Evvie Drake Starts Over(41)

“You were leaving him,” he repeated. “So all that time afterward…it wasn’t because you missed him. Or was it?”

Evvie shook her head. “I had no idea what to do.”

“Evvie, did…did he hurt you? Were you scared of him?”

Does dreading every conversation with him count? Does tensing up when he came into the room count? “No,” she said. “I had told him I wouldn’t talk about the marriage stuff with you. And I didn’t know for sure that I was going to go until I did it, and…I didn’t say anything. I was going to call you.”

He nodded. “You were going to leave town,” he said. It was not a question. He would know she couldn’t have been planning to leave Tim and stay in Calcasset. She had to have intended to go farther away than that.

“Yes,” she said.

“You weren’t going to say goodbye to me, or your dad…my girls.”

“No, I wasn’t.” She almost explained that she was leaving notes for them, but it seemed like it would make it worse.

   “Evvie…I would have helped, I would have helped you find somewhere to live. I would have taken you anywhere.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say anything to anybody.”

He never raised his voice, not the whole time. “You were the first person I told that I was getting a divorce. I told you before I told my own mother. I can’t believe I had no idea.”

She was sure Andy was watching a slideshow in his head of those days bringing food to her bedroom upstairs, and of himself at Tim’s funeral leaning down by her ear, and of the two of them at the tree-planting ceremony, and she knew he was changing the captions on all those pictures. He’d told her over and over that he understood everything she thought was strange, wrong, bad, ill-suited to the circumstances. The loss explained all of it, he thought. The grief did. But now he had to take all those pictures out again, and it felt inevitable to her that as he searched for new tags to place on them, sooner or later he’d get to Here is a picture of her lying. “I didn’t want to answer questions about it,” she said. “I thought everyone would blame me.”

“You thought I would blame you?” He didn’t have to tell her how unfair it was or that he’d never given her reason to think anything like that. He was right, and it didn’t change the fact that she had intended to leave him nothing but a note, after which he’d have spent the same thirteen days comforting her father. She could argue, but it was true: she’d been ready to walk away from all of them with no goodbye. She’d have visited. She’d have called. But being really gone was what she had intended. Being really, really gone.

“No,” she said. “No, of course not, of course I knew you wouldn’t. I don’t know what I thought.” It was the two of them, and the faint pick-a pick-a, and the furnace kicking on. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded, but what he said was “You don’t have to be sorry.”

She looked down and noticed for the first time that she still wore her ring, and he didn’t. He’d taken his ring off two months after Lori moved out. Andy had been married and was now unmarried, de-married. She was differently married, but forever.

“I want to know we’re okay.”

   He nodded. “Of course. Of course we’re okay.” He turned to her. “It’s a lot to think about.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes.

Andy looked at his watch and said, “I don’t want to keep you up. And to be honest, I should get home. I have work in the morning. It’s been a long day. I just didn’t want to go to sleep with it out there.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m glad we got to talk.” They stopped at the door. “Andy, I’m sorry that’s how you found all this out, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“No, I understand.” He jangled his keys in his hand. “Maybe I fell down on the job.”

“You didn’t. I didn’t want anybody to know. So nobody knew.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah.” He repeated it—“Yeah”—and walked toward the door.

“See you Saturday?” she asked as he stepped out onto the porch.

“Sure.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Ev.” He went down the steps to his car and waved, and she shut the door behind him.





O?N FRIDAY AFTERNOON, EVVIE WAS reading in the living room when she got a text from Andy: Hey—have to cancel tmrw AM. Wknd plans with M. Should be back next wk. okay?

She stared at it for a minute, then hit reply. She typed, Sure, have fun. Then she backed up and changed it to Sure! Have fun!

Well, that looks sarcastic, she thought, and changed it to Sure. Have fun!

The next morning, she was puttering in the kitchen doing the dishes when she heard the distinctive rings and bumps of the pinball machine. She poked her head into the apartment. “Can I watch?”

“You can as long as you don’t make fun of me,” he said without looking away from the game. “Wait, it’s Saturday,” he said over the bells. “Aren’t you supposed to be out with Andy?”

“He canceled,” she said as she walked over to the machine and leaned on the side. “Girlfriend plans.”