She asked. Because of how he stayed calm, Hershel said. because of what he did when he could have made it worse and chose not to because of the way he talked to his daughter through the door. When he went inside, I could hear it just a little. The patience in it, he paused and because of the look on his face when he picked up that box. It wasn't anger.
It was something harder than anger. What was it? Resolve, Hershel said. Man's been through things and he's still here carrying his own boxes into his own house. That means something.
Daniel spent the rest of the morning working. He carried the remaining boxes in from the truck. He figured out which boxes went to which rooms. He set up Maya's bed. This was always the first priority had been since the first move after Susan died because Maya needed to know there was a place for her to sleep in every new place before she could believe it was actually a home.
And he put her comforter on it, the one with the blue and yellow pattern she'd had since she was five, and arranged her stuffed animals in the specific order she had explained to him three times, and that he had written down on a piece of paper and kept in his wallet. He was in the middle of this arrangement holding the paper in his wallet with the focused attention. A button of a man diffusing something. When he heard the doorbell, he went to the door. It was a woman he didn't recognize.
Late 50s, dark hair going silver, wearing weekend clothes, jeans, and a green linen shirt with a ceramic dish in her hands covered in foil. I'm Margaret Patterson, she said. I live four doors down. I brought a lasagna. She held it out.
I want to say welcome to the neighborhood and I want to say I'm sorry you had to start it the way you did. Daniel took the lasagna. It was warm. Thank you. You didn't have to.
I stood on my porch and watched. She said the whole time. I didn't say anything. She looked at him directly. It was a deliberate look.
The look of someone making herself do something uncomfortable because she had decided it was the right thing. I should have. Daniel looked at this woman, at her directness, at the effort in it. You're here now, he said. My daughter lives in Houston.
Margaret said she's mixed race. Her husband is black. They have two kids, 8 and 10. And I thought about what it would mean for them to move into a neighborhood and have that happen on their first morning. She stopped, breathed, and I didn't like what I thought about.
The doorway was quiet for a moment. Would you like to come in? Daniel said. Fair warning. I don't have furniture in the right places yet, but I have coffee and my daughter found a bag of Oreos that I was hoping to hide until after lunch.
Margaret Patterson smiled. I'll take the coffee and maybe one Oreo. Don't tell Maya I said you could have one. She negotiates like a district attorney. Margaret laughed a real laugh.
Sudden and genuine. Mine was the same. They're all the same at 9: 00. She stepped inside. How long have you been on your own with her?
6 years, he said. Something in her face softened. That's a long time. It is, he said. But she's worth every minute of it.
He set the lasagna on the kitchen counter. She's in the backyard if she hasn't climbed the oak tree yet. I heard there was an oak tree, Margaret said. There's definitely an oak tree, Maya said, appearing in the kitchen doorway with dirt on both elbows. Now, which represented a significant escalation from earlier.
It's the best tree. It has a branch that's exactly the right height for sitting. Maya, Daniel said. What elbows? She looked at her elbows, looked up.
I was investigating the bark situation. And what did the bark situation reveal? that I should probably wash my hands, " she said with the expression of someone reporting a disappointing scientific conclusion. Margaret laughed again. Daniel handed Maya a paper towel from the roll he'd already located. And Maya went to the sink and for three minutes the kitchen of 14 Sycamore Drive was just a kitchen with a woman holding a coffee cup and a man unpacking a box and a 9-year-old arguing that paper towels were less effective than actual soap, which was factually correct.
And it was in its small ordinary way exactly what Daniel Carter had driven 80 miles in the dark for. It was a home. Not yet. Not fully, but the beginning of one. He held on to that.