by Elle Tyler
“Not at all,” she answered. “I was born blonde.” I couldn’t help my stare, and she rolled her shoulders in discomfort. “Do you like my new dress? It was a gift from Merriam Webster.”
My lips soured. “That’s a dictionary.”
Everly shrugged. “I thought it was pretty nice.”
I played along, even though I didn’t understand the game. “Why would this person give you her clothes?”
“She died. I used to talk to her at church. She was how I learned about hope.”
“I’m just gonna leap and guess she taught you a lot of the devious wisdom you possess.”
She looked up at me. “You see—you do listen. That’s another thing I like about you. That and your crease.”
“I have a crease?”
“Yeah.” She thumbed my glabella. “Right there, when I get under your skin. Sometimes I try to frustrate you on purpose just so I can see it.”
Her smile was too much. Her thumb was too much. I inched backward. “I think I should get going. My shift at the hospital starts soon.”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t say anything else, but Everly did. My name from her lips caused me to turn around. “You really are my favorite.”
“Don’t go giving out awards yet. I haven’t done anything.”
“But you have,” Everly argued. “You’ve given me hope.”
THIS WAS NOT A HOME
13.
A STURDY PILE of bricks. A proud American flag. Two stories of earned success. That was the greeting outside of the Brighton home.
The Saturday I knocked to ask Dr. Brighton the question that would lead to one of the most important adventures of my life, I found myself entering a whole new world as I stepped through the front door.
Their housekeeper led me into the foyer and told me to wait. As she disappeared up the staircase, I took one step that lead to three and then too many to keep myself out of trouble.
I searched to find a picture of Everly as a child, to see Brighton with his daughter, unmasked, but nothing. Every wall in the house was bare: not a single portrait, not even a piece of art. As I took it all in—the living room, the foyer, hallways in between rooms—I realized what I was seeing. This was not a home; this was a well-orchestrated production of how to keep someone alive.
Where most normal homes would showcase wood, carpet, or tile as flooring, Dr. Brighton’s home had rubber. No rugs to trip over. No sharp edges on furniture.
Sterile.
A locked box around the thermostat.
Charts on the fridge keeping logs of Everly’s eating times, what nurse was on duty, supplements to be given, appointments to be kept.
Not a single speck of dust or anything out of alignment.
And the oddest of all—sticker-like temperature gauges on nearly everything in the kitchen.
“Is there a reason why you’re snooping through my house, Mr. Trovatto?” His voice surprised me from the doorway of the kitchen. In his hand he held a dark-green coffee mug. As I scrambled for words, he slurped a long sip.
“Just looking for Everly.”
“Are your eyes working today?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you can see Everly is not in this room.”
“I meant I wanted to see a picture of Everly as a child, so I went looking around as I waited for you. That’s all, sir.”
“And are you satisfied by what you’ve found?”
“I don’t know what to make of it.”
“It... or... her?” he asked.
“Both, if I can be honest with you, Dr. Brighton.”
“For your sake—you better be.” Dr. Brighton took a seat at the kitchen table and then nudged a chair for me with his foot.
“I need to ask you something,” I said as I took my seat. “I want Everly to come to my family’s house in Montauk for the Fourth of July.”
He shook his head. “Out of the question.”
“Actually, sir, with all due respect, I haven’t asked one yet.”
“The names Everly and/or Montauk better not be part of it.”
And this was where having an actress for a mother paid off. “You know my father Andrew, right?”
“Yes,” he said coolly. “We worked together several years ago.”
“Then you know he’s an excellent doctor.”
He took another long sip, and I knew I was on to something. He was stalling. “With all due respect to you and your family, Callum, your father was an excellent doctor before he quit. I don’t even believe he’s licensed any longer.”
“If you were dying and had to choose between a licensed doctor and my father, who would you pick? No wait—allow me to rephrase. If Everly was dying, who would you choose to save her life?”
He sat taller. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Because you and I both know that a license is just a piece of paper, and my father is still one of the best doctors in the country. He has a drinking problem because he has a broken-heart problem, but that doesn’t make him any less brilliant than he’s always been.”
Brighton leaned forward and the gloves came off. “If you have been discussing Everly’s case with your father to form a diagnosis, I will have to fail you. That is absolutely forbidden. He has privileged information.” His face filled with regret as he soon as he slipped.
I stayed cool.
“Why would he know anything about her?” I asked, as if he had just given me the answers Everly already had.
“Isn’t that the point of your question? Lure me into thinking Andrew has come up with a miracle cure for my daughter so you can wiggle your way out of diagnosing her?”
“I didn’t even know my father knew her until now. I was only trying to convince you that, if Everly came to Montauk with us for the holiday, she would be in great hands.”
Brighton slammed his mug to the table. Splashes of coffee landed on the walnut-colored wood. “Game over. You spoke the two words I forbid.”
“Dr. Brighton... please. You have to see that Everly is not happy living this way. She’s only doing it because she feels guilty about her mother dying—she thinks it’s all her fault. She wants to make you happy.”
“Does she?”
“But at the cost of her own happiness.” I sighed and then went for the jugular. “She told me that when you bought her Peter Pan as a child, it made her sad, because she believes her only joy will come after she dies. She doesn’t even believe in the world she was born into. She doesn’t think she has a place. I gave her a Bible just so she could see our Lord has a plan for her. I really want to help her find happiness before she dies. Maybe a weekend at the beach doesn’t seem like much to you or me, but to Everly, it’s a dream come true.”
He watched for a lie, but it would never come. “She told me it was her favorite book.”
“I’m sure she did.”
He sat in his chair. It was quiet for a long while, the way the sky goes silent right before it turns gray and all hell breaks loose.
“She also told me,” I added, “that she needs my help to thwart your conservatorship.”
His gaze turned darker. “And you think that’s possible? You and your adorable three years of medical school?”
“I think making Everly believe it’s possible is a more prudent choice. Her hope rests on the possibility of freedom, so allow her to believe it’s being offered in order to keep her from taking more drastic, dangerous measures. I can and will keep her safe.”
“You don’t even know what she has,” he argued.
“Everly knows. She doesn’t have a death wish. She has a freedom wish. Give her an inch so she won’t want a mile. Appeasement is your only friend now.”
THE OCEAN BETWEEN THE WAVES
Part Two
FEAR OF FALLING
14.
EVERLY ONCE TOLD ME she loved New York because it was like a kaleidoscope—a maze full of pictures at every turn.
I wondered how many photographs lived in
side of her mind. How many times had she turned the lens and found for herself a new, bigger, more vibrant world.
As I climbed the metal steps of the Montauk Point lighthouse, those were my only thoughts. I wanted her to see the ocean from this high up. I wanted her to know that the world went so far beyond the lines of where the sky’s crease met with the ocean’s endless drift.
“I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” I said, climbing the stairs behind her as she ascended. But she kept her focus on the aged bricks, her hand sweeping along the brittle history with every new step.
A group of rowdy teenagers followed behind us, and even though they probably wanted to move faster, I kept the pace Everly had set, climbing sure-footedly. I watched in wonder, curious how someone so quiet could shut out the noise of the world without making a single sound.
She paused at the first window to gaze at the ocean but was a bit too short. I would have offered to help her, but she moved right along until we reached the top.
And that’s when I knew Everly had never witnessed true phantasmagoria in her world.
“Take my hand,” I offered.
She held steadfast to the railing, not stepping even an inch onto the observation area. “It’s too windy. Too high.”
“I promise I won’t let you fall.”
“With both pinkies?”
I offered my other hand. “What other kind of promise is there?”
“Timothy will flunk you if I die... In case you’re terrible at keeping promises.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure the Coast Guard wouldn’t appreciate it, either. Although they might mistake you for a mermaid with that hair color.”
“I’ll be sure to sing them ‘My Jolly Sailor Bold.’”
“You’re stalling.”
“Ya’ think, Callum Andrew?”
I smiled and then took her hands in mine—a little surprised when she let me so easily. But as soon as she stepped out on to the platform and felt the wind upsweep her long hair, she instantly bloomed to life and let go of the fear.
“Otherworldly, right?” I leaned on the rail and stared out into the ocean with her.
Everly put one hand in the air, the other on the railing next to mine. “What do you think it feels like to be a bird?”
“If you’re a bird who lives around here?” I answered. “Like you won the fuckin’ birdy jackpot.”
Everly laughed but cupped her hand over my curse word. My lips innocently kissed her palm and thrill grew in the pit of my stomach. I took her hand with a plan to lock our fingers, but she pulled free.
“So where is your house?” she asked, snuggly pulling the ivory fabric of her lace cover-up closed. She had on denim shorts beneath and a navy swimsuit, but they were all covered up now.
“Aren’t you hot?”
“It’s light. I’m fine.”
“I’m in shorts and a T-shirt, and despite the nice breeze, I’m still a little warm. You have on twice as many clothes as me.”
“I’m half your size,” she countered.
“Are you shy or something? One of those girls who doesn’t like their bikini body?”
“One of those girls? No, I’m not one of those girls, whoever those girls might be. I’m not one of anything so easily lumped together for the convenience of a title.”
I smiled, having a silent Eureka moment. “Seven.”
“Hmm?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing.” I smiled. “Nothing.”
HOW IT BEGINS IS
HOW IT GOES
15.
WORDS FROM MY childhood stopped us at the front door.
How it begins is how it goes.
It was cracked and faded. Chipped and forgotten in so many ways. Everly traced the letters with her finger. “Who wrote this?”
“Vandals. Damn vandals. You’d think in a nice area like this, we could avoid such pointless crime.”
“Callum Andrew,” she warned.
I sighed. “My mother wrote it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something she and my pop used to tell us as kids.”
“It kind of reminds me of something.” Everly turned to me. “One of my nurses gave me a box of paper dolls for my birthday one year. Do you know what those are?”
“Yeah, my sister had them.”
She smiled. “I liked the idea of those dolls. You could just snap their lives on them, and if they wanted something new, something different, you just chose something else, and suddenly a little girl was a business woman or a cheerleader. I started to think about life like that, how interchangeable we all are. When I first met Truscott, he was about to have his millionth surgery. And all I could think as I watched him was, if I could just snap off my heart and give it to him, he’d be all better. But it’s never going to be that easy. I was born with hopelessness, and, chances are, Truscott will die with the same hopeless feeling. His mother will endure that same hopeless feeling.”
I tutted, jokingly. “You have too much doubt in my ability to steal your heart, Everly Anne.”
“That,” she said, turning away, “is so very untrue. If anything, I believe too much in your ability.”
“Good to hear, as I am one skilled man when it comes to stealing the hearts of pretty girls.”
“Oh, are you?” She laughed.
“No,” I replied. “Not really.”
“I do doubt that.”
We stared at the door for a moment.
Everly finally asked, “So, how do we begin, Callum Andrew?”
“Hmm,” I thought. “How about with our first day of freedom. We start with freedom.”
“Freedom,” she echoed. “Freedom sounds like a dream.”
***
My father was in the kitchen when we entered the house. He startled as if we’d interrupted him from his thoughts.
“Hey, Pop.”
“Callum.”
He looked at Everly but didn’t acknowledge her further. I wasn’t sure if I should lie or ask him if he remembered treating her, but my gut told me to only say her name and let the scene play out organically.
“This is Everly.”
“Um.” She looked at me. “Could you tell me where your bathroom is?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. First door down the hallway.” I pointed her in the right direction, and she disappeared quickly.
“Girlfriend?” my dad asked around a sip of clear.
“No. Um... She’s from class. Brighton is making us conduct a differential on her.” Say something. Please. Remember.
He was quiet for a moment. “She looks well.”
“She has some kind of condition. I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Yes.” That’s all he said before he swallowed down the rest of his drink. His eyes glanced over my shoulder to the French doors behind me. “Tatum and Nicholas showed up while you were gone. He’s got the barbecue fired up. Spend some time with your friends. School can wait.”
I already knew the answer. “Will you join us, Pop?”
“Maybe in a little while.” Because not enough clear had made its way down, and he liked to drink away his sorrow all alone.
I waited for her at the end of the hall. She walked shyly toward me, and I offered her my hand.
“Do you mind if I give you a tour later? I have a few friends here. We don’t get to see each other too often—and I’d like you to meet them.”
“Why?” She honestly looked puzzled.
Slowly, I replied, “Because they’re important to me. We grew up together.”
She nodded and took my hand. As we walked to the porch door, Everly gazed up and all around, taking in as much as she could before we reached the deck.
Nick was always the easiest person to spot. His personality matched his height. His height matched his voice. His voice was like an alarm. And his ink was a story of where he had been and where his beliefs lay.
Death before Dishonor marked his chest.
SEMPER FI marked his upper right
arm.
Stripes and stars colored over his heart.
And the secrets he shared with my favorite nurse had taken over the inside of his left arm, because it was the most hidden place on his body, closest to his heart. Nicholas Petros was not the kind of man who paraded around his treasure. He was the kind of man who’d kill someone for simply trying to find where his treasure resided. It wasn’t something he’d been taught as a military man. It was something that simply came into the world with him and bloomed inside of a little girl named Tatum Quade. The only tell was that the ink on him matched the ink on her.
I grinned at his surly expression when we reached the table where he sat smoking. “If you’re waiting for me to salute you... Yeah... Not gonna fuckin’ happen.”
He laughed, blowing out smoke. He glanced quickly to Everly, to our hands, and then pretended as if he hadn’t. “Are you a doctor yet, Cal? Because I have this really itchy patch on my balls I need you to take a look at...”
I put up my hand. “Your sack itching is between you and the men you chose to love in the barracks.”
Nick choked out his laugh. Stomped out his cigarette in the red ashtray so he could extend his hand to me. “Good to see you, brother.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I shook his hand. “Don’t get all sappy because I acknowledged your balls.”
He smiled but glanced toward Everly again.
I lifted her hand in mine. “This is Everly. Ev, this is Sergeant Nicholas Petros. My partner in crime since we were in elementary school.”
He loomed over her as he stood to shake her hand. A giant before an ant.
Smiling, he said, “My apologies in advance for everything that might happen this weekend, Everly.”
She smiled a little and shook his hand.
“Where’s my favorite Tater Tot?” I asked.
“Apparently,” Nick said, sitting back down, “your pop only stockpiles the hard shit these days. My angel of a wife is on a beer run.”
“I could have picked up beer,” I said. “You should have called me before we got up here.”
“That’s a really funny joke, Cal. You on a beer run.”