Marcus looked down at his daughter's face. His daughter, who he'd sworn he would never let get attached to someone who might disappear, who he'd brought out here anyway, who now had paint on her nose and hope in her eyes, and a question he didn't know how to answer. He looked at the closed door. He looked at Harold, who was watching him, waiting. And Marcus realized with the cold clarity of a man who's just understood the size of what he stands to lose that everything, his daughter's heart, Emily's dream, the careful walls both of them had spent years building, all of it, now came down to what happened on the other side of that door.
Marcus knelt down so he was level with his daughter's face. "I don't know, baby," he said. "Honestly, I don't know if she's going to leave. That's a grown-up thing she has to figure out." "But whatever happens, that's not something you did."
"Okay? You hear me? Grown-ups have hard choices sometimes, and it's never because of you." Ava nodded, but her chin was trembling, and Marcus knew with a father's terrible certainty that the exact thing he'd spent 5 years trying to prevent had already happened. His daughter had gotten attached. She'd let someone into her heart who might disappear.
And there was nothing he could do about it now except stay and see it through and hope the landing wasn't as bad as he feared. "Go help Mr. Harold clean the brushes," Marcus said, squeezing her shoulder. "I need to talk to Miss Emily for a minute." Ava went, glancing back once. Harold caught Marcus's eye and gave a small nod.
"Go on," and steered Ava toward the paint cans with a gentleness that told Marcus the old man understood exactly how much was riding on the next few minutes. Marcus walked into the house. He found Emily in the kitchen, standing at the counter, phone face down beside her, both hands flat on the surface like she was bracing against something. She didn't turn around when he came in. "You can say it," she said, her voice tight.
"Whatever you're about to say, just say it." "I wasn't going to say anything," Marcus said. "Everybody says something." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "This is the part where you tell me how happy you are for me."
"And then it's the part where your face doesn't match your words. And then it's the part a week from now, two weeks from now, where you sit me down and explain, real gentle, real reasonable, all the ways it would be better if I just stayed." Marcus stood very still. "Who did that to you?" he asked quietly. Emily's shoulders went rigid.
"It doesn't matter." "It matters," Marcus said. "Because you're standing there talking to a version of me that hasn't said a single word yet. You're arguing with a ghost, Emily. And I'd like to know who put it there before I get blamed for what he did."
For a long moment, she didn't move. Then slowly, she turned around, and her eyes were red-rimmed and furious and scared all at once. "His name was Daniel," she said. "We were together 4 years. He said all the right things."
"Said he loved how driven I was. Said my career was one of the things he loved about me." She wrapped her arms around herself. "And then I got an offer, a good one. Not this good, but good."