What? You heard me. She turned back to Gerald. Saturday. She can come to dinner, but I'm making the menu.
Daniel stood in the doorway of his daughter's room. Purple-casted wrist, stuffed sea turtle, the absolute authority of a 9-year-old who had made a decision and was not taking questions. "I'll ask her," he said. "Tell her." Amara corrected.
He asked Victoria that night. Her response took longer than usual. 47 seconds, which he did not count. Definitely not. Then, "Are you sure?"
"I don't want to." He cut it off. "She wants to meet you. She's making the menu. Saturday, are you coming or not?"
Another pause. "Then "Yes, I'm coming," he told Amara. She nodded with the gravity of a general confirming a deployment. "Good," she said. "I'm making mac and cheese with the breadcrumb top, obviously."
Daniel leaned against her doorframe, "Amara." "Yeah, thank you." She looked at him. "For what? For being you."
He paused. "Your mom would be I know," she said quietly, not shutting it down. Just steady the way she got when the subject of Maya came up steady in the way of a child who had learned to carry something and carry it well. I know she would. He nodded.
She turned back to her marine biology book, purple cast propped on a pillow. Daniel went to the kitchen and stood there for a moment and thought about the week, the rumors, the coffee at 7:00 a.m. The school nurse, the ER, the purple cast, the hot chocolate, the 47 seconds. And he thought, "Bow!" What it meant that his first call when something went wrong was still himself, his own hands, his own legs moving toward the door, but also also there had been a text, someone asking which hospital, uh, someone asking what he needed.
He had said, "We're good." But the asking had mattered. He was beginning to understand something that he had been unable to understand for 6 years. Because understanding it had required the distance of time and the specific pressure of the right person asking. Strength was not the same as solitude.
He had treated them like synonyms for so long that he'd lost track of the difference. Saturday arrived. At 5:52 p.m., Victoria Hayes knocked on the door of apartment 3C on North Paulina Street. She was holding a small brown bag, something she'd brought without being asked. Daniel opened the door and she looked at him and he looked at her and for a moment neither of them said anything because there was something surreal and also something absolutely right about this woman standing at his door on a Saturday evening.