"Okay," she said. "Okay," Marcus said. Harold looked between them and threw up his hands. "That's it? That's the big romantic scene?"
"Okay. Okay. I introduce you. I pour out my whole dying-wife speech, and I get okay?" "Okay, Dad." "In my day, a man would have—"
"Dad, I swear." "I'm just saying there was more kissing in my generation." "Harold," Emily and Marcus said at the same time, and all three of them broke, laughing. The tension of the last hour cracking apart into something lighter, something that felt for the first time all afternoon like it might actually be okay.
From the back door, a small voice. "Can I come in yet? Mr. Harold said to give the grown-ups a minute, but it's been a lot of minutes, and I got the paint out of the brushes and my hair." Ava stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, stre with paint. The picture of a 9-year-old who had reached the absolute limit of her patience.
Marcus laughed and wiped his eyes and held out his arm. "Come here, baby." She ran over and climbed into the chair beside him, looking around at all the adults with their red eyes and their strange smiles. "Were you guys crying?" she asked suspiciously. "A little," Marcus admitted.
"Because of the leaving thing?" Marcus and Emily looked at each other. "We're still figuring out the leaving thing," Emily said gently, turning to Ava. "But I promise you something, okay? Whatever happens with the leaving thing, I'm not going to disappear on you."
"That's—that's not—that's not a thing I would do to you. Even if I did have to go somewhere, you and me are friends now. Friends don't just vanish." "Okay." Ava studied her with those clear, serious eyes, her mother's eyes, the ones that saw straight through people.
"Okay," Ava decided. "But you should stay. Just so you know, my vote is stay." "Duly noted," Emily said, and her voice wobbled. "Mine too," Harold said.
"Two votes for stay." "You don't get a vote. You're compromised," Emily said. "I'm the host. The host always gets a vote." Marcus sat there in the warm kitchen, his daughter tucked under his arm, a woman he was falling for across the table wiping paint off her hands, and an old man he'd met on the side of the road grinning at all of them like he'd known this was coming since the second Marcus hit the brakes.
And for a moment, just a moment, the whole thing felt settled. Felt safe. Felt like maybe the hard part was behind them, and the leaving thing would sort itself out. And they'd all just laugh about it someday from inside that finished garden house. Marcus should have known better.