Chapter 10 - The Light in the Room
The first Sunday, he brought a bottle of red wine and a box of crayons.
He wore a sweater, which Mara had never seen him do, and he stood in the doorway of her small apartment with a look on his face she recognized. It was the look of a man walking into a room he had been told was safe and not quite believing it.
“You can come in,” she said.
“I know.”
“You’re standing in the doorway.”
“I am aware of that.”
Sophie solved the problem by taking his hand and pulling him inside.
They ate pasta at a table meant for two, with a third chair brought in from the bedroom. Adrien asked about her job. Mara asked about the company. He told her he had sold the port division and kept the freight business, and that he had spent the summer dismantling the parts of his father’s legacy that he had spent his life pretending were not there.
“Was that hard?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No.”
Sophie, who had been listening with a spoon in her mouth, said, “Are you still rich?”
“SOPHIE.”
“It’s a reasonable question,” Adrien said. “Yes.”
“Good,” Sophie said, and went back to her pasta.
—
The second Sunday, he came early and helped cook, which meant he stood in the kitchen and asked Mara a series of precise questions about heat and timing while she did everything.
The third Sunday, he brought the music box again, and after dinner he wound it, and Sophie asked if she could dance.
He looked at Mara. Mara looked at Sophie.
“Not on the table,” she said.
“No tables,” Sophie agreed, and climbed onto Adrien’s shoes.
He held her hands and moved very slowly around the small living room, one step at a time, while the tiny ballerina turned in her circle. Sophie laughed the whole way through. Adrien’s face was not laughing. It was doing something much more private than that, something Mara recognized because she had felt it herself, in a hospital corridor, on the night she first held her daughter.
When the music stopped, Sophie demanded it again. Adrien wound it again. They went around the room three more times, until Sophie yawned so wide she nearly fell over.
Mara put her to bed.
When she came back out, Adrien was standing by the window, looking into the courtyard.
“I have been thinking,” he said.
“That sounds dangerous.”
“That is where I do my best work.”
She laughed and poured the last of the wine. “Go on.”
“I would like to be in her life,” he said. “Not as a man who gives her things. Not as a man who takes her to a house with guards. As someone who is there. On Sundays. And on the other days, if you’ll have me.”
Mara looked at him for a long moment. She thought about the first morning, the silver box, the frozen men by the window. She thought about the gallery and the closed door, and the man who had told her the truth about his daughter and then had not asked her for anything.
“And what about me?” she asked.
Adrien turned from the window.
“I’m not good at this,” he said. “I was good at being feared. I was good at being a wall. I am not good at being —”
“Liked?”
“Present.”
Mara set her wine down.
“You don’t have to be good at it,” she said. “You just have to keep showing up.”
He looked at her for a long, still moment. Then he crossed the room and stopped in front of her, and for once in his life, Adrien Vale looked unsure of what to do with his hands.
Sophie’s bedroom door opened a crack, and a small voice said, “Mama, is Mr. Grumpy still here?”
“He’s still here.”
“Good,” Sophie said, and closed the door.
Adrien’s mouth curved, just slightly. “She’s going to be a problem.”
“She’s already a problem.”
“Mara.”
She looked up at him. The courtyard light was going gold, and the room smelled of pasta and wine and crayons, and somewhere behind them the music box sat open on the table, its tiny ballerina still.
“May I?” he asked.
She knew what he meant. She had known since the corridor of the hotel, or maybe since the guest suite, or maybe since the morning a three-year-old pushed a music box across a desk and told a man he should play it.
And this time, she said yes.
—
The following spring, they took Sophie to a small park by the water, and while she ran ahead toward the swings, Adrien walked beside Mara with his hands in his pockets and his shoulder touching hers.
“You know what she asked me last night?” he said.
“What?”
“She asked if Evelyn would have liked the blue crayon.”
Mara’s throat tightened. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her Evelyn liked the red one, and that she was very stubborn about it, and that she would have argued with her about it for hours.” He was quiet for a moment. “She said she would have won.”
“She probably would have.”
“She probably would have.”
Ahead of them, Sophie reached the swings and turned around, red sweater bright against the green, and shouted something that the wind took away.
Adrien stopped walking.
“What?” Mara asked.
He was looking at the child in the red sweater, and then at the empty air beside her, and then back at the child. His face had changed in a way she had learned to recognize.
“I spent five years,” he said slowly, “believing that the only way to keep something safe was to keep everyone far away from it. I built walls. I made a house into a fortress. I told myself it was love.”
“It was love,” Mara said.
“It was fear.” He turned to look at her. “You and Sophie gave me back the other one. Not by breaking down the walls. By walking through them.”
Mara took his hand.
“You gave yourself back,” she said. “We just showed up.”
He looked at her for a moment, and then he smiled. It was not the small, quickly extinguished thing she had seen in his office that first morning. It was not the almost-joke in the corridor, or the laugh he had allowed himself in a guest suite at midnight. It was real, and it stayed.
“Come on,” she said. “She’s waiting.”
May you like
They walked toward the swings together, with the water behind them and the light coming through, and Sophie jumped off the swing into Adrien’s arms so hard that he had to take a step back to keep his balance.
He was not afraid to fall.
