There was the Saturday in February when Sarah almost invited him to a neighbor’s open house and then did not, because Richard would have been holding a plastic cup and making small talk with men who measured boys at a glance. There was the Saturday in March when Claire said, “Bring him for coffee, just me,” and Sarah said, “If it’s only you he’ll think I’m hiding him from Dad,” and Claire had accepted that even though coffee with a mother would have been easier. There was the Saturday two weeks ago when Marcus had a missing driver and could not come anywhere near Sycamore Court, and Sarah ate leftover pasta with her parents and listened to Richard talk about a client who “didn’t look the part and then turned out to be the whole operation,” a sentence that passed through the room like a missed exit. Claire looked at Sarah. Sarah looked at her plate. Richard did not hear himself. That is the most ordinary tragedy in a nice house: a man saying the useful sentence on the wrong day, about the wrong person, and then arriving at the right day with none of that wisdom left in his mouth.
Sarah remembered that pasta night on the brick walk. She remembered it the way you remember a warning you did not know was a warning. She held Marcus’s hand tighter, not because she was afraid of him, because she was afraid of the version of her father who could praise a client for being more than he looked and still fail the same test in his own living room.
When they reached the brick walk she did not let go of Marcus’s hand. That was the last decision she made before the thirty seconds began, and it was the one she would not take back, not when the smile died, not when the sentence landed, not when her father told her to pack her things. A person can be stunned and still hold on. That is not a small skill. It is the skill the evening would require of her, and she had already started practicing it on the walk from the car.
Marcus drove. The car was clean, older than Richard would have preferred and better kept than Richard would have expected, had he been the sort of man to look at a car before he looked at a person. Sarah sat in the passenger seat with her ankle boots crossed and her necklace touched once, then left alone. The subdivision received them the way it received everyone: quietly, with painted doors and a basketball hoop two houses down. Early evening laid itself over the lawns. A neighbor Claire liked was dragging a bin to the curb and lifted a hand. Sarah lifted one back. Marcus did too.
At the curb Marcus turned the engine off and left his hands on the wheel for a second. “Last chance to do this another day.”
He did not sound afraid. He sounded like a person offering an exit out of manners.
“I want them to see you while I still live here,” Sarah said. “Not as a rumor I maintained from a dorm.”
“You don’t live in a dorm yet.”
“I will. And you’ll be in Atlanta. And I don’t want the first year of that to be me editing you for him.”
Marcus nodded. He came around and opened her door, not as theater, as habit. She took his hand when she stood. Their fingers fit the way they had fit for weeks, easy, public, sure. The porch light came on because the sensor had opinions. Sarah laughed once under her breath.