"What's that?" He hesitated. Then he told her the truth because he'd never once lied to his daughter, and he wasn't going to start over a piece of paper. "It's the old man's address from yesterday. Harold." Marcus turned the paper over in his fingers.
"He asked me to come by today." Ava studied him with those clear brown eyes. "Are you going to go?" "I don't know." "Why not?"
And there it was. The simplest question in the world, the one only a child would ask so directly. And Marcus found he didn't have a clean answer for it. "It's complicated," he said. "That's what grown-ups say when the answer is yes, but they're scared," Ava said.
Marcus stared at her. Nine years old. "Where do you even hear this stuff?" he said. "You. I hear it from you."
She shrugged and reached for a triangle of the sandwich he hadn't finished packing, taking a bite out of it before he could stop her. "You always say being scared isn't a good enough reason not to do something. You said it to me when I didn't want to go to swim class." "That was different." "How?"
"Because—" Marcus opened his mouth, closed it. She had him, and she knew it. And worst of all, she wasn't even gloating about it. She was just eating his sandwich and waiting. Marcus set the paper down on the table.
"Finish my breakfast," he said. "I got to think." "You think too much," Ava said around a mouthful of turkey. "That's your whole problem." By 9:00, Marcus was in his truck driving toward the old part of town, telling himself the entire way that he was only going to say hello.
That was it. He'd stop by, make sure Harold hadn't collapsed again, thank the man for the kind thought about his daughter, and politely decline. Fifteen minutes in and out. A neighborly thing to do. It didn't have to mean anything.
He almost believed it. He found the house at the end of a quiet street, a two-story place with white siding gone a little gray with age, and a wraparound porch that had clearly been somebody's pride once. The blue pickup was in the driveway, and behind the house Marcus could see the bones of something being built. A frame going up, fresh lumber pale against the green of the backyard, the garden house. He parked.
He sat there for a second, hands on the wheel. Then he got out. He didn't make it to the front door because as he came around the side of the house toward the sound of hammering, he stopped short. It wasn't Harold building. It was a woman.