All About Evie (ARC)

by Cathy Lamb

She was displeased. “I am going right down to your mother and aunts for a little flower power and I’m going to speak to them about you.”

  It was as if I were still a child and she was reprimanding me, even though she was the one buying pot. I sighed. This is the problem of living in a small town on a small emerald island where your mother and aunts live. “You are welcome to do that.

  Tell them I said hi.”

  She patted her white hair. She knew her threat wouldn’t work with me. “All I want to know is if Seymour will ask me to marry him or sleep with me and take off. What’s the problem? Why so stubborn?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t do fortune telling.”

  “Humpf. You’re being obstinate and unhelpful.”

  “I’m sorry.” Mrs. Lennert is seventy years old. Shouldn’t she know by now if a man is going to sleep with her and take off?

  On the other hand, her paramour, Seymour, is seventy-five. He had a cane and a hearing aid. If he does take off, at least he won’t be taking off rapidly.

  “Mrs. Lennert, you need to ask yourself how you feel about Seymour and then you need to ask him if he’s going to sleep with you and leave you.”

  She furrowed her brow. “I would rather lean on the accuracy of your premonitions.”

  The accuracy of my premonitions? Well, they were accurate.

  Except for the one with the fiery car accident when I die. Probably. Maybe. Could be. “I did get three more autobiographies in.

  Would you like to see them?”

  “Only if they’re autobiographies about powerful, strong women who know their minds. You know I can’t stand reading a book if I think the woman is shallow or weak, following a man around like a silly puppy dog and letting him make decisions about her own life.”

  ALL ABOUT EVIE 323

  I did not laugh at the irony. “No weak or shallow women, I promise.”

  That night I crawled into bed with my cats and dogs and three books.

  I am a Crazy Cat Lady.

  And a Crazy Dog Lady.

  Is there such a thing as a Crazy Alpaca Lady?

  At least Marco understood being crazy about animals.

  I wondered if Betsy, Johnny, Kayla, and Tilly liked animals.

  Would they think I was a crazy animal lover?

  My mom and aunts and I were not talking. It hurt all of us, but I needed time.

  Time to deal with their lies, filled with love though they were.

  When I received a message on my ancestry account the next morning I choked on my coffee and had to spit it out.

  Dear Evie,

  My name is Betsy Baturra. I am your biological mother.

  I would love to meet you, to talk to you, but I will respect your privacy if that is what you would like. Your father, Johnny Kandinsky, and I have been together since we were seventeen. We have been married for twenty-seven years. We have a sixteen-year-old daughter, Kayla, your sister, and you have an aunt Tilly. They, too, would love to meet you, but we will all respect your wishes.

  Our story is complicated. You may have looked us up online. Please know that the online portrait is not always true.

  What is true is that Johnny and I have always loved you. We were devastated to lose you. Every day of our lives we have prayed for your health and happiness.

  I am sure that you have read that I have premoni-

  tions. I have had no premonitions about you, or your

  324 Cathy Lamb

  future, but I am wondering if you have the same gift.

  My mother had it, as did my grandmother, and her

  mother before her. It is the Irish second sight.

  Please call me at the numbers below, or e-mail me, or Johnny, if you would like. I have also enclosed our address. We would be happy to come to you, too, at any time, including today.

  Yours sincerely and with all my love,

  Your mother, Betsy

  I sat back, stunned.

  Shocked.

  There she was. Betsy Baturra.

  Mom.

  I showed the letter to Jules.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  We were sitting at my kitchen table that night, yellow Julia Child roses on the table. Jules was showing me the photos of the motorcycles she had recently custom painted, and we were sampling two pieces of pie—marionberry from a farmer friend named LaRenti and lemon custard by a man who had recently moved here named TeeRee—that I was going to sell in the bookstore. Obviously, the pie eating was purely for professional reasons.

  “I’m going to write back to her. Soon. But not yet. I have to think this through. Do I want to meet her? When?” I looked at my dad’s airplanes hanging from the ceiling. Why did you have to lie, Dad? “Do I want new parents and a sister in my life all the time? Part of the time? Will they like me? Will I like them?”

  “Yep, wait it out and think about it,” she said, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “This marionberry pie is heaven.

  Have a bite.” She held out her fork. “Open up, sister-love.”

  “Delicious.”

  * * *

  ALL ABOUT EVIE 325

  I saw Marco on his boat. I was sitting in the gazebo reading a book with Sundance. I knelt down like a spy and peeped out.

  He was with three other men. They were laughing and talking. I thought my heart would stop beating, collapse, and be sucked into the rest of my body.

  He was so dang handsome, the wind brushing his hair back, his arms muscled, his smile wide.

  I loved that man, I did.

  But Marco loved his boat. That was a problem. A deathly problem.

  My premonition of Marco’s death was stark and horrifying, I didn’t even like to think about it. Thinking about that premonition before I went to sleep had always given me nightmares.

  Together with Sundance we were out on his boat at the tail end of dusk. The boat started taking on water in a freak storm, thunder and lightning, the works. We were not near the islands, not near home, I don’t know where we were, but night soon caved in, the inky blackness all around us, like a suffocating black blanket.

  The boat started to sink, why was not clear to me. Marco had a life raft on board and he inflated it, pushed me into it, then tossed Sundance to me, which knocked me over. The boat suddenly lurched to the side and Marco fell over. He cracked his head on the rail as he went. I grabbed the oars of the lifeboat and went around the tilting boat to get him, screaming his name, my screams lost in a blast of thunder.

  I couldn’t see him, I couldn’t find him. I was nearing hysteria.

  Sundance was barking. The boat went down, the suction pulling on the raft, and I paddled back, still screaming his name, but he was gone. The rain pounded down, the lighting highlighting that I was alone, in a raft, on the ocean, Marco under the water, dying if not dead.

  In the distance, I could see two boats, speeding straight for me. Marco had sent out a Mayday signal. I took off my life jacket and dove off the raft as soon as the suction stopped, searching for Marco. I came up for air, the waves slamming

  326 Cathy Lamb

  against me, but no Marco. He had had a life jacket on, too.

  Where was he? Why wasn’t he bobbing to the surface? Was he stuck, pinned somehow? I dove down again and again, telling myself to be calm, to find Marco. The two boats arrived, and the people hauled me out of the water with a life ring, then grabbed the lifeboat with Sundance barking in it.

  Marco was gone.

  In my premonition I see myself on my knees, keening, sobbing, shaking in the dark on the rescue boat, my despair endless.

  I want to jump in the water and be with him, drown myself, go where he has gone.

  And that was why I could not be with Marco.

  It was his destiny to die on his boat if I was with him.

  My problem with the premonition is that I could not exactly remember what either of us was wearing. It was dark. It was raining. We were wet. I couldn’t tell. Also, I think I was so terrified when
that particular premonition hit, like a rock to my face, that our clothing didn’t penetrate.

  Boating was part of Marco’s life. He loved it. He would want, he would need, someone who loved it, too. If I am not with Marco, if I am never on his boat with him, he will live.

  Now one could say that we could make a rule that we will never sail together, but it’s not good enough. It’s one mistake, it’s letting down our guard one time, and he dies.

  Plus, I’m screwed up. Hair-raising premonitions. People I have to save with, sometimes, only a few minutes to do so. A high dose of anxiety and depression that comes and goes that I have to fight. Sometimes that depression is based in sand and burning flames in a place far away. I also don’t want to leave the island again, which would be restricting for anyone. Who wants to live with a semi-hermit? I have deliberately let some people die without warning them what’s coming for them. He may well have a moral issue with that. I have an endless need to be alone to get my brain sorted out and my rampaging emotions evened out. I’m a book hoarder.

  I could kill him, and I could make him miserable as his wife.

  I’m a real prize.

  ALL ABOUT EVIE 327

  No, Marco is better off without me. That is not said as an irritating martyr. It’s said as truth.

  Thinking about a life without Marco, or worse, thinking about life without Marco when he gets married and has children . . . well, that dumps me in an emotional gutter.

  But it is what it needs to be.

  I know that.

  C h a p t e r 3 2

  Betsy Baturra

  Portland, Oregon

  2012

  Betsy saw the car crash premonition again when she was driving to the original Rose’s Market for a meeting.

  The cliff was on her right, mountain on her left, the one-lane road curving. The sun behind her shone through the fir trees, the orange poppies almost glowing. She looked over the cliff, not liking how steep it was.

  The other driver, in the blue truck, coming straight toward her on that one-lane road, swerved as she slammed on her brakes.

  Betsy swerved, too, away from the truck, but it was too late. The truck dove tailed and their head-on collision was a dead-on hit.

  At first they wobbled together, like a teeter-totter at the edge of the cliff, then they both, at the same time, together, crashed over the side.

  Betsy knew they were rolling as her car collapsed around her, the sides smashing in, the roof bending, her body thrown around under the seat belt, her head slamming into the airbag.

  She thought they were taking more air for a second before her car rolled one more time. The crush of metal was louder than it had ever been, as if she were in a can that had been squished by a giant foot.

  ALL ABOUT EVIE 329

  One of them died, she thought. Maybe both of them. There was an air of death amidst the cacophony of noise, the flames, the black smoke, and the shattering of glass.

  But it was also unclear . . .

  She gritted her teeth and went to the meeting at Rose’s Market.

  When she left the meeting she thought of Rose, actually she thought of Evie Lindsay, her daughter. The daughter who had taken a DNA test. She had learned all she could about Evie and her bookstore. They looked almost identical, and the resemblance to Kayla was uncanny.

  She prayed and prayed that Evie/Rose would answer the message she wrote to her.

  “Please, Rose, please,” she whispered, her voice sounding raw and desperate even to her. “Evie, please.”

  C h a p t e r 3 3

  On Halloween night Gavin killed my best friend’s mother, Miss Patsy.

  Two neighbors out walking their dogs heard Patsy screaming and came running. They heard Gavin yelling, “Wake up, Patsy!

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God! Patsy!”

  The neighbors ran to the house. One of them was a retired police officer, and one was a retired firefighter and paramedic.

  They rushed to the kitchen as Gavin was rushing out, grabbing his keys and wallet, his face red, stained with tears. The retired police officer stood his ground and yelled at Gavin not to move, but he did not have a gun, and Gavin was panicked so he shoved him aside and took off in his truck. The police officer and the firefighter bent over Patsy, who was bleeding profusely, and tried to help.

  They called 911 and said they needed a helicopter to take Patsy to the hospital. They did CPR in Patsy’s home, and they continued until the life flight crew took over.

  Patsy was wearing her brown sweater, the scarf with pumpkins on it, and her beige slacks. She died.

  Gavin sped off in his boat, out of his mind, but was immediately plucked up out in the ocean by the coast guard. He would get a sentence of life in prison. He had two other convictions for assaults against a former wife and former girlfriend and a multi-tude of antistalking orders.

  My sweet friend Emily was so shocked that her mother had

  ALL ABOUT EVIE 331

  been killed, she stopped crying altogether the next day, her eyes vacant, her face gray.

  Emily and her grandma, Patsy’s mother, who sobbed through the memorial service, packed up with help from all of us, and they moved to Texas, where her grandma was a teacher. We wrote letters for years. Emily later became involved in drugs and alcohol. It was obvious why—she was numbing the pain of her loss. No father—he had abandoned her before she was even born—and her mother murdered. Her grandma died, I knew that, when she was twenty-one, and Emily was on her own. I haven’t heard from her in years.

  Patsy’s death was my fault.

  All my fault.

  I saw that beating coming, I saw death leaning over her, and I saw what Patsy was wearing, I could have done something to save my best friend’s mother. I should have noticed her clothes that day, but I was too excited about the Halloween dance. I have never been able to get rid of that guilt. The guilt led to depression. Yes, I know I was only fourteen years old. Yes, I know that Gavin was responsible.

  But the worst thing about having premonitions is that when you can prevent something bad from happening to someone, and you mess that up, you live with that guilt, as irrational as it sounds, for the rest of your life. I failed Emily and I failed Miss Patsy.

  And because of my failure, Patsy could not mother Emily, and Emily got into drugs and disappeared. I didn’t even know if she was alive.

  I drove by Emily’s house when I delivered books to Torrance, who was almost healed from his surgery. I stopped, backed up, then pulled into the driveway, the willow tree blowing in the wind.

  I have always missed Emily, and I hoped that her life was happy and healthy. She deserved it. Her mother had deserved it, too.

  Marco came over to my house on Sunday evening.

  He had called first, asked if he could come over to talk, and

  332 Cathy Lamb

  I’d said yes. I couldn’t resist seeing him. I was miserable. My own loneliness was like a living, breathing tangle of pain.

  “Thanks, Evie.” He sat at my table. I had made him hot chocolate and put a huge dollop of whipped cream on it, plus a stick of chocolate. And I’d given him a slice of peach pie. I was trying not to cry. Trying hard.

  “Wow.” He actually smiled. “Now that’s dessert. Thank you.”

  “There are peaches in the pie, which puts it in the fruit group,”

  I said, my voice cracking a tad because he is warm and loving and always looks at me as if I mean something to him. As if I’m important. He looks at me gently. And with lust. It’s a potent and near irresistible combination. “And the hot chocolate has milk in it, which puts it in the milk group.”

  He nodded at me.

  “It’s my best excuse.” Sundance tried to get in my lap, but I gently pushed him down. Ghost climbed up on the table, and I gently put her on the floor. I hoped the goats would not try to come in. I sniffled, tried to hide it by saying, “I think my cats are making me sneeze.”

  “You don’t need an excuse to eat peach pie. Ea
t what you want.”

  His face was so handsome, but he seemed tired. Stressed. For once in my life I couldn’t eat peach pie. That was a dang shame, but I was too miserable. I’d actually lost fifteen pounds. My butt was smaller, my boobs were smaller, and I felt weak and drained. I didn’t even have the energy to get something nice on.

  I was wearing a zippered pink sweatshirt and jeans. I did make time to put on Aunt Camellia’s lotion called Rose Hips and Bust.

  “Evie, I’ve asked you out many times and you’ve said no.”

  “I know.”

  “I need to ask you something.”

  I knew what he was talking about. “Yes. I’ve had a premonition about you. About us.”

  I saw the worry in his eyes, but also courage. “Was it a good premonition or a bad one?”

  ALL ABOUT EVIE 333

  “It was a bad one.” My eyes flooded. “You die in it, Marco.

  You drown.”

  He was silent for long seconds, his hands clasped together, not eating the pie. “Well, that’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not. You see, Marco . . .” I rushed forward so I could calm him down, reduce his worry, about how and when he died. “I’m with you. We’re on your boat. There’s a storm. It’s nighttime. You pitch over into the water. The boat goes down, the suction almost taking me down in the life raft. I’m trying to find you, but you’re gone. I’m screaming, I dive in and out of the water, but the night is so dark, the waves so bad, I can’t find you. Sundance is barking, I’m crying. It’s the worst premonition I’ve ever had.” Including the premonition where I might or might not die in a calamitous car crash.

  He stared at me, then said, his face clearing, “Then we need to stay off my boat. It’s that simple.”

  “We can’t. It’s one mistake on our part, one boat ride, one time thinking that it’s okay and it’s not. I’ve even tried to see the clothes we were wearing, but I can’t. It’s too dark, the storm is too heavy. The whole thing petrified me.” I drew my hands across my face, my breathing somewhat gaspy, like I was drowning.