Alright. That seems … good.
Duck and cats continue investigating each other and I hear my front door swing open. For a split-second, a flare of hope seizes in my chest. But then I hear Stella and Layla bickering about cinnamon rolls and my heart rolls over, disappointment pounding out a slow beat.
I looked at Evelyn and told her I wouldn’t settle for the pieces of her. It’s how I feel, but I wish I said it in a better way. Softer, maybe. I can still see her face as the words tripped off my tongue. The way her whole body flinched, her hands clasped tight together. Her eyelashes against her cheek. A single, sharp inhale.
Regret is a funny thing. Self-preservation, too. I’ve been swinging wildly between the two and reached for my phone more times than I can count. But I can’t quite make myself dial her number, my thumb hovering over the screen.
Stella and Layla stumble to a stop at the edge of my kitchen. I don’t bother looking up.
“Christ,” Layla breathes. “It’s worse than I thought.”
I watch as Comet nudges once at the duck with her head, a happy purr tucked between them. The duck flaps his little wings against my hand. I’ll have to name him now. It’s settled. “I thought I locked my door.”
“I have a key,” Layla says mildly.
“I took your key away three months ago when you broke in and stole all of my pop tarts.”
“Like I’d eat store-bought pop tarts.” Layla is offended. “That wasn’t me.”
Stella raises her hand. “That was Charlie. He’ll buy you a new box.” She pauses for a second and drops to her knees next to me, holding her hand out towards the kittens. “Beckett, why are you sitting on the floor?”
Interesting question from a woman who just told me her half-brother broke into my house and ate all my processed sugar. I ignore it. I’m too tired for the details.
“I’m introducing them to each other.”
“Alright.” She blinks at me. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Sitting on the floor?”
“Yes.”
Layla busies herself with something on the counter. I hear the sound of foil crinkling, my drawers opening as she looks for silverware. Vixen is more interested in whatever she brought than her new family member and goes trotting off, winding herself between Layla’s ankles.
I glance at the clock. “I’ve only been sitting here for ten minutes. Why?”
Stella looks relieved. “Okay, good.”
“Why?”
“Because Sal told us he saw you on your back in the middle of the Santa barn yesterday for three hours,” Layla interrupts. She holds out a plate with a single blueberry muffin on it—a perfect, buttery crumble on top.
I frown. I hadn’t realized I’d been there that long. “I was checking the roof for holes. Some of the farmhands have noticed leaks.”
And then I fell asleep, flat on my back in the middle of the Santa barn. I woke up tired and disoriented, a hollow ache in the pit of my stomach.
Missing Evelyn is like missing the bottom step on a flight of stairs. I keep expecting her to be where she’s not.
It’s that expectation, I think, that’s the worst of it. I step into the kitchen and expect to see her sitting at the counter doing her crossword. I walk past the back door and peek out the window, looking for her long legs curled beneath her on the back porch. I check for her coat on the peg next to mine. Her boots tossed beneath the entryway table. I leave a space in the fridge for where she likes to put her coffee, right next to the iced tea.
I’m missing all the pieces of her.
I want them back.
Layla sits down on my other side with her own plate of muffins and extends one to Stella. I bring the duck closer to my chest—behind the protection of the fence—and deposit him carefully in my lap. He gives a happy quack, wanders in a circle, and then falls into a little clump of yellow fur against my thigh.
“Evelyn texted us,” Layla offers, like that single sentence doesn’t steal all the breath out of my lungs. I take a bite of muffin to keep myself from saying something stupid. When, I want to ask. Did she sound half as sad as I am? “She wanted us to check in on you.”
That’s something, I guess. I pluck a dried blueberry off the top of the muffin. I checked her social media profiles the other day, desperate for a glimpse. She hasn’t posted anything in weeks. Nothing since a picture of her flat on her back in the wildflower field, the shot angled to get only the top of her head. Smiling eyes lit up by the sun, her long hair spread around her head like a halo, flower petals twisted between the strands.
I stared at that picture for a long time.
“I’m fine,” I say. I want to ask more about Evelyn, but I can’t bring myself to say her name.
Stella sighs. “You can’t sit here all day.” She looks like she wants to walk out back, get the wheelbarrow, and dump me into it. “Come over to the house. Luka will make you gnocchi.”
He’ll also probably sigh his way through the meal, muttering under his breath the entire time. “No, thanks.” I take another bite of muffin and ignore the silent conversation happening on either side of me. I can feel their eyes like little lasers. “I’m going to my parents house later. I’m fixing the porch.”
What I’m doing is avoiding my problems. Getting out of this house that still has the ghost of her laugh and her smile and her big, brown eyes everywhere I look.
“Well,” Layla stretches out her legs on the floor of my kitchen and frowns down at her socked feet. She must have toed her boots off at the door. She drops her head against my shoulder just as Stella curls her hand around my arm, right above my elbow. She squeezes affectionately. “We’ll sit with you until you have to go.”
I let out a shaky exhale and watch the cats bat around an old cardboard box, something they must have pulled out of the recycling. Stella crosses her ankles and Layla lets out a yawn. The three of us sit there in silence, huddled on the floor.
Partners, in all the best ways.
“Does the duck have a name?”
“Hm?”
“The duck. He needs a name.”
He does. The three of us consider it.
“How about Pickles?” Layla offers. She peers over my shoulder at the duck fast asleep against my knee. “He kind of looks like a Pickles.”
“In what way does he look like a Pickles?”
“The little mark on his head sort of looks like one, don’t you think?” She glances at me and her eyes widen at the look on my face. “Alright. Not Pickles.”
“Eggbert?”
I make a noise low in my throat. I haven’t forgotten that Stella wanted to name Prancer—Raccoon.
“James Pond?”
“Squeak?”
I ignore them both. “I like Otis.”
My dad used to play Otis Redding in the morning while we were getting ready for school. He would blast it from the speakers in the living room. Turn it up loud enough that we’d hear it all the way in our bedrooms. It was the very first artist Nessa ever danced to. He still plays These Arms of Mine for my mom every Wednesday night after he thinks we’ve all left. She sits across his lap and he hums in her ear, a slow turn around the driveway with nothing but the porch lights on.