lunch and through the rest of that afternoon and into the evening when he was helping Ava with her homework at the kitchen table and found himself pausing for no reason with a pencil in his hand, staring at nothing. "Dad," Ava said. "You're doing the thing." "What thing? The far away thing. You look like you're trying to solve a math problem, but in your head." He looked at his daughter.
I'm just thinking about Ms. Olivia, about your homework, Ava. She looked at him with those eyes, Denise's eyes, and then with the particular mercy of a child who understands more than adults give them credit for, she let it go for about 30 seconds. Then she looks at you the same way. You know, Ava, I'm just saying we are doing fractions. Fractions are boring.
M. Olivia is fractions. Ava, she sighed, picked up her pencil, but she was smiling down at her paper, and Marcus was not smiling. He was absolutely and completely focused on fourth grade math. And if there was something in his chest that felt lighter than it had in 3 years, he was not acknowledging it.
He was absolutely not acknowledging it. The fourth weekend, something shifted. Marcus was replacing the last section of rotted trim when he heard Olivia's phone ring inside the house. He didn't think anything of it. He kept working.