PART 5 — Six Weeks Later
The six weeks became eight. The eight became twelve.
Marcus fixed every unit in the building. The lady upstairs cried when her door finally locked properly — “I haven’t felt safe in three years,” she told him. The guy in 4B’s bathroom ceiling got rebuilt. Marcus worked sitting on a rolling stool, brace and all, and the tenants started leaving him casseroles.
His transitional housing came through. He looked at the letter for a long time.
“You should take it,” I said.
“I know.” He folded it carefully. “I got a job offer too. Finish carpenter — a contractor saw the building work. Light duty to start.”
“Marcus, that’s amazing—”
“I’m not taking the housing.”
“What? Why?”
He looked at me — really looked at me — and then at Liam, who was at the table building his volcano diorama with Marcus’s help (it had a working eruption mechanism now; Marcus had insisted).
“Because I’m home,” he said simply.
Liam’s head snapped up. “Does that mean you’re staying? Like… for real?”
Marcus knelt — carefully, brace creaking — in front of my son. “If your mom says yes.”
I was crying before I could stop myself. “You fixed my door, Marcus.”
“I fixed a lot of doors.”
“No.” I took his hands — rough, scarred, flour still under the nails from that first night. “You fixed mine. The one I’d stopped asking anyone to fix.”
He stayed.
It’s been eight months now. His knee is out of the brace — he walks with a cane on bad days, but he’s working full-time, building kitchens again. Cherrywood ones. He pays half the rent, and argues every month that it should be more.
Liam got an A on the volcano. It erupted all over the science fair table, and Marcus cheered louder than anyone.
And every now and then, on a cold night, we’ll be driving past that grocery store, and Liam will go quiet, looking at the brick wall by the automatic doors.
“You okay, bud?” I’ll ask.
“Yeah,” he’ll say. “Just thinking about how glad I am that I stared.”
Me too, baby. Me too.
THE END ❤
