An old colleague, a woman named Patricia, who had done community space work before and understood the particular requirements of a building that needed to serve children in the morning and their parents in the evening and a counseling team in between. Marcus sat in on the first consultation, not to speak, to listen to take notes, to understand what the building needed, so he could understand how the money needed to move. Patricia looked at him once across the table with a raised eyebrow that said very clearly, she was assessing whether he was the kind of man who took over spaces that weren't his. And then something she saw in him made her nod almost imperceptibly and go back to her plans. He didn't take over anything.
He asked three questions, all of them structural and specific, and Patricia answered them with the efficiency of someone who appreciated precision, and Olivia watched him from across the table with an expression he had come to know the private one, the one that wasn't for anyone else. The city permits came through faster than any of them expected, which Mrs. Patterson claimed personal credit for on the grounds that she attended the same church as someone on the zoning board, a claim which Marcus chose not to investigate too closely. On the grounds that some civic machinery functioned best without scrutiny. Ka, Mr. Henderson's granddaughter, Georgia Tech. The girl who had stood in the fundraiser backyard and told Olivia about Tuesday afternoon counseling group volunteered to redesign the community center's website.
She showed up one Saturday morning with her laptop and a level of digital competence that made Marcus feel at 38 like a man who had just discovered that tools had gotten better while he wasn't paying attention. Ava took a strong proprietary interest in the community center from the beginning. She came to three different planning sessions, sitting at the end of the table with a legal pad of her own, a small one with a purple cover, taking notes with the seriousness of someone who intended to be consulted. At the second session, she raised her hand and suggested that the kids program needed a corner with books about horses, which Olivia received with a gravity that Marcus believed was approximately 60% genuine. The evening after the third session, walking home, Ava put her hand in Marcus' and said, "Dad, the community center is going to change things for a lot of kids." "I think so, too," he said.
"Kids who don't have a lot of people in their corner." "Yeah." She was quiet for half a block. Then, I have a lot of people in my corner. He looked down at her. Mrs. Patterson, she counted. Mr. Henderson, Kesha, and her mom.
You. She paused. Ms. Olivia. He held her hand. You do?
He said, she nodded. I just wanted to say it because I think sometimes people forget to say when they have a lot. He stopped walking. She stopped with him and looked up. He crouched down to her level, not performing it, just doing it the way Olivia always did, and looked at his daughter, who had her mother's eyes and her own courage, and a purple legal pad for community center planning sessions, and a certainty about the world that Marcus had been trying to earn back for 3 years.
"Your mom would be so proud of you," he said. Ava looked at him steadily. "I know," she said. "She'd be proud of you, too." He pulled her into a hug and held on there on the sidewalk in the October evening until she said in the slightly muffled voice of someone whose face is pressed into a jacket, "Dad, people can see us." "Good," he said. She hugged him back.
The first day the community center opened its doors was a Tuesday in December, not a grand opening that was scheduled for the following month with proper invitations and a ribbon. And the city council member who had approved the permits attending with what Olivia described as the enthusiasm of someone who had not been involved at all until success was certain. The first day was quiet, unofficial. Olivia unlocked the front door at 8:00 a.m. and Marcus was there and Ava was there and Mrs. Patterson was there and Darius had driven down again because he said he wasn't going to miss it. They stood inside the front room.