Evvie Drake Starts Over(30)

“And you don’t want to?”

“I’m only supposed to have to find presents for my family,” Rose said.

Evvie nodded. “Ah.” It could only be the first or second year the kid would have picked out her own gifts for anyone, but Rose’s quiet picking at her fingernails certainly spoke of a trespass against some expectation. “Well, lots of people buy presents for friends, too, you know.”

   “Do you and my dad get each other presents?”

“No,” Evvie said. “But that’s because we’re lazy and we hate shopping.” Rose smiled. “Your dad would buy me some potato chips from the vending machine and I’d buy him a hot dog at the gas station.”

Rose laughed into her pajama sleeve, then she started rolling and unrolling the edge of the blanket. “Fred is so boring. He’s nice, but all he talks about is chairs.”

“Does he like anything else? Sports? Music? Books?”

Rose turned to look at Evvie and paused, making her eyes as big as she possibly could, before saying, “He lit’rally only talks about chairs.”

Evvie squinted hard at Rose. “How about…golf? Does he play golf?”

Rose shook her head. “He doesn’t do anything.” She waited a perfect beat. “Just chairs.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Evvie said. “Get him a tie.”

“You think he wants a tie?”

“No, probably not. But ties and perfume and candy dishes and stuff have been perfectly okay for hundreds of years when people don’t know what to buy. A tie is a nice, safe present.”

“I don’t know if it’s good enough,” Rose said.

Evvie grabbed Rose’s hand, admiring her long fingers. “You know what? You don’t have anything to worry about. Your mom and dad love you, and I’m sure Fred loves you, too. And when Fred sees that you got him something, he’s going to be happy, because it’s a nice thing to do, and because it’s from you.”

“Evvie?”

“Yeah?”

Rose squirmed a little, then said, “I don’t always want to go to my mom’s. I have to pack up all my stuff, and I have to share a room with Lilly. And I just don’t always want to go.”

“I know. And that’s okay.”

   “I have to go anyway.” Rose said it flatly, as much to herself as to Evvie.

“Yeah. Right now, pretty much, you do.” Evvie squeezed her hand. “I know you’ll be happy to see her.”

Rose nodded. “Do you have to see your mom, too?”

“Pretty much,” Evvie said. “Not at Christmas, but sometimes. When she’s around.”

“You probably miss her.”

“Sometimes.” Evvie smoothed the back of Rose’s hand with her fingers.

“I’m not going to be here for Christmas with my dad.”

“Maybe not the actual day,” Evvie said. “When you get back, though, you can have Christmas with him. And we’ll make those snowflake cookies again, and I need you to help me. We’ll keep it going. Christmas is not one day. It’s a whole thing. There are elves, and there are reindeer, and there’s ‘Jingle Bells.’?”

“The Batmobile lost a wheel and the Joker got away,” Rose sang, and then she grinned at herself.

Evvie reached across Rose for a bottle of hand lotion on the nightstand. “You want a little?” Rose nodded, and Evvie put some in her own palm, then rubbed her hands and Rose’s together. “It’ll still be Christmas when you get back. I double promise.”

“I’ll get Fred a tie,” Rose finally said. “And then I only need something for Lilly and Dad and Mom, and my grandmas and grandpas.” She looked up at Evvie. “And you.”

“Aw, you’re the best,” Evvie said, putting her arm back around Rose’s shoulders. “Nobody’s better than you.”





AFTER ROSE WAS ASLEEP, EVVIE managed to crawl out of her bed and go downstairs to do the dishes. She had figured that she and Dean would talk about the article once he was home. But when he and Andy got back, they carried the girls to Andy’s car, Dean slipped into the apartment and shut the door, and that was it. There was not a kiss on the forehead; there had not been since Thanksgiving. She wondered sometimes if she’d imagined the whole thing.

She was still awake at two in the morning, too sweaty with the extra blanket on the bed and too cold without it. It was winter for real now, close to freezing, and as she lay in bed debating whether to get up and tweak the heat, she heard Dean’s truck start. Then she heard him turn it around in the gravel driveway, she heard the careful way he navigated around her car, and she heard him leave.

There were a lot of possibilities. It could be a drive to clear his head. Could be he had to go rescue a friend with a flat tire in the middle of the night. Could be nothing. But she turned onto her side and felt a little hitch in her back, and when she put her hand to it, it was like pressing the play button on a video of all the times she’d seen Dean rubbing and stretching out his right shoulder. He did it in her kitchen, and when they were walking in town, and when they were having dinner, and he did it when they sat and watched television together. Lots of possibilities for this, too. It could be a nervous habit. It could be an old injury or the cost of twenty-five years of throwing as hard as he could for eight months out of the year. It, too, could be nothing. But in her mind, she saw him throwing a ball until his shoulder ached, and she heard the wind outside. It made her think of when he asked about Dacey Park in winter.