Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(19)

“Your stepbrother.”

“Yes.”

She shifts in her seat and shrugs. “You want to tell me about it.”

“Stop saying questions like they’re statements.”

“That was a statement,” she sighs. “You do want to talk, you’re just trying to find the words.”

“I haven’t had a real conversation with another human being about anything but my work in five years.”

“I can tell,” Alicia says, dryly.

I give her a look.

“My daughter looks at me like that when I say something she knows is right.”

I look at the computer again. I have more emails.

An urge strikes me. I open the browser, navigate to Twitter and type my name in the search box.

I suck in a deep breath when I read what I see. There must be thousands of tweets. I glance at Alicia and bite my lip, and scroll through the screen.

There’s a hashtag.

“I have a hashtag,” I blurt out.

#EveDestroyedMyLife

Trembling, I click the link.

For the next twenty minutes, I sit in silence and read, my face a still mask. The tweets go on forever. This only started yesterday.

I had 19 years of seniority and a pension. #EveRuinedMyLife I snap the computer’s screen down and stare at the door, trembling. Then I get up.

“I need to get out of here.”

“You’re in your pajamas.”

I look down at myself.

“Go take a shower and change.”

I am not used to be ordered around, at least by anyone but my father, but I do as she says. My shower turns out to be half an hour standing under the hot water followed by brushing my hair and dressing in the only casual clothes I have, an ancient sweatsuit at the bottom of my bottom drawer, which I don’t remember even putting there. I don’t have sneakers, either. I don’t care; I put on a pair of slippers and make a mental note to buy some sneakers. When I step outside, Alicia is waiting for me.

“Should I have the car brought around?”

“Do you have a car?”

She nods.

“Let’s take yours.”

I feel strange walking out of the house, down the path that winds around the back to where Alicia and the other staff park. Her car is a boxy minivan. The inside smells strongly of fabric softener for some reason. I sit in the front seat next to her, and she starts the engine and looks over at me.

“Where would we be going, then?”

I sigh. “I want a cheeseburger.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. Pick one.”

Some twenty minutes later, I find myself sitting in her minivan while she wheels it around the curving drive-through lane of a McDonalds. She stops before pulling up to the speaker.

“What did you want, hon?”

“A quarter pounder.”

She orders, pulls up, and I realize I have no cash on me. My God, I’m making her pay.

“I’ll pay you back,” I say, as she pulls into a parking space facing the road.

She passes me my food and I spread the paper open on my lap.

“You don’t have to pay me back. It was nine dollars.”

I peel the top of the bun off and use a napkin to wipe it clean, leaving a thin layer of mayonnaise-ketchup-mustard mixture soaked into the bread, then settle it on top of the patty and take a bite.

“If you’d said something I’d have ordered it plain for you.”

“I like it this way.”

She eyes me while she chews. “You mean you like to order it and then peel everything off.”

“Yes. They just put too much on.”

“Okay.”

Every bite is like torture. The food is fine, the memories are not. It’s like every bite tries to stick in my throat.

“Evelyn,” she says.

I put the half-eaten burger on the paper in my lap and thoroughly clean my hands with a pale yellow napkin. I fold the burger in the paper and stick it back in the bag, and take a long pull on the soda she bought me.

“Thank you for lunch,” I say, barely more than a whisper.

Alicia says nothing else until she balls up the wrapper from her fish sandwich and tosses it in the open bag. She reaches for the key, to start the van.

“Wait.”

Her hand sinks back to her lap. I stare straight ahead.

“This is what happened.”





Chapter Seven





Evelyn





Mrs. Vanderburg placed the folder in my hands.

“You’ve done very well, Eve.”

My face lit up in a smile so hard it hurt. This was a strange week. I was saying goodbye to my tutors. A dozen admission letters rested in two neat stacks on my desk, behind Mrs. V. Of all my teachers, she was the one I loved most. For the last four years, all through high school, she visited three times per week to instruct me in mathematics. I missed a few points on the papers she handed back, but I didn’t care. I was excited and full of fear at the same time, my stomach doing backflips.

Today I would be saying goodbye to a fixture in my life. When you are eighteen years old, four years is a long time. In all those years of instruction, I’d never seen Mrs. V wear anything but an ankle length dress, usually buttoned to her neck. She looked like she belonged in a Victorian period piece, except for her big oversized glasses, more practical than stylish. In the years I’d known her, half-moon shaped bifocal lenses had appeared in those glasses, and her tightly wound bun went from silver to mostly white.