Evvie Drake Starts Over(18)

“Is he at home?” Ellen Boyd with the leather notebook wanted to know, even though Evvie suspected she’d waited until his truck wasn’t here to show up.

“He’s not, no. I can take your business card if you like, and I can ask him to call you.” This was what Andy had done for Evvie when a couple of reporters came around knocking, asking about Tim’s accident. She still had the cards in an envelope; she’d never looked at any of them.

“Could I ask you a few questions?”

“Oh. No, I can’t be helpful. You should talk to Dean.”

“Would you happen to know if he’s been drinking since he’s been here?”

Evvie’s hand tightened on the doorknob. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m curious about how he’s doing. Has he been drinking since he’s been here?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking, but I’d like you to go, I don’t have anything else to say.” She started to close the door, but Ellen put her hand on it to keep it open.

“Totally understand, but you’ll be helping him if you answer a question or two, because then I really can go. If it’s no, say no, but if it’s yes, you can get it over with and I won’t be back, okay? Do you know whether he’s having issues with his mental health?”

Evvie paused. She pulled the door back open and stepped into the doorway. “You should get off my porch.”

   “Did you and Dean know each other while your husband was alive, or did you get together more recently, or…?”

Evvie’s head felt light. “Listen,” she said, making every syllable the precise equivalent of every other, “you’re standing on a porch my father rebuilt when it was ninety-five degrees outside. I grew up here and I know everyone, and nothing will happen to me if I kick you down those steps with your notebook and your shit shovel.”

“So you don’t want to get into how the two of you got involved.”

Evvie grabbed the notebook out of Ellen’s hand and threw it. It landed with a thump in the grass. “You dropped something.” Evvie nodded toward it and pushed the door shut.

Once it was latched, she leaned back against the door. “Oh shit, oh shit,” she whispered to herself, letting out a hoarse, nervous chuckle. She spun around and peeked out the window. She wondered whether Ellen Boyd would be out there, calling the police, reporting that Evvie Drake had destroyed her property and needed to be arrested. She half expected to see cop cars wailing up her driveway with their lights and sirens going. What she saw was Ellen brushing dirt off the book, talking on her phone, and laughing as she walked to her car.

Forty-five minutes. That’s how long it took for Ellen Boyd to file her story, get a photo of Dean added, and throw it on the Beat Sports blog that went by the name “Off the Field.” And an hour after that, Evvie got the link from her cousin Steve, and thirty seconds after that, there it was on her own screen.


When Dean Tenney vanished from New York in September after choking as spectacularly as any pitcher in memory, rumors swirled that he was on drugs, was depressed, or might have a gambling problem. More adventurous folks suspected it might be personal. Maybe a woman whose situation was complicated. Maybe a relationship in trouble. Maybe with a man, even.



Evvie was willing to bet Ellen had started these rumors herself, assuming they existed at all.


But a month or so ago, he turned up in Calcasset, Maine, which most assumed he’d chosen because it was the hometown of longtime pal Andrew Buck, and a place where the locals probably don’t even have cellphones or high-speed Internet, let alone spend time on Twitter.



Uch. #condescending-New-York-douchebags.


Shortly after he got there, though, Tenney moved in with a young widow named Eveleth Drake. Drake’s husband, a beloved local doctor his patients called Doc, had died in a single-car accident less than a year before.



Evvie realized it was awfully petty that out of this scurrilous pile of crap, the word that was sticking in her craw was “beloved.” And didn’t patients call every doctor Doc?


Drake answered the door at her house (a great big but still cozy property that looks like something out of a movie) earlier today, but when I asked, she claimed Tenney wasn’t around. After admitting they were living together, she refused to answer questions about whether he’d been drinking and insisted she didn’t know anything about any mental problems he might be having.

But how did a widow from Maine wind up living with a guy who was a New York Yankee two years ago? Could this all have really come about just in the time since Doc died?

Whatever the answers to these questions, when she was asked whether she was involved with Tenney prior to her husband’s death, the former Mrs. Drake ended the interview and threw in a threat of violence.



“I didn’t threaten violence,” Evvie muttered. “Or I threatened very little violence, anyway.” She had to give it to Boyd: the reporter had made all she could out of nothing. And even though it was innocent, it didn’t look innocent. And everybody she knew would read it. Her father would read it, Tim’s parents would read it, everybody who already thought she was a bad wife would read it. And, of course, Dean would read it. Why hadn’t she closed the door?