The fear and the warmth and the dangerous, terrifying hope of it without immediately shutting it down. Good night, Victoria. He said, "Good night, Daniel." He got out of the car. He walked up the front steps of his building, unlocked the door, and went inside without looking back.
But as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, lunchbox in hand, rain damp coat dripping on the hallway carpet, he was smiling. Not the quiet, careful smile he used at work. Something wider, surprised, real. And for the first time in 6 years, Daniel Brooks went to sleep without going through tomorrow's to-do list in his head. He just let himself be still.
And somewhere on North Paulina Street, a Navy Mercedes S-Class sat parked for another 4 minutes before finally pulling away. Three floors up, a little girl named Amara Sunny was asleep with one arm around a stuffed sea turtle named Gerald, dreaming something she would spend all of breakfast, describing to her dad in elaborate, wonderful detail. She had no idea that her father had just come home carrying something new, something fragile, something that for the first time in a very long time, he hadn't immediately sat down. The next morning came the way mornings always did in Daniels apartment Amara first. She appeared in his doorway at 6:47, still wearing her pajamas with the little planets on them, hair loose and wild from sleep, holding Gerald the stuffed sea turtle under one arm like a football.
She didn't knock. She never knocked. She simply materialized the way children do as if proximity to a sleeping parent was its own form of permission. Dad. Daniel opened one eye.
Dad. He opened the other. I'm up, he said, though his body strongly disagreed. You're not up. You're horizontal.
I'm horizontally up. Amara considered this with the grave philosophical seriousness of a 9-year-old who had heard that kind of answer before and was not impressed by it. She crossed the room, climbed onto the bed with the boneless ease of a child who had not yet learned that joints could ache and sat on his legs. Mrs. Perkins said you came home late, she said.
I did. She said a fancy car dropped you off. Daniel was quiet for exactly 1 second too long. Mrs. Perkins needs to mind her business.
He said. Amara grinned. It was Maya's grin wide and knowing and slightly wicked. The grin of someone who understood they had just found something interesting and intended to pursue it. Whose car was it?
Someone from work. Someone from work came to our street. Amara, what? Go start breakfast. Dad, eggs and toast.
You know how. She narrowed her eyes at him again. Absolutely, Amara. And then she slid off the bed with theatrical reluctance and disappeared toward the kitchen. Talking to Gerald about something Daniel couldn't make out, which was probably better for everyone.
He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, Victoria Hayes, standing in the rain. I didn't come for your shift. He sat up, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, and told himself firmly that whatever that had been, it was a moment, and moments passed, and he had a child to feed and a job to get to, and absolutely no room in his life for whatever he had felt sitting in that car last night. He told himself that. Then he got up and went to make breakfast.