PART 4:

Sophie appeared from the hallway, paint-stained and curious. Hi. Sophie said to Olivia with the directness of a child who hasn’t yet learned to be diplomatic about her interest in people. Hi, Olivia said. You must be Sophie. Sophie looked at her father with an expression that was approximately, you told her about me? And then back at Olivia with an expression that was approximately interesting.

What’s in the dish? She said. Chicken casserole. Is it spicy? No spicy. Okay, Sophie said, as though she’d completed a full due diligence process. You can stay for dinner if you want. Ethan looked at his daughter, 7 years old and already running his household. Olivia looked at him, checking. He lifted one shoulder. Up to you.

I don’t want to intrude, Olivia said. You brought the food, Sophie said, with the unassailable logic of a child. So technically you’re invited. Olivia stayed for dinner. It wasn’t planned and it wasn’t complicated and it was, Ethan thought later, one of the better Sunday evenings he’d had in a long time. Sophie talked almost constantly about marine biology, about her best friend Priya, who had a hamster named Governor, about a book she was reading in school that she described as very intense for second grade.

Olivia listened the same way she’d listened to Ethan on Tuesday night. Fully, without performing interest, asking questions that proved she’d been paying attention. At one point, Sophie said, “Do you have a spreadsheet for your life?” Olivia paused. “What makes you ask that?” “Daddy says some people have spreadsheets for everything.

He says it like it’s a bad thing, but I think it sounds organized.” “It’s very organized,” Olivia said, and she looked across the table at Ethan with something sharp and amused in her eyes. “And yes, I do have spreadsheets.” “For what?” “Lots of things.” “Like what kinds of things?” Olivia glanced at Ethan again, and this time there was something else in it.

Something almost like an invitation to a joke only the two of them had the context for. He pressed his mouth together to keep a straight face. “Important things,” Olivia said, “boring grown-up things.” Sophie accepted this and moved on to describing Governor the hamster in significant detail, and Ethan looked down at his plate and smiled at nothing.

After Sophie was in bed, Olivia helped him clear the table without being asked. They did it without talking, moving around each other in the kitchen in that particular way that requires a certain level of mutual comfort, the reaching past, the knowing which cabinet things go back in, the understanding of where to stand so you’re not in the way.

At the sink she said, “She’s wonderful.” “I know,” he said, “she didn’t get it from me.” “I don’t believe that.” “She got the stubbornness from me. The rest is all her.” Olivia handed him the dish to dry. “She asked me if I had a spreadsheet for my life, and I think that’s the most insightful thing anyone said to me in months.

” “She’s seven.” “Smart is smart.” He set the dish in the cabinet. “What would it say?” “The life spreadsheet.” Olivia was quiet for a moment. Her hands were in the soapy water. “Column A, what I planned. Column B, what happened. She paused. Very small column B. He looked at her sideways. That’s not nothing.

That’s actually a lot. It mostly looks like gaps. Gaps are where things happen, he said. In HVAC, the spaces in the wall are where all the actual systems live. The visible stuff is just surface. She turned her head to look at him. Did you just compare emotional vulnerability to ductwork? I contain multitudes. She laughed.

That real one, the unguarded one. And the kitchen felt smaller and warmer, and he dried the last dish and put it away, and neither of them moved toward the door. She left at 9:30 with the empty casserole dish under her arm. He watched her cross the hallway. She didn’t look back this time, just let herself in.

But right before the door closed, she said through the gap, “Thank you for letting Sophie invite me.” “Thanks, Sophie,” he said. A pause, then, “I will.” And she closed the door. He stood in his own doorway for a moment. Then Marcus’s voice came into his head, clear as anything. You’re going to fall, you know. It’s already starting. He went inside and didn’t think about that.

He thought about it twice before he went to sleep. The Saturday morning with Marcus happened at a diner off Route 9 that smelled like coffee and bacon grease in the particular combination that makes you feel like the world is basically manageable. Marcus was already in the booth when Ethan arrived. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, the kind of face that had settled into a permanent expression of considering whether to say something.

He had a coffee in front of him and was looking at his phone. And when Ethan slid in across from him, he put the phone down. “Talk,” Marcus said. Good morning to you, too. I know your good mornings. This isn’t one of them. Something’s happening with you. Nothing’s happening with me. Marcus looked at him. He had a talent for silence.

Not uncomfortable silence, just the kind that made clear he wasn’t going anywhere, and you might as well. Ethan picked up the menu. My neighbor came over Tuesday night. Marcus didn’t react, just waited. She had a bad date. She knocked on my door. We talked for a while. She left. Uh-huh. And then she came back Sunday with a casserole.

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