Patterson and Lily standing on the front step getting smaller. And he kept his eyes on the road and he drove. He called at 3:47 that afternoon. Lily was asleep in the back seat. She had lasted longer than he expected.
Made it all the way to the Tennessee state line before going out like a light mid-sentence about something she'd seen on the highway. And Marcus had four more minutes until his exit. So when Clare picked up on the second ring, he talked quietly, one eye on Lily in the mirror. We're almost there, he said. How was the drive?
Long good. He paused. Lily identified 14 interesting license plates and gave up at the Alabama border. classic road trip arc. She's asleep now. Been out for an hour and a half.
And you? I'm good, he said. And then because he was trying to be honest about things like this now, I'm nervous about the house, about all of it. Starting again somewhere new. Making sure Lily adjusts.
Making sure the job is what I think it is and not just what it looked like in a presentation. Those are all reasonable things to be nervous about. Clare said, "I know you're going to be fine. You don't know that? No, she said, "But I know you, and you're going to be fine."
He took his exit. On the ramp, the Nashville skyline appeared ahead, lower and quieter than Atlanta. A different geometry, a different weight. It looks different than I expected, he said. Different good or different bad.
Different real, he said. Like a place that's going to ask things of me. That's what good places do, she said. He pulled onto the surface street that would take him to the new house. following the GPS, unfamiliar turns in an unfamiliar city with his daughter asleep in the back and 400 miles of Georgia and Tennessee between him and everything he knew. Clare.
Yeah, thank you, he said. For what? For he stopped. He tried again for the last few months. For sitting in my office and asking me the right questions.
For being in the audience of your own life when I needed to see what that looked like. He paused at a light. for being the kind of person who puts conditions on going back to the place that hurt her so that it can't hurt anyone else the same way. The line was quiet for a moment. You did that too, she said. You didn't take a promotion for 3 years because Lily needed you to stay.
That's not small. That was different. It wasn't, she said firmly. You chose someone. That's not small.