chapter six

Chapter Six

Elias POV

Marcus called me at seven-thirty that morning.

I let it go to voicemail. Then he called again. Then he texted: “I went to see her.”

I sat with my phone on the kitchen counter and read that sentence three times before I responded.

“I told you not to.”

“I know. She handled it well. Better than I deserved.”

That was it. No apology, no elaboration. Just Marcus being Marcus, doing the thing he decided to do and then reporting back like that was the same as asking permission.

I should have been annoyed. I was. But underneath the annoyance was something else, something I didn't want to look at directly, which was the fact that he had seen her and I hadn't, and that bothered me more than it should have.

*******************

Saturday came faster than I wanted it to.

I pulled up to the address at exactly two o'clock. Not early, not late. I sat in the car for ninety seconds doing nothing in particular and then got out before I could talk myself back in.

She answered the door before I knocked.

Which meant she had been watching. Which meant she was as prepared as I was trying to be, and that for some reason settled something in my chest.

"You're on time," she said.

"I said two."

"People say things."

She stepped back to let me in. She was wearing a dark green sweater, her hair pulled back, and she looked like someone who had cleaned the apartment and then tried to look like she hadn't. I noticed all of that in about four seconds and then made myself stop noticing.

The apartment was small and warm. Books on every surface, a child's drawing taped to the refrigerator visible from the door, a lamp on in the corner even though it was the middle of the afternoon. It felt like a place someone actually lived in. I had not been somewhere that felt like that in a long time.

"My mother's driver is coming at three," I said.

"I know. You texted me." She turned toward the hallway. "Lily's in her room. She knows someone named Elias is coming and that he's, I told her you were important. That was all I could manage on short notice."

"That's enough."

"Is it?" She turned back to look at me. Not hostile. Actually asking.

"I don't know," I said. Honest, because lying to her seemed like a bad idea from the start. "I've never done this before."

"Neither have I." Something in her expression shifted. "Come in. I'll get her."

She disappeared down the hall. I stood in the living room and looked at the drawing on the refrigerator, a house, green grass, a sun with approximately fourteen rays, two figures of different heights. I looked at that for longer than I meant to.

"She drew that last week," Mara said from behind me.

I turned. She was standing in the hallway with Lily beside her, one hand on her daughter's shoulder.

The world did something strange for a moment.

Lily was small and dark-haired and she had Claire's jaw. That was the first thing. Then she looked up at me with Mara's directness, that same measuring quality, and I understood immediately that she was going to make me earn this.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi." My voice came out level. I didn't know how.

"Mommy said you're important."

"Your mommy is being generous."

Lily considered that with the gravity of a very small judge. "What does generous mean?"

"It means kind. More kind than necessary."

She thought about it. "I'm generous with my crackers," she said. "But not with my markers."

I heard Mara suppress something behind her. Not quite a laugh.

"That's fair," I said. "Markers are important."

Lily accepted this and moved past me toward the couch, already done with introductions in the way children were when they had decided someone was acceptable. I watched her go. My throat felt strange.

"You okay?" Mara's voice was low, meant only for me.

"Fine."

"You don't have to be fine."

I looked at her. She was watching me with that same careful steadiness she'd had at the door three weeks ago, like she was fully prepared to catch whatever I dropped. Nobody had looked at me like that in three years. I didn't know what to do with it.

"She looks like Claire," I said.

"Yes."

"And like you."

Something moved across her face. Quick, controlled. "She's her own person."

"I can see that." I held her gaze a second longer than I meant to. "You've done well by her."

"Don't compliment me yet," she said. "We're twenty minutes in."

She walked past me to the couch. I followed and sat in the chair across from them and let Lily explain at length and with enormous authority the names and personalities of every stuffed animal currently arranged on the cushion beside her. I listened. I asked questions. At some point I looked up and found Mara watching me instead of Lily, and she looked away quickly, but not before I caught something in her expression that I filed carefully away.

She hadn't expected me to be good at this.

Truthfully, neither had I.

At ten to three, Mara's phone buzzed. She looked at it and then at me. "The driver's two minutes out."

I nodded. Lily was already explaining that her best stuffed animal's name was Clover and that Clover did not like strangers.

"Tell Clover I'll try to earn it," I said.

Lily looked at me. "She says okay. But it takes a while."

"I've been told that runs in the family," I said, and I was not looking at Lily when I said it.

Mara's eyes met mine across the room.

She didn't deny it. She didn't look away either.

The knock at the door came, and we both stood, and for one moment we were standing at the same distance from each other as we'd been that first night on her doorstep, close enough that I could see exactly what she was feeling and she could see exactly what I wasn't saying.

Then Lily ran for the door, and the moment broke, and we followed her.