I fumbled with my coffee, took a sip. “Lorrie stopped coming by.”
“Stopped? Just like that?”
I nodded.
“Evangeline must miss her.”
I nodded again.
“And when you talked to Lorrie about why she’d abandoned Evangeline, what did she say?”
I swallowed, said I hadn’t had that conversation with her.
He regarded me awhile. “Well, you’re a persuasive man, Isaac. I’m sure when you do, she’ll reconsider. When the heart leads, way opens.”
He stood. “Amy put together a big lasagna for tonight, and the kids all have better things to do. You want to come over and help us eat it?”
I said I would and saw him out.
* * *
—
WHEN I ARRIVED BACK FROM GEORGE’S AROUND NINE THIRTY, Evangeline’s door was closed, her room dark. Though Rufus was sleeping in the kitchen, I thought nothing of it. She often left him out if I was getting home late, not wanting him to wake her on my return.
It wasn’t until ten the following morning that I finally knocked on her door. She could easily sleep till noon, but I hadn’t heard her even once during the night. When she didn’t respond, I cracked the door.
“Everything okay?”
Again, no answer, and I flipped on the light. Her bed was made, the floor empty of its usual clutter. On her pillow was a folded piece of paper, my name on the outside. My hands trembled as I opened it.
I don’t want to be anyone’s “mistake.” Evangeline.
I flipped it over thinking there might be more. Finding nothing, I stood there, unable to move for several minutes. Then I stormed to the kitchen, threw the note on the counter. I ransacked a drawer, yanked out an oven mitt in which I’d stashed a hundred dollars. The money was gone, another note in its place: I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back somehow. I promise.
I slumped onto a kitchen chair and stared at words written in a girl’s language I had yet to learn. Jolting upright, I tore the notes into bits and kicked over a chair. When that solved nothing, I sent another chair flying, then rampaged through the house, throwing open closets and drawers. Finding the girl’s once-cluttered medicine cabinet now bare, I slammed it shut, the mirror cracking down the middle. I opened and slammed it again. Then again. And again. I slammed it until glass broke free and sliced the air in arcs of fragmented light.
I slammed it until the last shard exploded in the bathroom sink.
56
Simplicity had been easy to find, and Evangeline remembered that George kept a key in the aft-deck storage. She hadn’t seen a soul on the docks last night, not even when she’d used George’s big slicker to trek multiple times to the marina’s head.
When morning came, Evangeline stayed below with the curtains drawn, wondering when Isaac would find her note. By nine, people were walking the docks, playing radios as they hosed down decks and sanded wooden rails. She had to use the boat’s head after that. She trusted that it’d been pumped recently. George seemed meticulous about such things.
At the chart station, she found a manual on the Yanmar engine but set it down a few minutes later and stared at the boat’s teak walls. They were curved and hand-fitted. She pictured George running his fingers over them as he placed each board. It made her sad somehow, this imagined tenderness, the way everyone—even old Quaker men—had lives of quiet passions.
She wondered how she’d ended up in this place. Last night, Isaac had been halfway out the door when he stopped and poked his head back in. “Sure you don’t want to go? George says there’s plenty.”
She should have gone with him. She had wanted to, wanted to forget what she’d heard, wanted to be part of this family she’d made up in her head. And that was the thing—this family wasn’t real. Maybe no family was. She went over the list—her mother and father, Jonah and Lorrie, even Isaac—all people who’d left her one way or another. So she’d said no thanks, figuring if leaving was part of life, she’d better get good at it herself.
Packing gave her pause, being forced to touch all she’d been given. But what choice did she have? Isaac had made a “mistake.” He would probably report her to the state. And what would bureaucrats do with the infant of a homeless teenage girl?
The kitchen was the hardest to leave, with its memories of meals shared, with Rufus curled on his chair. When she entered with her packs, the dog glanced blandly at her. She went to him, put her face close, and stroked his ears. “I love you, Rufus. Do you love me?” He refused to answer, accepting her affection with bored blinks of his eyes.
She gave him another chance, once again putting her face close so he could lick her, get his snot and saliva all over her. He loved doing that. But he refused even this, turning dully away. She stood. To hell with him. Hadn’t she known from the beginning his love was a con?
In the drawer with the oven mitts, she dug out the green one crammed at the back. She felt shitty about the money, but Isaac had told her it was there if she had a sudden need.
* * *
—
SHE SPENT THE REST OF THE MORNING ON SIMPLICITY, peering out portholes, studying the lines that held the boat to the dock. If you took off all but the front and rear lines and looped those once around the cleats, you wouldn’t need any help off the dock. You could pull them up on your own and sail away.
At noon, she ate another can of cold stew and figured Isaac must have found her note by then. She was certain he’d search for her on his own. He didn’t seem like a man who’d go public with his concerns.
She busied herself studying the control panel. Some of it was easy. The cabin-outlets switch was flipped on. That explained why the heater and lamp were working. But what did 240VAC, 50HZ, and LPG Control do? Why were there different kinds of power? She searched for instructions for over an hour and found nothing. How could she leave without knowing these things?
By two, she collapsed in the salon, frustrated at the complexity of Simplicity and furious at Isaac. Not for saying she was a mistake—she knew in her gut she’d gotten it wrong—but because he had failed to find her.
* * *
—
WHEN SHE HAD LEFT THE NIGHT BEFORE, she’d headed to the bus that would take her an hour south to the Seattle ferry. As she neared, she saw two women chatting inside the bus shelter, their faces slick and yellow in the dim light. She stopped and squinted, swore under her breath. One was Ms. Swanson, her chemistry teacher.
Evangeline darted around a corner. This was why she had to escape this town—everywhere you went, people knew you, kept tabs on what you did. She decided on a different ferry, only ten minutes on foot. She could walk right on board. It’d put her well north of Seattle, but she could catch a ride on the other side.
By the time she’d hauled her belongings to the landing, she was sweltering in her jacket. The ferry rose out of the dark, its car deck gaping like a mouth waiting to be fed. Just then, the baby unleashed a series of furious kicks, doubling her over in pain. She stumbled to a nearby bench and studied the far shore. Nothing but an unlit wall of black. Even if she made it to Seattle, it’d be a waste of time. Her mother never returned to places she had left. And her mother, she knew, was why she was here. This wasn’t about Isaac or the jerks at school, it wasn’t even about the state. She was searching for a mother who didn’t want to be found.