It's not a rescue. You have a good idea and a real problem. Those are two separate things and one doesn't cancel the other. She was quiet. Then my mother would have liked you.
He absorbed that. It landed somewhere deep and careful. She sounds like she was a perceptive woman. He said she was the best person I ever knew. Olivia looked down for a moment, then back up.
She'd have said you were sturdy. That was her word for people she trusted. That man is sturdy, Olivia. Like a compliment and a building code violation all at once. Marcus laughed.
Real and unguarded. Olivia smiled at the sound of it like she was collecting it. "Good night, Marcus," she said. "Good night, Olivia." She walked back to her house. He watched her go, which he told himself was just being polite, just making sure she got there fine.
It was just a few feet. There was nothing significant about watching someone walk to their own front door. He went inside, checked on Ava, who was already in bed with her horse book. "She's nice, Dad," Ava said, not looking up. You've mentioned that.
I'm just confirming. She turned a page. She laughed at all your jokes. I didn't tell any jokes. The thing you said about Mrs. Patterson's cornbread, she laughed at that.
Ava looked up. You're not that funny, Dad. She was just being nice. But also, maybe she thinks you're funny, which would be good because you need someone to think you're funny. Marcus turned off her lamp.
Go to sleep. I'm just saying. Good night, Ava. He went to his room, sat on the edge of his bed in the dark. The house was quiet in the way it was always quiet after Ava was down.
A quiet he had learned to live inside, to move through, to not resent too much on most nights. Tonight, it felt different, larger, more noticeable. He thought about Olivia's face when she'd said, "Let someone save you." He thought about her hands pressed flat on the legal pad. The tightness in her jaw, the way she had held herself together over that phone call with the mechanical precision of a person who has had to hold themselves together so many times that they have perfected the technique. He thought about the way she had listened to Ava.