Evelyn, After: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

  She wore sensible ballet flats and an innocent-looking blue dress that fell past her knees. She wasn’t dressed like a man-stealing whore at all. In fact, she’d covered the dress with a thick black cardigan that washed out her face. Or maybe her face was just washed out. She did look pale as she watched the kids scramble up and over ladders and monkey bars.

  This wasn’t the girl Evelyn had come to know on Facebook. She didn’t look angelic or bright or even particularly pretty. Mostly she looked tired.

  A strand of hair came loose from her ponytail and blew across her face. She didn’t seem to notice.

  Was she genuinely sorry for what she’d done? Was she worried she’d lose her job, children, and marriage? Was she tortured over Kaylee’s death?

  Evelyn supposed that she could confront Juliette at some point. Demand answers to these questions. But she’d have to expose herself then. Right now she was safe. She held all the power. Juliette didn’t even know she was being watched.

  If she confronted her, Evelyn might learn things she didn’t want to know. What if Juliette screamed that she and Gary were in love? That he’d wanted to leave Evelyn and now he couldn’t? What if Juliette laughed in Evelyn’s face and called her fat and old and disgusting?

  Evelyn slouched down a little further and peered over the steering wheel. As she watched, Juliette drew her phone from her pocket and frowned as she read whatever was on the screen. A moment later, she typed out a text.

  It didn’t occur to Evelyn until that exact moment that Gary might still be in touch with Juliette. That the affair might still be going on. He could be texting her right now, asking to see her again.

  He’d said it was over, but isn’t that what men told their wives? What else was he going to say? “She’s the best sex I’ve ever had, and I’m never giving her up, but I don’t want a divorce.” Probably not a good strategy.

  Or maybe he had tried to end it and Juliette wouldn’t let him go. Maybe that was why she looked so awful.

  How the hell was Evelyn ever supposed to trust him? Why would she even want to? Her only comforting thought was that Gary hated texting. Whoever Juliette was texting, it likely wasn’t him.

  Her phone buzzed again, and Evelyn glanced at it in disgusted irritation. Why couldn’t everyone just leave her alone? This time it was her sister asking how she was doing. Evelyn clicked off the screen.

  She watched Juliette until the recess ended, though she wasn’t sure what she learned. Juliette seemed subdued for most of the time, brightening only when a child approached. If she had to guess, Evelyn would say that maybe she wasn’t an emotionless monster. But she wasn’t ready to render that judgment quite yet.

  After the last of the children were ushered inside and Juliette disappeared, Evelyn searched for the nearest grocery store on her phone and started her car. If she waited to do her shopping at home, someone might spot her and know she wasn’t bedridden at all.

  As she drove, she realized Juliette might take this route for her own grocery shopping. She pulled into the parking lot and wondered if it was Juliette’s normal store. Was it possible she was just an average woman who did the same things Evelyn did?

  “No,” Evelyn said as she got out and retrieved a cart from the lot.

  No, normal women didn’t seduce their psychiatrists. Or drive away from victims of accidents.

  Still, seeing Juliette in the flesh had brought Evelyn some calm, even if it had raised more questions. Tonight she’d spend some time with Gary after dinner. They could watch Antiques Roadshow or the news, and she’d keep an eye on his phone. That password would be easy enough to crack. Just four numbers, and she’d be able to watch the pattern without even seeing the screen.

  Tomorrow she’d force herself to get up early and sneak a look at Gary’s phone while he was in the shower, just in case. If he wasn’t texting or calling Juliette, Evelyn could try to start making peace with this.

  But as she walked the unfamiliar aisles of the grocery store, she found herself watching constantly for a blond ponytail, eager to push the limits of this spying game she’d started.

  She walked at a snail’s pace, slowly gathering the ingredients for meat sauce, then deciding she’d make garlic bread as well. Not that she’d be able to choke down much of anything, but Cameron would love it.

  By the time she left the store, she’d been there for ninety minutes, and she felt oddly deflated as she got in her car and started for home. Juliette hadn’t shown up.

  But tomorrow Evelyn would get more information. Tomorrow maybe things would start to get better. The storm that had hit her life had to start easing soon or she’d never hold up.

  CHAPTER 25

  AFTER

  “I just want to know what’s going on with you,” Gary said, arms crossed as if to convey sincere concern.

  Evelyn hunched over her coffee, hoping its heat would warm her. She felt cold all the time lately, but it was worse in the mornings. “Nothing is going on with me.”

  “You’ve stopped going into work—”

  “I quit.”

  “You what?”

  “I quit. I was tired of the office politics. I never planned on staying after Cameron graduated anyway.”

  “You never mentioned that to me.”

  “Well, now you know. As fulfilling as it was to take high-school attendance every day, I’m moving on.” Granted, it hadn’t been “I quit” so much as “I stopped going in or returning their calls,” but there it was. She no longer worked at the school. Somehow the world kept turning. In fact, some days it felt like it was spinning faster and faster and Evelyn would just fly right off and float into space.

  “You never called that therapist,” he said.

  Evelyn sighed, her breath steaming over the coffee. “No.” No, and she wasn’t going to. There was nothing she needed to say that she wanted Gary to hear. She had no desire to feel closer. Not to him.

  “Evelyn, I have no idea what you’re thinking lately. You won’t talk to me at all.”

  “Why would I talk to you when you’re just going to psychoanalyze me?”

  “I’m not trying to be your doctor, for Christ’s sake. I just want to know what’s going on with my wife.”

  She could see it then. No wonder he’d turned to someone else. She’d left him years ago.

  She’d pulled away to escape Gary’s superior attitude. His superior intellect. His superiority complex. He’d made her feel small with the petty criticisms that had increased over the last ten years, but she would never care about that again. She was swollen up with feelings that had nothing to do with him.

  “You didn’t even want to go out for your birthday,” Gary said. “You barely touched your cake. You just retreated to your studio.” She didn’t know if he’d meant to sneer the word, but it was there, clear as day.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for work?” she asked.

  Gary sighed loudly, as if projecting his frustration to an entire audience instead of just her. She ignored it.

  He finally walked out, slamming the garage door behind him like he thought she still cared about his moods. Did she have to write it on a piece of paper for him? Please leave me alone. I don’t care about you anymore.

  A few minutes later, Cameron breezed by, though he tossed a kiss somewhere near her cheek as he passed. “You didn’t have breakfast,” she said out of habit.

  “I’ll grab something at school. Bye, Mom.”

  And then she was alone. Thank God.

  Yesterday had been her birthday. She’d waited for Noah to get in touch. Surely he would wish her a happy birthday. In Monterey, he’d said they’d go out to dinner. He would risk closing the gallery early and take her back to Ranbir’s restaurant as a treat. That had been ten days ago. He couldn’t have forgotten so quickly, yet he hadn’t said a word. Her hand ached from clutching her phone too hard for too many hours.

  Had he even thought about her? Had he at least struggled not to reach out? Or had he just decided to move on a
nd that was that? They’d had a good time. That good time was over. The end.

  That kind of callousness didn’t seem possible. They had a connection. Something real and rare. Surely the particles of her constant pain must bombard him, even from this distance.

  Every day she searched for signs of what he was feeling. She checked the gallery’s Facebook page for clues. Then Juliette’s. She reread every text Noah had ever sent her, trying to puzzle out whether she’d misinterpreted his words. She looked at the paintings she’d shown him and tried to remember his exact comments. What had he meant? What had he been trying to tell her? She replayed every act of sex in her mind, every motion, every word and whisper. Had he meant the sweet things he’d said? Did he even recall that he’d said them?

  She’d typed out text messages to him a hundred times. Five hundred times. She wasn’t sure anymore. Each day ran together. The memories of him began to fold into one long stretch, as if they’d spent whole weeks together.

  Only one thing kept her steady enough to never hit the “Send” button: patience.

  The truth was coming. It was a freight train barreling toward all their lives. No one could stop it.

  Despite Noah’s silence yesterday, one of Evelyn’s birthday wishes had come true: there had been news from Dawn.

  Thank you for coming forward, she’d written on her Facebook page at five in the morning. A cryptic message to some, perhaps, but not to Evelyn. The witness to Kaylee’s death had been found.

  How long would it be before the police came knocking with questions? Hours? Days?

  It wouldn’t be easy, but Evelyn could wait. As soon as the police showed any interest at all, she’d delete her fake account and lie low. She’d wait for the shock of it to shake through their lives; then she’d reach out to Noah and apologize for the stupid deception she’d perpetrated on him. He would understand. He would need to talk to someone, after all, and Evelyn was easy to talk to. He’d told her so.

  He’d be confused by Evelyn’s lies, yes, but she could explain them. She’d been in so much pain. He’d forgive her. He had to.

  And the people who needed to pay for this—Juliette and Gary—would pay. Then Noah and Evelyn could rebuild their lives. Not that they’d get married. She wasn’t delusional. He would want to protect his young children from more scandal. He’d want to be careful and quiet. But he and Evelyn would comfort each other. Start again. And eventually . . . eventually they’d find their way together.

  Feeling reassured, she took her coffee to the desk and signed in. She checked the gallery’s page, then Juliette’s, just like normal. Then she pulled up Dawn Brigham’s account to see what today’s news was.

  At first, Evelyn had no idea what she was seeing. Yesterday’s message had been clear to Evelyn, but this one was opaque as paint. I’m very disappointed in the authorities for obvious reasons. I will keep fighting for my baby.

  The replies expressed only standard sympathy and didn’t offer more insight. Evelyn clicked around for a while before finally looking up her favorite local news site.

  Girl’s Hit-and-Run Death Ruled Accidental.

  “What?” Evelyn gasped as the blood seemed to drain from her head in a wave that left her face tingling.

  She clicked the headline and waited for the article to load. Hands clasped together, she rocked shallowly in her chair. “What, what, what?”

  It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be about Kaylee. But it was.

  A witness confirmed that Kaylee Brigham was using heroin the night of her death and likely wandered onto Old Highway 23 from a shed in a nearby wooded area. There were no witnesses to the actual accident, but police confirmed that there are no streetlights on that stretch of the road and that Brigham, dressed in black, would have been difficult to see. “Toxicology reports indicate she had heroin, Xanax, and cocaine in her system,” a police spokesperson said. The spokesperson also confirmed that brake marks on the road indicated the driver was well within the lane and had not swerved onto the shoulder when the collision occurred. The county coroner confirmed that the reason for death will be listed as an accident. “However,” the police spokesperson added, “failure to report an accident, leaving the scene of an accident, and failure to call for assistance are all prosecutable crimes. If the driver is identified at some point in the future, there will be charges brought.”

  If the driver was identified? If?

  Evelyn stared at the screen, her breath scraping in and out of her throat at a faster and faster rate.

  The friend hadn’t seen the accident, so the police were doing nothing?

  No. No, this wasn’t right. This wasn’t okay. What about Noah? Who was going to tell him the truth about Juliette?

  “Oh, God,” she groaned. “Oh, God.”

  Nobody was going to do anything. Evelyn was the only one who knew the whole story. She was the only one who could tell it.

  “Okay,” she whispered, rocking in her chair again, trying to calm the muscles that were screaming with unreleased tension. “Okay.” She had to stop being a coward about this. Because that was what she’d been. A coward. Waiting for someone else to do what she should have done the moment she’d walked into the Whitman Gallery.

  New Evelyn wasn’t a coward. Hadn’t she already proven that to herself? She was brave and untamed and bold.

  She could do this. She had to.

  She got to her feet and paced across the kitchen, trying to burn off the adrenaline flooding her blood. Hands shaking, Evelyn opened a text box on her phone and typed in his name.

  CHAPTER 26

  BEFORE

  Two weeks. Two weeks since Gary had called and tossed Evelyn from her bed into a nightmare. Two weeks since Kaylee’s awful death. Two weeks, and it wasn’t getting better yet.

  But Evelyn was still trying.

  This time she pulled into the parking lot of Oakwood Elementary just a few minutes before school let out. The pickup lane stretched on for nearly a quarter mile down the neighborhood street, but it was a new school that had been designed to keep traffic flowing even at the busiest times of day. Evelyn sailed right past all the waiting parents and found a spot in the lot. Few parents wanted to actually get out to retrieve their children. Not when they could idle in their giant SUVs and continue their important phone conversations.

  The day had started off well. A promising beginning to today’s reconnaissance. It had taken a couple of days to get Gary’s phone code. And a couple more days to actually find his phone unattended. But this morning, she’d finally opened it and it had been clean. If he’d been in touch with Juliette, he’d been wiping the messages and calls as they were sent and received. That was certainly possible. After all, the two of them were covering up a crime together. But Evelyn definitely felt better to have found nothing. It meant she could hope, at least.

  An hour after Evelyn’s arrival at the school, Juliette finally emerged. She was typing on her phone again, and that pushed Evelyn’s new hope higher. Gary might have exchanged an urgent text with his mistress once or twice a week, but not often.

  Both of Juliette’s children scampered out behind her, and Evelyn made a little bleating sound at the sight of them. Gary had been right about that, at least. She didn’t want to hurt these children. They were so much smaller than Cameron or any of the other kids Evelyn saw every day. She’d forgotten how tiny they were in elementary school. Closer to being infants than teenagers.

  Juliette slowed, and Stephanie and Connor ran to the flagpole like this was a normal stop for them. As they took turns trying to climb it—neither of them making it more than two feet from the ground—Juliette typed on her phone, frowning the whole time.

  She was probably texting a friend. Or maybe even her own husband. Evelyn knew next to nothing about him. Maybe things were rough between them. Maybe they were on the verge of a breakup. After all, even if things were bad, Juliette might fight tooth and nail to stop him from finding out she’d cheated.

  Evelyn watched intently as J
uliette finally looked up. She flashed a brief smile at the sight of her daughter trying to slide her son higher on the flagpole, pushing both hands against his rear end. When she called out, they both ran back to her without complaint. On top of everything else, her kids were well behaved. Great.

  Juliette put her phone away so she could hold hands with both kids as they headed for the lot. They walked within ten feet of Evelyn. She stared, mouth gaping, unable to pretend nonchalance. Luckily, Juliette didn’t look over.

  They got into a little red compact car and pulled out. Evelyn followed. She knew from TV that she couldn’t follow too closely. These suburban streets weren’t busy, so Evelyn could be easily spotted. Then again, there were so many turns and curves designed to keep everyone at twenty-five miles per hour that she couldn’t hang back too far or she might lose Juliette altogether.

  “Oh, what the hell,” she muttered. If Juliette wasn’t expecting to be followed, she wouldn’t be watching for it. They headed out to the main road pretty quickly, then made a right turn two miles later into a nicer neighborhood than Evelyn expected for a teacher. They weren’t McMansions, but they were close. Her husband must make more money than Juliette did. Maybe he was a doctor.

  Evelyn snorted, then waited a beat before following Juliette into another right turn.

  “Oh crap,” she whispered. It was a cul-de-sac, and Juliette was pulling into one of the driveways. Before Evelyn could panic and screech into a U-turn or drive over a mailbox, Juliette pulled into a two-car garage, and the door closed behind her.

  Evelyn, who’d very conspicuously braked right in the middle of the street, edged forward and rolled slowly past the house. Brick facade, front porch, cheerful spring flowers in pots on the railing. Just lovely. Just perfect.

  Curling her lip, Evelyn swung the car around the end of the cul-de-sac and drove by again, but there wasn’t much to see. No warning signs that a murderer lived inside. The children had seemed happy and well fed. The grass was still mostly brown from winter but looked as if it had been nicely trimmed in the fall. An Easter wreath hung on the door, and there were sun catchers in the front windows.