Sophia's expression didn't change, but something behind it did. "Not in the picture." "Not in the picture meaning what exactly?" "Meaning he made a choice, and the choice was not us." James nodded.
He didn't press. He'd learned over the years that not every wound needed to be opened in the first conversation. You got anything bags, car? Anything outside? Sophia blinked like she hadn't expected the conversation to turn practical this quickly.
There's a bag in my car and a travel crib in the trunk. Keys. She reached into her jacket pocket and held them out. Her hand wasn't quite steady. James took the keys, stood up, looked at her sitting there on his couch with this baby against her chest and those gold hoop earrings and those exhausted dark impossible eyes.
I'll get your things, he said. The guest room's in the back. Sheets are clean. There's an outlet by the window for the baby monitor if you have one. He walked to the front door.
James, he turned. Why? She asked. Her voice broke slightly on the word. Just slightly like she was ashamed of it.
You don't owe me anything. You don't owe me this. So why? He looked at her for a moment. Thought about all the versions of that answer living inside him.
He picked the simplest one. Because my daughter watches everything I do, he said. And I want her to see a man who helps people even when it costs him something. Even when it costs him a lot. He opened the door and stepped out into the cold.
He got her bags, the travel crib, a diaper bag that was worn through at one strap and held together with what appeared to be determination and a safety pin. He carried everything inside in two trips without saying a word about the condition of it. He set it up in the guest room while Sophia fed Noah on the couch. And when he came back out into the hallway, he stopped at the linen closet and got an extra blanket because the guest room ran cold in November. He set it on the bed.
He stood in the doorway of that room and looked at the travel crib he just assembled and the single duffel bag leaning against the wall and the extra blanket on the old quilt his mother had made. And he breathed through his nose in and out the way he taught himself. "You did the right thing," he told himself. "Now figure out the rest." He went back to the kitchen.
He did not eat the jerk chicken. He sat at the table with both hands flat on the surface and stared at the wall where he'd hung a drawing Ava made when she was six. A picture of the two of them in the garage. Her on the stool, him under a car. Both of them smiling with the exaggerated smiles of people who didn't know how to draw mouths but knew how they felt.