Evvie Drake Starts Over(86)

“Learn anything interesting?”

She fidgeted, picking at one of her fingernails. “Believe me, we’ll get there eventually. There’s plenty. Mostly, I just wanted to tell you that I wish I’d done a bunch of things differently. I should’ve listened better. Fixers want to fix, and I wanted to fix something. I wanted to help. And I shouldn’t have pushed.” She took a breath. “But I also think that in fairness to me, you—”

He held up one hand. “Evvie, I wanted to fix it, too, and I should have just said that, and it wasn’t fair that I didn’t. I said yes to the game. I said yes to everything. You were right. The pinecones, the park in the middle of the night. I really wanted it all back.” He reached down to pet the dog. “But, Ev, when it didn’t work, when it looked like I was maybe going to be a high school gym teacher, it seemed like you thought that wasn’t enough.”

This cut deep, right between her ribs. “Dean, I didn’t want you to be able to pitch because it would mean you were enough.” They looked at each other. “I wanted you to be able to pitch because it would mean that I was enough.”

He wrinkled his brow. It wasn’t even disbelief, just curiosity. And then it dissolved. “You’re enough.”

She nodded. “So are you.” She smiled and took a deep breath. “Therapy, right? You know, the dog was her idea.”

“You got a prescription for a dog?”

“Not exactly, she can’t prescribe anything. If that happens, that will be the psychiatrist that I also have. No, my therapist thought that since I’m still trying to figure out my life and give it some structure, having somebody like Webster, who demands that I get out of the house, would be a positive thing.”

He nodded slowly. “This is a lot.”

“Yeah, well, I’m really broken,” Evvie told him brightly.

“Oh, sure, me, too.”



* * *



—

   They sat and talked in the living room into the afternoon, and when it started to rain, they watched the drops speckle the water and wet down the lobster boats, and Evvie took her wool plaid blanket out of the trunk in the sitting room and draped it over her legs. She made tea and showed Dean how to put up a fire in the woodstove, and she shared her informal research about what kinds of wood burned best.

Dean picked up Webster’s favorite toy, made from old T-shirts Evvie had braided together, and engaged in a lengthy battle of tugging and wrestling that also included significant growling by both parties. Evvie smacked Dean on the elbow and said not to torture her dog, and Dean said to take it up with the dog, and Webster wore himself out and walked over to lie by the woodstove.

When it got to the late afternoon, Evvie poured bourbon and made snacks, and they sat on the love seat with their feet on the coffee table and listened to the new episode of the true-crime podcast they’d both been following. Dean rolled his eyes and complained that the people were clearly never going to solve the case, and Evvie passed him a peanut butter cracker and said it was about the journey. He reached over and hooked his index finger through hers.

The show ended, and Evvie suggested they take Webster for a walk. They took the long way, up the lane and out to the road, then down around the curve of the inlet to a short little bridge that connected Calcasset to the island where Evvie lived now. There was so little water that cars rambled over the bridge in only a few seconds, but if you asked everyone along Evvie’s curved road, they’d say they lived on Kettle Bay Island, as if it were an isolated hamlet. Evvie explained that there were, in fact, also islands in the bay that you couldn’t drive to, that you had to take a ferry to. She particularly liked one where there was a lobster fishery and a tiny town that swirled with tourists in the summer. She’d take him out there sometime, she said, when the weather was warmer. As they walked, she held the leash in one hand and he put his arm around her shoulders.

   When they got back, they curled up on the couch and turned on the TV. Immediately, they both cracked up. “It had to be baseball,” Evvie said.

“Oh, it’s not just baseball,” Dean told her. “It’s opening day.”

She gestured toward the game with the remote control. “You want to watch this?”

“Are you kidding? I want to know how much you’ve picked up.”

So they watched for a while. Dean told her which guys he knew, which pitcher he could tell could have used one or two more spring training starts, and which hitters had changed their stances. And sometimes, they stopped to make out or have a snack. That was the perfect way to watch a game, he told her.

They ate at the table as it got dark outside. Evvie explained that she was only a couple of weeks away from starting work with Nona. She’d added some transcription clients and was doing a few hours of paperwork a week for Betsey, with whom she’d become friendly while she was buying her place. It wasn’t quite what she wanted yet, but it was work, and she was paying her mortgage with her own money.

They did the dishes, standing next to each other by the sink, and then they went back into the big room by the big windows and sank into the big chairs, and they could hear the water slapping the boats. She let Webster out one more time, into the little fenced-in yard her dad had built for him, and as she stood in the open door to call him inside, she felt Dean slide his arms around her waist. He whispered in her ear that he wanted to see her room, and she laughed, and the dog came inside and settled himself. She took Dean down the hall, where he noticed right off that she had a new bed. It was not the one she’d slept in with her husband; it was not the one she’d slept in with him. It was one she’d only slept in alone—and, of course, with Webster, when he jumped up, which he was emphatically not supposed to do. But tell that to a puppy.