"The both add-ons kind?" "Yeah," he said. "It is." He stood on the new porch after he hung up in the October dark looking at the river. He stood there a long time.
Then he went inside and picked up the phone again. He called Earl. Earl answered on the third ring, which was Earl's way of not seeming eager. What? I need you Saturday morning, Marcus said.
The whole day. What for? I've got something to pick up in Murfreesboro. Ring the kind you give a woman. Silence.
It's about time. Earl said, don't. No, I'm serious. It's about time. I've been watching you circle this for 11 months.
I haven't been circling Marcus. You built the woman a porch. You introduced her to your daughter in December. You went to Nashville together to see your father. You come into this shop every morning looking like a man who's got somewhere to be when he leaves.
Earl paused. You've been circling. But you're ready now. Marcus let out a long breath. Yeah, he said.
I'm ready now. Good. Saturday. I'll drive. You're not driving.
My truck has better heat. We'll take my truck. Your truck has that shimmy at highway speed, Earl. A pause. Fine, your truck, he hung up.
He sat on the porch for another hour. He thought about a flooded road and a barefoot woman and a sentence about the sofa. He thought about a kitchen table in the dark with a lantern between them. And the first time she told him true things. He thought about the dock and the marina a lot and six years of her being in the background of a world that should have been seeing her all along.
He thought about Dileia teaching her a bow line knot and Clare bringing groceries in January without being asked and the specific weight of her shoulder against his arm on this swing. He thought about what it meant to choose. Not to drift into something. Not to find yourself somewhere by default, not to be landed by the current into a life you didn't plan. To actually choose to look at a thing and say, "This is what I want."