“Maybe, but you do make mistakes. And the people you love forgive you.” Kevin moved out from the protective shelter of his desk as he delved into deeper, murkier waters.
“I’m so sick of hearing you spout off about forgiveness!” Evelyn threw her remaining materials into her bag helter-skelter. “How could you, Kevin? What did I do . . . what didn’t I do that made you need a relationship with this woman? That’s what it was, a relationship, not an ‘accident’!”
Cocoa yelped and wriggled from Evelyn’s overly tight embrace, hopped onto the floor, and scurried over to the safety of the love seat under the window. Evelyn crossed her arms over her midsection to warm herself in the absence of her pet, trying to calm her now-churning stomach. She prayed there wouldn’t be a repeat of their last confrontation.
“We’re friends . . . we were friends!”
She pounced on the present tense. “So you’re still friends. Friends? After all this . . . all this . . . this ‘I’m sorry; please forgive me’? But you know what? You should never have been friends in the first place, let alone still! You work together, Kevin. More specifically, she works for you. Which means there should never. Have been. A friendship.” Evelyn jabbed her index finger in the air, emphasizing each phrase. “It was an employer-employee relationship. In fact, she can sue you! That’s sounding like a pretty smart thing to do. If you’re going to cheat, at least be smart about it.”
“Sam didn’t work for me. She worked for Eric—”
“Sam. How cute. ‘Sam didn’t work for me.’ But that’s all you have to say? That’s your excuse?” Evelyn huffed. “Wait a minute, worked? What do you mean worked?”
“You couldn’t possibly think we’d still be working together.” Kevin raked his right hand down his face, a habit of his that had made her smile not that long ago. “Samantha Jane quit. She’s moving to Illinois.” He sighed. “And yes, she could sue me, I suppose, but she wouldn’t.”
Evelyn smirked. “Of course not, because you’re such good friends.” Crushed herself, she could muster no sympathy for his admin’s abrupt leave-taking. “A broken heart?”
“She didn’t love me, Evie, despite what she said.” Kevin stepped closer. Cocoa growled from the couch. Ignoring the dog, he whispered, “And I didn’t love her. I love you. You know I do.”
She winced at her name and at his nearness. In a voice that was more hiss than hush, Evelyn responded, “What I know is that you left me, if only for a day, a moment. Okay, so you just came this close—” Evelyn held two fingers a millimeter apart—“to having sex with her, but you were unfaithful to me, and you know it. You chose to spend time with her, you gave in to a mutual attraction, you became besties . . .” Her laugh held no humor. “You shared something precious with someone you say you don’t even love, Kevin, something you share with me. So how can you really love me? And if you do, how can you not love her?”
He shook his head, perhaps to clear away the fuzziness created by Evelyn’s reasoning, but still he tried to speak. “Ev—”
But she couldn’t stand, physically or emotionally, to hear him defend something she considered indefensible. Her empty stomach rebelled against all the emotions roiling around within and without. She backed away from him, shaking her head and holding up a hand to ward him off. Evelyn snatched up her bag and scooped Cocoa from the sofa.
This was the closest she’d been to Kevin in weeks, since she’d thrown up all over his feet. As if willing to risk another pair of shoes to maintain their connection, however fractured and tenuous, he pursued her to their family room. Though he didn’t touch Evelyn, he used his considerable size to block her from rushing pell-mell through the room and to the garage.
“Evelyn—”
She drew up short. “If you touch me . . . Please, just—just . . . don’t touch me. I don’t think I could take it.” She shook from head to toe.
“Okay. Okay. But you look terrible.” Instead of reaching for her, Kevin held up his hands in surrender and backed toward the kitchen.
Evelyn watched his retreat, thinking of how he used touch to communicate: kissing her nose instead of saying hello; squeezing her knee under the table to let her know his plans for dessert; playing with her hair to show he was listening while she talked about her students; cupping her shoulder in church to indicate he was getting sleepy and needed some gum. Whenever she was within reach, he was reaching for her. She knew it showed incredible restraint for him to back away at that moment and offer:
“Water. I’m getting you some water.”
As if that would quench her dry, thirsty places.
“No. Nothing. Wait! Uh, yes, juice. Orange juice, please. With ice?” Evelyn’s physical needs overwhelmed her emotional ones, and succumbing, she plonked her things down on the coffee table and fell in a heap into the overstuffed armchair in the corner. She hated to depend on him for anything, but she knew she couldn’t take another step, even to help herself.
One minute later she was sipping an icy tumbler of juice. Five minutes after that, her meager stomach contents decided they would stay put, at least for the moment. She rested her head on the tufted back of the chair and closed her eyes.
When she opened them, more than an hour had passed, and a delicious smell wafted from the kitchen. She stretched and sniffed her way in its direction. She peeked around the kitchen door at Kevin.
He stood there with his shirtsleeves rolled up, handsome, focused, in his element in the kitchen as much as he was in the boardroom. And in the bedroom. Looking up from the twelve-inch skillet he was standing over, he gave her a small smile, the gap between his front teeth winking at her a bit, making his perfect, chiseled jawline a little less perfect, a little more approachable. She almost smiled back at him.
Almost.
Instead, she nodded toward the cast-iron pan. “Is that—?”
“Chicken Lester.” They locked eyes for a moment.
The first time she’d prepared the dish—a thinly disguised chicken marsala—they were newly married. Kevin had just started his company, and money was very tight, too tight to waste on wine they didn’t drink. Instead of splurging on a bottle for a test-case meal, she and Kevin had substituted homemade chicken broth and a cardboard carton of the cheapest mushrooms they could find. They’d dubbed the successful result chicken Lester forever after.
“Hungry?”
She just about shook her head, but her stomach, appeased by the calcium-fortified orange juice an hour earlier, was now fully alert and ready for action. Evelyn nodded. “Can I help you with anything?”
“Almost done. Why don’t you freshen up and meet me at the table?”
Evelyn accepted his offer and retreated up the back stairs to the landing and hastened to their bedroom. Getting ready didn’t take long, especially after her dry run a couple of weeks ago.
“Evelyn!”
Freshly showered, dressed, and packed, Evelyn quietly took her bags down the front stairs and circled around through the mudroom. She tucked them by the back door leading to the garage. Kevin, busy setting the table in the sunroom on the other side of the kitchen, didn’t hear her as she retraced her steps to the second floor so she could descend the back stairs. Evelyn arrived at the table a little out of breath but ready for her last supper.
“You feeling better?” Kevin set down her plate and pulled back her chair. He stood there, obviously waiting for Evelyn to sit down.
“Why don’t you go ahead and sit, and I’ll bring your plate so we can sit down together?”
“O-okay.” Kevin sat—directly to her right instead of across from her at his usual place—and sipped from his water glass. Evelyn centered his plate on his mat before sitting down. Instinctually, she covered his hand with hers, and hands clasped and heads bowed, Kevin asked for God’s blessings on their meal.
This is why I have to go, Evelyn thought. I’ll fall back into habits and rituals without thinking about what I’m doing. Bile rose into her throat. And I will not forget.
They ate quietly, exchanging a few banal comments. When the meal ended, she crossed her fork and knife on the plate and pushed it away. She clasped her hands under her chin, almost as if to pray, and took a deep breath, but Kevin stopped her as she parted her lips to speak.
“You look beautiful, Evelyn. You really do. Even more than usual.”
His light-brown eyes caressed her face, something she didn’t think she could ever let his hands do again. All she could think about were his hands touching Samantha Jane, who missed him. Avoiding his eyes that looked hungry for her despite the filling meal, Evelyn studied the remains on her dish instead, giving herself and him time to digest both the food and the moment. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Kevin—”
“Evelyn.” They spoke in unison. He paused, but then he continued instead of letting her speak first, as his father had surely trained his oldest son. “Evelyn, we can make it through this. We just need to take some time, to talk it through. What we have is good. It’s based on truth, no matter what it looks like now.” He swallowed. When he started to speak again, his voice cracked. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I don’t know how I could have betrayed you by even looking at another woman, let alone getting close enough to . . . to consider having an affair with her, but I do know it will never happen again.”
Evelyn blinked to break their connection and focused on the Scripture from 2 Corinthians she had read earlier that day: “Persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” Her resolve renewed, she met his eyes, and this time she did not waver. She refused to let her condition force her from the table and to the bathroom or worse, to the bedroom with Kevin to forgive and forget. She spoke quickly, definitively. “I’m leaving, Kevin.”
“What? What do you mean—?”
“I’m leaving. You. Tonight.”
“B-but what about this—?”
“This what? Dinner? It was delicious. Thank you. It was perfectly cooked, and actually, it was well-timed. I couldn’t think of a better way to remind myself of what we had, of what you threw away when you nearly had sex with that woman.” She could feel the heat rising from her toes, working its way up to the collar of her loose, printed shirt.
“You say, ‘I know it won’t happen again,’ but in the same breath you admit you have no idea how it happened in the first place. If that’s the case, how can you promise you can prevent this from happening again? How can you sit there and tell me our marriage is based on truth? What truth? Whose truth? You lied to me when you hid your attraction to her, and you kept lying for another six months when you hid what happened that night. If I hadn’t read those messages, you’d still be lying now with your lips clamped shut on the truth, telling me how much you love me instead of telling me how sorry you are. As far as I’m concerned, you might as well have had sex with her because you wanted to.”
Evelyn stood. The napkin resting in her lap dropped to the floor. “How can I trust you?” She wanted to ask him, How can we trust you?
Kevin’s silence didn’t answer either question.
“I love you, but I don’t believe you. And I can’t trust you with my . . . with my heart.” Evelyn wasn’t sure what had almost slipped through her lips, between the crack in her defenses, but she knew she had to leave before the walls crumbled completely and she said too much. “I don’t know where we’re headed. All I can do is feel right now. I can’t think clearly, whether to stay or to go—”
“But you are going!” Kevin exploded to his feet, throwing his napkin on the table.
Subconsciously her feet made truth of his words as she backed up a step from him, toward the door, but she continued to face him. “I am going, but . . . but . . . I’m not moving out, at least not . . . not permanently.” Evelyn struggled because in her heart, she really did want to go. For good. But her head told her that this was her brokenness talking, her passionate nature. She knew she needed space and time to pray. “I don’t want to rush into anything, Kevin, whether it’s to work this out or to let my lawyer do it for me.”
He inhaled sharply at that, and his eyes widened.
Evelyn sensed he had never entertained that thought, the idea that she would divorce him. He seemed to shrink a few inches, to diminish physically as he swallowed his emotions. She watched him sink into his chair.
“But our house is big enough. I can move to a guest room, to the basement.”
Evelyn allowed a tiny smile. “No, Kevin, it’s not big enough. I see that tonight. If I stay any longer, we’ll be eating by candlelight and making love after dinner, and I’ll let that erase what happened without dealing with it. There’s too much at stake for me to let that happen.”
“Have you prayed about this, Evelyn?”
“Did you and Samantha Jane pray about it?”
He squeezed his eyes closed. One hand covered the other that was curled into a fist. He rested his forehead on his clasped knuckles.
“Really, Kevin, did you?”
He shook his head, once, twice, but he kept his eyes closed, his head bowed, seemingly submitting to God’s will even as he resisted his wife’s.
“Well, okay then. I’ll pray about us long and hard. Believe me. I know you have a long trip coming up. When you leave for Europe, I’ll return. We both have work to do, and I don’t think we’ll get much done if we stay here together.”
She waited a minute, giving him time to respond, but Kevin said nothing. He just continued to shake his head. She turned away from the tears that seeped from the corners of his eyes.
“Cocoa!” From out of nowhere the dog pitter-pattered to her and she picked her up. “Good-bye, Kevin. I’ll pray for your success and safety.” Evelyn turned away.
“Do you really think God will hear you if your heart isn’t right?”
Evelyn gasped at the sucker punch. If my heart isn’t right. She gathered her bags she’d stowed by the door and added Cocoa’s leash and travel case. She turned back in his direction. It was his turn to stare out the window into the backyard. “You’d better hope so.”
With these whispered words Evelyn loaded Cocoa and their things into her Acura SUV. She pressed the button overhead to open the garage door. She backed down the drive and turned her car in the direction of Mount Laurel. To Mama’s.
It was time to go home.
Chapter Five
A WEEK INTO HER VISIT, Evelyn determined home wasn’t that sweet.
Jackson spent his free time attached to his PlayStation controller, enjoying his last months before college. Her childhood friend Maxine Owens had to leave on a writing assignment. She couldn’t picture what Peter would do next in her story because all she saw was Kevin, boarding the flight for Europe. Arm in arm with Samantha Jane. Swapping salted peanut–flavored kisses in business class.
So she wore herself out running here and there. From Harris Teeter with groceries. From her sister’s phone calls. From her mama’s observing eyes. From thoughts of Granny B. Today, Evelyn’s fleeing feet had led her to Headquarters, the full-service salon Elisabeth—Lis—had opened the year her husband died. Evelyn got there early for their “date” to visit her daddy’s grave site, so she hid behind the wood-and-iron screen in the lobby.
Lis strode through the aisles in her three-inch-heeled sandals. She leaned in close to a stylist’s ear and graced her with her Southern, yet professional lilt. “Laurie, you must base your client completely before using the chemical. Let me show you, dear.” Effortlessly, yet surely mindful of the expensive red pantsuit she was wearing, Lis demonstrated how to liberally spread the coating behind the ears, above the brows, and around the temple, protecting her client from chemical burns. Done, she stripped off the gloves as she depressed the trash can’s pedal with a red-tipped toe. Again, she leaned into her stylist.
Evelyn watched her mama’s lips move as Laurie bobbed her head up and down and blinked back tears. Then Lis smiled again and moved toward her office nestled in the rear. On her way she chatted with two other clients sitting under cooled hair dryers. Mama h
ated to see customers idle like cars at a red light. Tired of wasting gas herself, Evelyn gathered her bag and stepped into view.
“Evelyn! Is that you?”
“Girl, you look good!”
“Isn’t she though? Just like her sister—”
“And her mama.”
“Miss Lis didn’t tell me you were home . . .”
Evelyn played the role of visiting dignitary as she stopped to formally introduce herself to Laurie and chat it up with Saundra, John, and the other stylists who had been family to Lis since Graham’s death. She shared some Krispy Kreme doughnuts she’d picked up, handed out smiles and promises to visit soon, and wound her way to the back.
Before Evelyn could tap-tap on the partially open door, she heard her mama expel a breath and mutter, “Order dryer caps. Track anti-humectant shipment. Discuss procedures with stylists. Do something with Evelyn.”
Evelyn swung open the door. “I have some ideas if you’re fresh out.”
Lis barely blinked an eye as she set down the pen and notepad. “I was wondering when you’d come out from hiding. Now be careful you don’t knock my dress off the hanger. I’m changing out of this pantsuit before we visit your daddy. I’ll be ready to go in a minute.”
Of course Mama knew I was there. Evelyn stepped in the room and closed the door quietly behind her. The green sundress hanging on the back of the door swung side to side before coming to a stop.
As she watched her mama shuffle papers, Evelyn’s eyes zeroed in on a photograph on the corner of Lis’s desk. In it, a tuxedoed Graham and Evelyn in a white ball gown posed at the top of a winding staircase. Evelyn was thirteen, a year before Daddy died, on the night she’d tucked her left hand into his right arm so he could usher her into Mount Laurel society. She could still smell his Old Spice. Still feel the taffeta crinkle every step she took. Still hear Mama’s voice.
A Long Time Comin' Page 4