The actual budget breakdown. She looked at him for a long moment. Then she got up and went inside. When she came back, she had a laptop and a folder that was thick with printed spreadsheets, and she sat down at the small outdoor table and opened it. And Marcus pulled a chair over and sat beside her.
And for the next two hours, they worked through the budget together. The way two people work through something difficult when they are both competent and both serious and both beneath the professional surface, fighting for something they care about, that has nothing to do with numbers. At some point, Ava knocked on the fence gate. They both looked up. Mrs. Patterson says, "It's almost dinner time." Ava announced.
Then she looked at the laptop and the paper spread across the table and said with the instinctive assessment of a child who has been watching adults her whole life. Are you fixing something? We're working on it, Olivia said. Ava considered this. Then she looked at Marcus.
Dad, you should invite Ms. Olivia for dinner. Mrs. Patterson made too much and she hates wasting food. Ava, she literally said that there's too much food and I hate wasting food. Ava looked at Olivia with complete sincerity. You'd be doing her a favor.
Marcus looked at Olivia. He was already shaking his head, already forming the apology, already prepared to extract his daughter from this situation with minimal casualties. Olivia was looking at Ava. And then she was looking at Marcus. And then she closed the laptop.
"I don't want to impose," she said. "You're not imposing," Marcus said before his better judgment could catch up to his mouth. "If you want, it's just dinner." "Just dinner," she agreed. "It was not in any way that mattered, just dinner." Mrs. Patterson took one look at Olivia and immediately started acting like she had personally orchestrated everything which she had. Not though the suspicious quantity of food she had prepared suggested at minimum that she had left options open.
Ava sat next to Olivia and talked for the entire meal with the uninhibited enthusiasm of a child who has decided she likes someone and sees absolutely no reason to moderate herself about it. She told Olivia about her horse book, about the birthday party treasure hunt, about her best friend Kesha at school who could do a backflip but only on a trampoline, which Ava argued didn't fully count. Olivia listened to all of it with complete attention. Not the polite attention of an adult being patient, but real attention. The focused, curious engagement of someone who actually finds a seven-year-old fascinating.
Marcus watched this and felt something happen in his chest that he did not examine too closely. After dinner, while Mrs. Patterson made herself usefully scarce, and Ava was brushing her teeth, Marcus walked Olivia to the front door. They stood in the doorway for a moment, that particular doorway moment when a conversation is ending, and neither person is quite ready to end it. Thank you, Olivia said. For today, all of it.
The budget work was worth doing. I know that's not what I meant. She paused. I meant thank you for not making it feel like a rescue. He looked at her.