“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I’ll stay out of the way. I can even stay in the car if you want me to.”
She’d read his mind or more likely the expression on his face. “Just let me get a handle on things first, then I’ll let you know.”
“Of course.” She folded her hands in her lap obediently and managed not to ask whatever questions must have been burning at the back of her throat.
When he pulled into the driveway, stones kicked up from the tires and he hardly had it in park before he was out the door. “Lock it,” he instructed as he made his way to the mansion doors. He could only imagine what a girl like Evie would think of a house like this.
“Mom,” he said, pressing a code on the keypad on the door and letting himself in. “Mom, it’s Emmitt. The alarm went off; are you all right?”
“Emmitt?” he heard his mom sing out in guarded hopefulness. “Oh son, I’m so glad to see you.” She flipped the light switch on and off three times and then stepped over the threshold of the main entry to see him in. That one small act, the game with the light told him all he needed to know. She wasn’t cured of the obsessive mannerisms that had plagued her for years. No matter how much he hoped one day they’d just mysteriously vanish, they never did.
“It’s been so long,” she said, pulling him into a hug. “But the shirt.” She uttered nervously moving away suddenly and turning her back. “Honey, the shirt.”
“I forgot, Mom,” he apologized, looking around for some kind of solution. “Mathew called and said your alarm was going off, and I was close by so I came. I forgot I was wearing red.”
“I’m still happy to see you,” she said apologetically though she wasn’t seeing him at all. Her back was still turned and now she nervously spun a lock of her hair around her finger the way she always did when her weird ticks were challenged.
“I have a blue sweatshirt in the car. Let me go put it on and I’ll be right back.” He looked around the entryway again making sure no imminent danger seemed to be lurking around and then headed outside.
“I need my sweatshirt,” he said uncomfortably as he reached his hand out to Evie. “I can’t wear red.”
“Why?” she said half laughing. “Is there a bull in there?”
“My mother has OCD. She panics when people are wearing red. Or when the light dimmers don’t line up perfectly on the wall. Or when curtains touch the floor. She flat out faints if she sees the television is set to channel twelve. So I need my sweatshirt.” He wasn’t mad at her joke; he’d have easily done the same if the roles were reversed. But he was mad that he couldn’t wear red and that now Evie would understand why.
“Let me come in,” she said, grabbing his wrist before he could step away. “I want to. Please.”
“Fine,” he said with a defeated shrug. “But you can’t fix this. Don’t try.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said earnestly. “I’m not trying to make anything better.”
“Then what are you doing?” he asked, suddenly skeptical of her desire to interject herself into his problems. “This shit is messy. It’s bad. Why do you want to be here?”
“Things don’t have to be bright and sunny all the time, Emmitt. It doesn’t mean you have to sit in the dark alone.” She kept at his side, not looking up at him, and he was grateful for that. He didn’t need her knowing the impact of her words. He glanced at her quickly and saw a smile break across her lips. “Plus I have to go to the bathroom.”
He stopped in his tracks and spun on her, still stone-faced but fighting the urge to laugh.
“I swear that’s not why I’m coming in. I meant the light and the dark and not sitting alone and all that. But completely unrelated to that I also need to pee. Badly.”
A small weight lifted off of him. It wasn’t the full burden. It wasn’t all the pain but it was a noticeable lift in emotional cargo he carried around with him. That was maybe what separated Evie from other people he’d known in his life. There were women who made him laugh, but he couldn’t recall a woman who took him from the lowest moment and still elicited something from him. Normally when he hit these depths nothing could penetrate him.
He let the smile finally form as he looked down at her poorly contained laughter. “I guess we’ll never know if you really wanted to support me or you just drank too many sodas.”
“Can’t it be both?” she asked as they headed back for the door. “Hey,” she said, falling serious, “I’ve got your back. Whatever the deal is, whatever is going on, I’m with you. Nothing is going to scare me off.”
He nodded his head and entered the code on the front door again, knowing his mother’s compulsions would have forced her to lock it three times after he stepped out.
“But seriously, where’s the bathroom?” she whispered as they stepped in.
“Mom, this is Evie,” Emmitt announced and watched his mother’s hands fly to her unkempt hair.
“Oh Emmitt, I’m not decent for company,” she protested.
Evie waved her off. “As you can tell by my hair right now, I’m not really decent to be company. So we’re even.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” she said, nodding yet not taking her hands off her hair.
“The alarm went off, Mom. Is everything all right?” Emmitt asked gently. His mother was fidgeting some, tugging the sleeve of her nightgown.
“It was nothing,” she said, waving him off. “I opened the front door and forgot it was on. I turned it off a few seconds later. I’m happy to see you, but you didn’t need to rush over.”
“Why did you open the front door this late at night?” Emmitt gestured for Evie to follow as his mother let them in to the formal sitting room.
“I thought I saw someone outside,” she explained. “But no one was there.” She looked disappointed by this fact. “Or if anyone was there the sound of that damn blaring alarm must have scared them off.”
“Good,” Emmitt said. “You shouldn’t open the door when you think you see someone outside the house at night.”
“You’re right,” she said apologetically as she sat in the large wingback chair by the fireplace and gestured for Evie and Emmitt to sit on the couch across from her. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately,” she cooed and smiled. “Mathew said you were very helpful to him in Texas. That’s a good thing. I’m glad for that.”
“He’ll be back soon,” Emmitt said, knowing his mother would be missing her dedicated and helpful son. Mathew spent plenty of time here. He handled all of his mother’s affairs and somehow dealt with her compulsions compassionately. Emmitt was always quick to be bothered by them. Annoyed by how they made her look, how little control she had over herself. “Who did you think you saw outside?” Emmitt asked worried it was his father, unsure if he should warn his mother that the bastard was poking around their family again.
“I just saw a light,” she shrugged. “It was probably a groundskeeper or something. I’m very tired.”
“Do you want me to walk you upstairs?” Emmitt asked, rising when his mom did.
“No, no, I’m fine. But stay. It’s late. I’d like you to stay over. And your friend too. There’s a room here for each of you. I want to see you in the morning when I’m not so tired and not so much of a mess.” She exchanged a small smile with Evie and patted her hair down again. Making a move toward Emmitt, considering a hug or maybe a kiss, she looked as though she changed her mind and retreated.
“We’ll stay,” Emmitt assured her as she slipped out of the sitting room and up the stairs. He saw her flip the light switch three times in the hallway before she disappeared. “She’s a good person,” Emmitt said, feeling desperate for the chance to explain.
“She seems lovely,” Evie sang out quickly. “If you’d prefer to stay here by yourself I can call a cab and go back to the hotel.”
“Your call.” He shrugged, not wanting her to feel any kind of obligation. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to stay. It’s not normal.”
“No
rmal doesn’t exist, Emmitt. If you sit around waiting for it, you’ll spend your life disappointed. I think your mother seems great, and she was happy to have you back here. I’ll stay too, if you think I won’t be in the way.”
He grunted and shrugged as though it didn’t matter to him what she did. As though watching her walk out the front door wouldn’t bother him at all. Lucky for him he was a well-practiced liar.
“It sounds like your mother would prefer we were in our own rooms.” She smirked coyly. “We should respect that.”
“She’s old-fashioned. Expects people to be married before they start bunking up together. But lucky for you I know every creaky board and squeaky hinge. I can get from my room to yours without ever being noticed.”
“There’s just one thing,” she said, slipping a hand up in his hair. “If you don’t show me where the bathroom is I’m going to burst.”
“Sorry,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “I forgot.”
“I’d imagine in a house this size I’d have about ten bathrooms to choose from.”
“Nine,” he corrected, showing her to the closest one. “But big houses and money don’t make for a happy life. My mother has everything a person could ever want. And she can’t stop flipping light switches.”
“She looked happy to see you,” Evie said, standing on her tiptoes and kissing his cheek. “We can’t always fix everyone in our lives, but we can give them brief moments of happiness. We can cheer them up or cheer them on. It counts.”
“It does.” He nodded, pulling her in close to him and kissing her full on the lips. “It really does.”
Chapter 17
Evie looked out the large bay window and up at the stars. The room Emmitt had shown her to was a girl’s dream. It was Harlan’s old room, and it was perfect. The closet was huge with motorized spinning racks to display clothes, and it was full of things Harlan must have left behind. Purses, shoes, and accessories. Things she must not need anymore. Evie envied the wealth. The ability to leave behind a closet full of things without thinking twice.
She was perched on the plush window seat, staring out over the estate. Home was so far from here. The miles, the days that had passed since she’d been there felt suffocating. It had never occurred to her that you could both hate something and miss it all at once.
“Are you still up?” Emmitt asked, poking his head in her room. “I used to sneak out that window all the time. It would drive Harlan crazy, but she had the lattice work you could climb down. My bedroom window was a thirty-foot drop.” He moved toward her and settled in on the window seat, pulling her close. It was welcomed, the feel of his strong arms reminding her she wasn’t alone.
“It’s a beautiful house. Something I thought I’d buy someday,” she sighed. “I was delusional to think I’d be a movie star. To think I’d be wealthy and I could change everything for my family.”
“What needs to be changed?” Emmitt asked, and she knew he wasn’t going to back off the truth.
“It’s not important,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m rambling.”
“Good, ramble some more.”
“You didn’t come in here to hear me talk,” she said, rubbing a hand across his firm chest. “That’s no fun. Aren’t you all about the fun?”
“Ramble,” he said, pulling her hand to his mouth and kissing it gently.
“I don’t think you and I will agree much on this, and why have one more thing to fight about?”
He didn’t reply, just sat there staring at her expectantly.
“I sent my brother, Alex, the advance I made on the movie. It was twelve thousand dollars. I sent it all.”
“For what?” he asked, sounding like that was a very stupid idea. “Why give him your money?”
“Partly because I expected I’d be getting a lot more. The other reason is because my mother needed it. I realized how much you and I have in common when you looked at me and said your mother is a good person, like you had to explain that to me, like it was very important I knew that. I can understand that better than you can ever imagine.”
“That dream you were having; it was not just a dream, was it?”
“A nightmare,” she said, leaning her head against him and still staring outside. “My mother is a good person, just like yours. She worked on our farm for her entire life. Up before the sun, back-breaking work that most people would never do. My father was the same. Then when my brother and I got old enough we were expected to work just as hard, and we did. It was just how it was.”
“I can’t really picture you working on a farm,” he said, his chin now perched gently on the top of her head as they both stared out the window.
“You name it and I learned how to do it. And I loved it. Life was great, until it wasn’t. One day my mother fell from the flatbed truck and hurt her back. I still remember the sound of her screaming. I’ll never forget it.”
“Was she all right?” Emmitt asked, and she felt him squeeze a little tighter.
“She broke two vertebrae. The recovery was tough. The pain was unbearable, but she was even more worried about the farm. The only way things worked was if we were all there to pull our weight. It was four months of her being laid up. When she did get back on her feet, the only way she made it through the day was with pills. The doctor gave her the really strong stuff. He gave it to her like he was giving out aspirin. Then suddenly, she needed more and more to get through the day. The pain was real; we couldn’t blame her. But one day the doctor wouldn’t give her anymore. The same guy who started her on these things suddenly wouldn’t write another prescription. He wanted her to do physical therapy and meditate. Just like that he wanted her to stop, but she couldn’t.” Evie pulled her knees up to her chest as she thought of her mother’s descent into addiction. “I thought the best way I could help her at first was to get her more pills. It was just asking around school. But when all those sources ran out, she began digging through medicine cabinets of friends. Then selling stuff off the farm to pay for more pills. Selling everything until there was nothing left. Until my father left. Until my brother had to work three jobs and drop out of high school. Until—”
“Until you could finally do something about it and make some real money?” he asked knowingly.
“I sent the money home for a special treatment center in California. She went. She stayed. She failed. She left.”
“Where is she now?” Emmitt asked, pulling her hair off her shoulder and running his fingers through it affectionately.
“She lives in an apartment with about fourteen other addicts. They pool their money for rent and pills. She’s a mess. A real mess. And now I don’t have another way to help her. I have no money to send back. I haven’t had the guts yet to call my brother and tell him I was fired. He’ll expect me to come home. He’ll want me to help, to do something. But I don’t know what else to do.” The tears fell freely now as she buried herself into him. “She’s a good person. She’s the same woman who made all my costumes for the school play. She’s the mom who packed the best lunches with little notes inside every day. Underneath all of that she’s still there somewhere. I have to believe that.” She paused, using her sleeve to clean her face. “I’m sorry, I’m a mess,” she apologized.
“It’s all right,” Emmitt whispered, holding her tightly. “It’s all right to not be all right.”
“I should go home, Emmitt. I should face it. I just don’t know how,” she cried. “I’m terrible for hiding here. For running. She needs me.”
“I’m about the worst person in the world to weigh in. I have my own demons, and my father’s addiction isn’t something I feel like I need to face. His choices are his, and they’ve led him where he is. She takes that next pill, and he places that next bet. Why should that be on us?” He was being honest, she knew that. And maybe he was right, but it didn’t absolve her of the guilt.
“I thought the treatment in California would work,” she said, sadly. “I really did.”
“I tho
ught when my mother was committed to a mental institution, and we were left with no one to care for us, that would be enough for my father to come back. I thought when Harlan fell off the swing and broke her arm, he’d be at the hospital. When I left for the military, standing out in front of the bus, I thought he’d be there to see me off. When I was wounded and sent home, I thought he’d show up. They don’t Evie. They just don’t get better and they don’t show up unless they need something.”
“She’s a good person,” Evie repeated in a whisper. “I swear she is.”
“I know,” he said, lifting her from the window seat and carrying her to the bed. Her arms were wrapped around his neck as he laid her gently on the large down comforter. “I’m sorry,” he groaned. “I’m sorry I’m not the guy who knows what to say.”
“Don’t say anything,” she begged in a hushed voice before pulling his lips to hers. He kissed her deeply, replacing the hungry desire to have her with the need to heal her. His hands didn’t roam across her body, they stayed fixed on her cheek and in her hair. Emmitt lay down beside her as he broke the kiss and pulled her body to his. “Sleep,” he ordered. “There’s nothing you can do about it tonight.”
“Stay with me?” she pleaded, looping one of her arms over him.
“A pack of dogs couldn’t pull me away from you right now,” he promised, sweeping all of her damp, tear-soaked hair off her face. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
“How?” she asked, nuzzling against him. “There’s no way to fix this.”
“I specialize in screwing things up, Evie. I am an expert at decimating and breaking shit. No one does it better than me. Maybe it’s time I start using my powers for good. We’ll think of something tomorrow. Just sleep.”
Chapter 18
Emmitt stared at the ceiling as the sun came up, and Evie slept peacefully at his side. At least one of them had rested. He spent most of the night wondering who the fuck he thought he was promising to help Evie fix her problems. Admitting her mother was not a lost cause was by default saying the same thing about his own father. Something he refused to acknowledge. The idea put him at odds with himself in a way that made sleep impossible.
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