She say why she left six years ago? Not yet, but she's going to eventually Marcus looked at the car, looked at James, looked at the car again. You need to be careful, man. I'm always careful. No, you're always strong.
That's different. Marcus stood up, grabbed a rag off the workbench. Strong means you handle everything and you don't complain. Careful means you watch out for your own heart. He pointed the rag at James in the way that Marcus pointed things at people when he was trying to make sure the point landed.
Make sure you're doing both. James looked at his old friend for a moment. Go work on the Buick, he said. Marcus took the rag and walked away. But James heard him under his breath say something that sounded very much like, "Lord, have mercy on this man."
James went back under the car. He worked for 3 hours straight. The kind of focused physical work that is its own form of prayer, the kind where you are so completely inside the problem in front of you that the rest of the world temporarily loses its claim on your attention. He found the issue in the exhaust system. Fixed it, checked three other things while he was in there, and rolled out feeling for the first time all morning like himself.
He checked his phone, one text from his mother, a photo of Ava making a face at the camera with a caption that said, "She wants pancakes for dinner." I said, "Absolutely not. She is currently giving me the negotiation eyes." James smiled. He typed back, "Tell her three pancakes and that's the deal."
His mother responded with a thumbs up and then 2 seconds later, "Is everything all right?" He stared at that question for a moment. He typed, "Everything's fine. I'll explain Sunday." He put the phone in his pocket.
He was back at his house by 11:47. When he walked in, Sophia was on the living room floor with Noah between her knees doing something with a soft toy that made the baby laugh. A real laugh. A big one. The kind of laugh that only exists in creatures under one year old and sounds like pure oxygen.
James stopped in the doorway. He had not heard a baby laugh in this house in 9 years. The sound hit him somewhere so old and so specific that it took him a second to identify it. It was the sound of Ava at that age on the floor of their first apartment when everything was hard and everything was uncertain and the only thing that made any of it make sense was that laugh. Noah looked up and saw James standing there and the laugh transformed immediately into a look of profound evaluative seriousness.
The expression of a baby who is deciding whether this new large person is safe. He's deciding about you. Sophia said. She was watching James's face. How do I know when he's decided?
He'll either reach for you or turn away. James crouched down to the baby's level. Noah stared at him. James stayed still and let the baby look the way he would let a cautious animal get used to his presence without urgency, without performance. After about 7 seconds, Noah reached out one fat, dimpled hand in James' direction.