I rub my palm over my jaw and keep quiet. I’ve had an old Tom Petty song stuck in my head since I left Evie tucked beneath my blankets, the kittens crowded around her and a flower from the greenhouse woven in her hair. I didn’t realize I’d been humming.
“Your dad does the same shit,” Barney complains, digging around in his bag of snacks. He pulls out some pretzels and sour watermelon gummies, offering me the latter. I shake my head. Those things make my tongue feel like a wool sweater. “Always humming something.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmhmm. He once did the whole soundtrack to Grease for a week straight, on a loop. He said it was my punishment for having an opinion.”
“What was your opinion?”
“That he shouldn’t fuckin’ sing.”
I manage to restrain myself for twenty-seven seconds. My opening bar to Summer Lovin’ is a little shaky, but Barney recognizes it all the same. He lets out a loud bark of laughter and punches me hard, right in the thigh. I tighten my grip on the wheel.
“Not while I’m driving, old man.”
“Old man,” he repeats to me. “I’d still kick your ass.”
I snort a laugh. He probably could. He taught Nova everything she knows about self-defense. He once picked her up early from school and took her to Wrestlemania in Baltimore. She tried to suplex me from the top of her bunk bed for close to three months.
We settle back into silence, the rush of wind at the windows and the creak of the truck beneath us. The crinkle of plastic as Barney fishes out another Honey Bun. If I remembered my damn cell phone, we’d at least have something to plug into the AV outlet. But I left it sitting in the center of my kitchen table, along with the thermos of coffee I was supposed to bring and all of our paperwork.
It’s a good thing Barney keeps duplicates shoved in a coffee-stained folder under the seat. Something about Evie tangled in worn flannel, the curve of her shoulder bare in the sunlight scrambled my brain before I even left the house.
“You know when his musical inclinations were at their worst?”
I grunt and merge over a lane, my mind still fixed on the way she stretched and rolled into me, not even all the way awake. A smile on her face and her hands reaching for me like she couldn’t bear to let me go. “December 1994. When you lost seven poker games in a row and you owed my dad $10,000 and a boat you don’t own?”
“I can’t believe he still tells that story,” Barney snorts. “No, smartass. The week he met your mom. He was moon-eyed, working in the fields and bellowing Springsteen at the top of his damn lungs.”
I shift in the seat. Clear my throat twice. “Sounds like you’re trying to make a point.”
Barney takes another bite of Honey Bun. “Imagine that.”
By the time we unload the trees and I return the truck to the large garage for service vehicles, I am tired down to my bones. I have aches in muscles I didn’t even know existed and my ears are ringing from the loud rumble of the truck. I want a sandwich the size of my head, a cold beer, and Evelyn.
I want to kiss the skin between her shoulder and neck, that little spot under her ear that makes her hum. I want to hear about her day and if she found any happy. Fall into bed with her and sleep for the next six days under seven layers of blankets. I want bare skin and husky laughter. More sandwiches.
My boots crunch against gravel as I wander up the walkway to the cabin, a twist in my stomach when I don’t see any light spilling from the windows. I can usually see Evelyn moving around the kitchen from the path, lounging on the couch with a book and the cats. I like seeing remnants of her spilled out across my hallway when I first walk in the door. Her scarf looped over the hook on the wall. Her boot knocked on its side by mine.
But the house is dark tonight, everything cast in shadow beyond the window. I stop on the bottom step of the porch and breathe in deep through my nose. The daffodils in the garden have started to peek through the mulch, a glimpse of bright green that looks gray in the darkness. They’ll be in full bloom soon, the other flowers not far behind. Black-eyed Susans and tulips. Pink and gold and yellow so pale it almost looks white, tumbling out of the front flower beds.
I continue up the stairs and ignore the anxiety sinking like a stone in my gut. I’ve had this feeling before. This twisting, painful thing that clasps against my throat and squeezes. Maybe she’s on the back porch or maybe she’s with Layla at the bakehouse. She’s been helping Stella digitize some of her records. Maybe she’s still at the office.
But I know as soon as I swing open the door. I glance at the dark hallway and the empty hook next to mine where she usually keeps her jacket. The house is quiet, still.
She isn’t here.
I’m not sure where she’s gone off to.
And I’m not sure if she’ll bother coming back.
I knew this would happen. It’s why I told her I wanted to see where this thing goes when I really wanted to say, Stay here with me. Hold my hand on the back porch. I’ll hold yours, too.
I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop since she pressed up on her toes in my kitchen and grabbed me by the back of my neck and kissed me like she damn well meant it.
I close the door behind me. I swallow and drop my keys on the table. I pull off my jacket and hang it on the hook. I go through the motions of coming home while a thin and trembling tension continues to twist in my chest, winding around and around. Like a piano being tuned, the strings vibrating with pressure. “Evelyn?”
No answer. One of the cats appears on top of the couch, a discarded sock draped over her back. I rub her tiny forehead with my knuckles and reach for it, a faded green pair that Evie had stolen from me.
“She isn’t here, is she?”
Vixen offers me a meow and then scampers off, back to the huddle of kittens at the edge of the fireplace. I see that Prancer has grown her little nest, an old necktie between her paws where she lounges with the rest of them. A scrap of paper and a kitchen towel.
I scrub both hands through my hair and glance down the dark hall, back to the table where my cell phone and coffee mug sit untouched in the middle.
I could go down the hallway and check her room, see if her suitcase is gone. Her laptop and the stack of papers she kept on the nightstand under a book. That's what I did the first time she left. I wandered around that little room and looked for any clue she might have left behind. A note, maybe. A slip with her phone number scribbled down. All I found was a pile of loose change and a receipt from the tiny bar we were in. A button and a pen cap.
The second time, I was in the bakehouse. I sat at the corner table with two cups of coffee and a cinnamon roll I had no intention of eating. I waited while telling myself that I wasn’t waiting at all. I picked at the edge of that damn cinnamon roll until the whole thing was gone.
If Layla thought it was odd that I was sitting at the window seat for the duration of her morning rush with two mugs of coffee, she never said a word about it. Turns out Evelyn left that morning. I hadn’t even warranted a casual goodbye on her list. No text. Nothing.
The solution, this time, is a simple one.
I won’t go down the hallway to check. I won’t look for signs or signals or whatever the fuck else. I need to realize that sometimes a shooting star isn’t magic at all. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of space dust burning through the atmosphere.