"I've been holding a level for 20 years." "Then you've been holding it wrong for 20 years." She reached over and turned his hand a/4 in. "There. Now read it."
Marcus looked at the bubble. It had shifted. She was right. He hated that she was right. "That's a rounding error," he said.
"That's the difference between a door that closes and a door that sticks for the next 40 years," Emily said. "My mother's garden house is not going to have a door that sticks." And just like that, the joking stopped because there was that word again, mothers. Marcus lowered the level. "Your dad told me about her. I'm sorry."
Emily was quiet for a moment, running her thumb along the edge of the board. "She wanted this so badly," she said. "For years. And he kept saying he'd build it. He's an engineer."
"He could have built it in a weekend if he'd wanted to, but there was always something. Work, then retirement, then his knees, and then she got sick, and then she stopped." And now he's out here every single day trying to finish it 3 years too late. "Like if he gets it right, it somehow makes up for all the years he didn't." "It doesn't work like that," Marcus said quietly.
"No," Emily said. "It doesn't, but he has to build it anyway." Emily looked at him. "Yeah," she said. And there was something surprised in her voice, like he'd said the thing she'd been trying to say for weeks.
"Yeah, he does." They worked in silence for a while after that. But it wasn't an awkward silence. It was the other kind. The kind that only happens between two people who've each carried something heavy and can recognize the weight of it on somebody else.
Around 2:00, Harold announced he was making sandwiches and disappeared inside. And Marcus was fairly sure the man was faking his sudden hunger just to leave the two of them alone. He wasn't even subtle about it. He practically winked on his way through the door. "He's not slick," Marcus said, watching him go.
"He thinks he's the sickest man alive," Emily said. "It's honestly kind of adorable." She sat down on the edge of the frame, wiping sweat from her forehead, and looked at Marcus. "So, since he's clearly going to interrogate us both later, tell me something real about yourself, Marcus Johnson. Not the version he's going to make up."
Marcus sat down a few feet away. "Not much to tell. I'm a construction supervisor. I've got a daughter, Ava. She's nine, and she's smarter than me, and she keeps track of my face."