Evvie Drake Starts Over(57)

   The first time she’d heard that it wasn’t her fault that her mother had left was on her tenth birthday, when she first asked whether it was. After she’d blown out the candles on a cat-shaped birthday cake from Specialty Sweets and pulled the red paper and white ribbon off a box with a new winter coat from her father in it, she’d picked up the card that Eileen had sent. She almost never got mail, so she loved seeing her own name written above their address, and she knew the handwriting from reading and rereading a long letter her mother had sent her about her abandoned ambitions, which Evvie had barely understood. It said things like “I was a very talented dancer! But a lot of things can get in the way of that, and that made me sad. I knew that if I was an unhappy person, I couldn’t be a good mom!”

I am named after my mother’s unhappiness.

On the front of the card was a Scottie dog, and when Evvie opened it, on the inside it said, “Hope your birthday is through the woof.” Eileen had written, “Love, Mom.” Just “Love, Mom.” This card had been in the blue suitcase on the night of Tim’s accident, when Kell saw it in the back of Evvie’s car.

Evvie had shown the card to her dad and said, “She didn’t even write ‘Happy birthday.’?”

Frank had taken the card from her and looked at it all over. “No,” he’d said tightly. “She sure didn’t.” But then he pointed to the preprinted writing. “Well, it says ‘birthday’ there. Maybe she didn’t want to say it again.” He squeezed Evvie’s shoulder.

“I think she’s mad at me,” Evvie told her dad, laying the card on top of the coat.

“She’s not mad at you,” Frank had said evenly. “I promise you, you hear me? She’s not mad at you.”

   Evvie had felt herself starting to cry and dug her fingers into her palms. “Then why doesn’t she come home?”

He’d led her into the living room and they’d sat down next to each other on the beat-up green couch. “Your mom,” he started, “is down there thinking about a lot of things. But she loves you, Eveleth. She didn’t leave because of you.” He put his hand on his daughter’s cheek. “That’s important.”

Eveleth had looked down and said to him in something of a choked voice, “I’d never leave.”

“Me neither,” Frank had told her. Then he tapped her under the chin so she’d look him in the eye. “Hey. Me neither.”

Her fortunes were a mixed bag: widow with a huge house, no real job, a semidetached best friend, and what seemed to be an appointment in three days to have sex with one of the best pitchers of the last twenty years. But she was smart enough to know that maybe her most important lucky break was one of her first: that when he’d told her “me neither,” he meant it. And now, looking at him eating a bowl of good chowder, ignoring the sore back she knew he had almost all the time, she could only hope to be as good to him. “I love you, Pop.”

He reached over and squeezed her fingers. “I love you, too, honey.”





O?N THURSDAY, EVVIE GAVE DEAN a cup of coffee in the morning and he kissed her goodbye on the forehead. And then, as he headed out the door, he said, “Five o’clock, right?”

She nodded. “Five o’clock.”

“Be ready to go.”

“I’ll be ready. I hope you picked out someplace good.”

“Oh, I did. Bring a bag in case we stay over. Also, I have a proposition.”

Evvie snorted. “I’ll bet.”

“You have a dirty mind,” he said in a low voice. “What I meant is that I propose that this dinner is back on old rules. No husband, no baseball.”

“All right, agreed.”

“So anything you have, get it out of your system now.”

“Okay. Wait: my husband was a jerk.”

“Well, sometimes I watch myself strike people out on YouTube.”

“All right, good enough. Now go to school. Teenagers are waiting for you to mold their character.”

When he was gone, she went upstairs and into her closet, where she’d stashed a white bag with elegant black letters that said CATHERINE’S. This was a lingerie boutique that, in fact, Monica had recommended to her via text after being sworn to secrecy.

   Weird question: do you have a favorite place for pretty lacy things? I’m looking to upgrade and I haven’t shopped in ages.

YES. Go to Catherine’s in Bangor. Worth the trip. Beautiful not trashy, good for everyday and special occasions. There was a winky face. She couldn’t blame Monica for the winky face. She deserved the winky face.

Thank you. PLEASE don’t tell Andy I asked you about this.

Monica had texted back the smiley face with the zippered mouth.

Well, it certainly qualified as a special occasion, if being a special occasion had anything to do with having been neglected for so long on this front that she’d pretty much forgotten whatever moves she’d ever had, not that she’d ever had much call for moves. She’d picked out a pink two-piece set, a red set, and a black set, and she’d hand-washed them all in the sink in Woolite the previous day, then hung them to dry and put them back in the bag in the closet, as if she were quarantining their wickedness away from the rest of the apparel, lest her sweatshirts be scandalized. She picked out the black ones and laid them on the bed.