When Adam Met Evie

by Giulia Skye

  “You can’t be seen without your darling wife during the holidays.”

  Michael leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. Not for the first time in his life, he’d underestimated his aunt. For all her vegetable-growing, home-baked and country ways, he’d forgotten how much she loved her computer and broadband. “Have you been googling me again?”

  “Always.” She chuckled. “How else would I know what’s going on in your life?

  He knew he should have been in touch more often, but Flo had been clear from the start that she hadn’t approved of the whole Saskia and Michael brand, saying it preyed on the public’s desire for happiness and made a mockery of marriage. Needless to say, she hadn’t attended their wedding, her RSVP the only thing that had made him laugh during that whole crazy wedding period. I would come but I’ve got chickens to feed and shit to shovel. You understand.

  Flo sat in the chair across from him and dunked a cookie in her coffee. “So how long have you got to stick it out for this time?”

  “Six months, max. But it’s looking hopeful that Howie can negotiate with Strive to cut me out of their spring campaign so she can dump me in three months.”

  Florence shook her head. “What’s she gonna do? Slap you in the face on the red carpet?”

  “Pretty much. Although I hear she’s toying with seeking comfort in the arms of another man and making up stories of our awful sex life.”

  “It’s a disgrace.”

  Michael tapped his fingers on the sturdy wooden table. “I deserve it. I sold my soul to the devil, Flo. It’s the life I chose.”

  “Horseshit. It’s the life you drifted into because you didn’t know what else to do with your time.” She drew in a deep breath. “All that crap you did was just an easy way out. What have I always said to you? ‘Can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’”

  He reached for another cookie. “I can’t get out of it now.” Evie would hate him even more if Saskia exposed her as the much-hated other woman. “I just have to suck it up.”

  “Horseshit.”

  Yep.

  He could always rely on his aunt to speak her mind.

  After dinner, Michael washed dishes while his aunt packed away leftover food into plastic pots and placed them in the fridge. He listened as she talked about the days when his mother had been alive and he’d been a boy, tall for his age with arms he’d yet to grow into.

  As Flo talked, his mother came back to life. Silly little details he thought he’d forgotten. The way she smelled of hairspray and nail polish, the soft crook of her neck, and that green sweater she used to wear with huge pockets at the front, deep enough for him to put his head inside. My baby kangaroo, she used to say.

  “Your mother. Her death. It was a shit thing to have happened to an eight-year-old boy,” Aunt Flo said, “but she loved you. She loved you so much. I’ve spent your whole life making sure you know that.”

  Michael nodded. The memory of his mother’s death like a buried knife, old and rusty but still as sharp. When his tears burned the back of his eyes, he turned away and faced the sink.

  “It was a long time ago,” he said eventually, and changed the subject.

  He wasn’t going to sob for that lonely boy any more than he was going to sob for the lonely man he’d become.

  The next morning, Michael woke to a bright blue sky and the cluck and crow of a hen telling the world she’d laid an egg. He drank half a mug of coffee then went for a long run, getting lost among the half-remembered roads. His thighs were screaming when he returned, so he took a hot shower then sat in a cold bath until his muscles contracted and his nuts turned blue.

  By the time he’d dressed, Flo had gone to work in her vegetable garden, and he saw that he had a missed call on his phone. It was Shane. They had only spoken a couple of times since he’d been back, and the first time Shane had asked about Evie, Michael had shut down the subject so fast he hadn’t asked again. Krista had been texting and calling a lot, which he’d been ignoring for obvious reasons.

  He called Shane back, but his heart sank when Krista answered. “He’s in the shower.” Right. Damn it, Scary Wife was clever too.

  “How you doing, Mikey?”

  “Okay. How’s Stefan?”

  “He’s good, thanks. How’s Evie?”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars richer.”

  “Have you made contact with her yet?”

  He snorted. “No.”

  “Why not? You can’t just leave it as it is.”

  “She made her choice.”

  “With Saskia breathing down her neck. What have you got to lose by contacting her?”

  Nothing and everything. He wouldn’t even know how. “Forget it. She could easily contact me if she ever wants to know the truth.” Which she obviously didn’t.

  “Come on, Mikey, find her on Facebook at least.”

  “Sure, I’ll just send her a friend request.” The last time he’d suggested that Evie had slammed the truck door in his face.

  “There’s no need to be so flippant, Michael.” There was a scuffling noise. Krista’s voice faded. “Hey sweets, it’s your idiot friend on the phone.”

  He heard Shane’s voice in the background. “Who? Michael?”

  Thanks, buddy. He heard the phone exchange hands. “Hey, Shane.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Anyone ever tell you your wife is seriously scary?”

  “She’s only scary when she’s right, mate.”

  Great. Michael flopped down on his creaky old bed and listened to Shane telling him the same thing as Krista—only awkwardly so, like he was being prodded with a broom handle by his wife until he got the message across to his “idiot friend” that he should contact Evie.

  To distract himself afterward, Michael set up his laptop and reviewed the business plans he’d been sent by Brandon’s team. When it was time, he called Brandon for a finance update.

  “Your account’s taken a heavy hit recently, Michael.”

  Michael scribbled the bottom-line sum of his monetary worth on the back of an envelope. He should get a notebook, he thought. Even though he’d had to pay Saskia off for “the inconvenience of his disappearance,” which included the expenses she’d incurred traveling to Australia, he could still afford a notebook.

  “Thanks, Brandon. So this figure also includes the fifty-thousand-dollar-bounty payout?” To appease Saskia and as a “gesture of good faith,” Howie had smoothed feathers by making Michael agree to pay for the bounty too. Which irked. Immensely. “You’ll be compensated with the new Strive deal,” Howie had said. “Be grateful she’s not suing your sorry ass.”

  Michael doodled a stickman next to the figure he’d just written down. “Who was the bounty check made out to?”

  “A Mr. Peter Murphy from Perth.”

  Of course. Despite the sour memories, he hoped Skinny Pete used the money wisely. “And did you process that donation I wanted to make?”

  “Daisy’s Brain Tumor Trust? Yeah, that went out. My assistant uploaded the video clip to the website, too, just like you asked.”

  “Thanks.” They then spent some time going through the business plans, page by page. When they were done, Michael leaned back. “I appreciate the time you’ve spent on this, Brandon. Thank you. I’ll get back to you in a couple of days.”

  “A quick query before you go, Mike.”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “There’s a check made out to a Miss E. E. Blake for two hundred thousand. It still hasn’t been banked. Do you know what’s going on with that?”

  “No.” His heart beat faster. He had visions of Evie tearing up the check in rage, scattering the tiny pieces like bullets in the air, but really, he knew she wasn’t able to deposit it until she got back to England.

  And he was certain that she would. What ha
d she said once when he’d asked her why she’d been cleaning showers? It’s not in me to turn down a bit of cash when it’s offered. If the check hadn’t been deposited yet, she was still traveling. Carrying on with her life, her own adventures. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s going on with it.”

  But as always, it did make him wonder.

  Michael pushed a lump of carrot around his plate, the long prongs of his fork glinting under Aunt Flo’s kitchen light. She’d made a casserole for dinner but thinking about Evie and the check had made him lose all appetite.

  “This used to be your favorite,” she said.

  He forked a potato chunk into his mouth. “I’m sorry. It’s delicious.”

  He could feel his aunt’s eyes on him.

  “Ten years ago, you were obsessed to be the best. You were so committed. So driven.” Flo reached out and patted his hand. “I’m not saying it was a bad thing, Mikey, but there was nothing left of you afterward. In a few months, you’ll be thirty-four. There must be something more to you. Something else that you want. Tell me what’s really put those bags under your eyes.”

  “No.”

  She waited for him to stop chewing another forced mouthful. “Tell me about Australia, then.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What it was like, of course.” Flo chuckled. “Meet any women out there?”

  Sensing by the tone in her voice that she’d seen straight through him, Michael looked up from his plate. For a second, he thought to evade her question. But evasion felt too much like running away and he’d stopped doing that. Before he could think about the words spilling from his mouth, he told Flo all about Evie. From the first day they’d met to the last, and everything in-between.

  There was a long pause while his aunt absorbed all that he’d told her. She leaned back. “Can you really blame her for running away?”

  “No, I can’t and I don’t.” But God, how he wished she really had loved him enough to stay.

  “So that’s the story of Adam and Evie. The end.” Flo peered at him from across the table, her knuckles resting on the faded patterns of the tablecloth. “Any reason why you can’t start the story of Michael and Evie now?”

  “You mean other than the fact she hates me? And that Saskia will likely make her life a misery?” Michael pushed his half-eaten dinner away. “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Then it’s time you found out.” Flo speared a leftover potato from his plate. “Or isn’t she worth the effort?”

  CHAPTER 35

  Three weeks before Christmas, with her backpack on her shoulders and her day bag strapped across her chest, Evie walked through the automatic security doors and into Heathrow’s arrivals lounge.

  Her mother greeted her with a huge hug, a few tears and a much-needed winter coat. “Did you have a good flight?” Mum asked, avoiding the much bigger question of what her daughter was doing back home five weeks earlier than planned. She held the backpack as Evie slipped on her goose-down parka. “You look very tired, darling.”

  Evie looked at her wristwatch. She’d been traveling for forty-two hours. Alice Springs to Melbourne, Melbourne to Sydney. Sydney to Singapore. Her connection to London heavily delayed. “I’ve not slept much.” She’d been too upset and unhappy. And angry. Wow, she’d been angry. Tearing furiously through airports, hating her broken heart for blinding her against the sights of Australia. For making her focus only on the end goal of diving under the duvet of her old childhood bed in her old childhood home.

  “It’ll take you time to get used to the cold again,” Mum said when they got outside.

  The thin strip of sky visible between the terminal building and multistory car park was gray and hazy, a fine morning mist clung to the air. I remember this, Evie thought. The British weather. Freezing and wet, it seeped through to her bones as they walked.

  “You look thin, too,” Mum said, inserting coins into the car park’s pay machine.

  “I’m fine, Mum.” When they reached the car, Evie dropped her backpack in the boot of the Honda Civic. “It doesn’t feel so long ago that I lifted this bag out to leave. Nearly ten months. It’s gone quick.”

  “It will always seem quick,” Mum said. “No matter how long you’re away. I think it’s because when we’re at the end of something, we compare it only to the beginning and we forget all about the middle.”

  Evie nodded, knowing it was precisely that middle bit that her mother was burning to know more about. So far, all Evie had told her was that she’d been seeing someone and it hadn’t worked out—but even revealing that much had been bad enough. Mum would think she was a fool once she’d discovered how easily and quickly her daughter had fallen in love. And she’d be right.

  Evie slid into the passenger seat. “We flew over the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan,” she said, telling her mother how she’d seen the world change from summer to winter as she’d flown from the southern hemisphere to the northern. “Clear skies all the way until we reached the coast of England.”

  “Typical.”

  London had been under a cover of thick, thick cloud. Her first sight of British soil had been the dreary M25 as they dipped below the cloud line and touched down a few moments later. “How’s Aunty Jayne?”

  “Good, and much better now her chest has cleared. She said she’ll pop over later to say hello.”

  “That would be nice.”

  Her mother drove to the exit, poked her ticket into the machine and waited for the barriers to lift. “It’s lovely to have you home for Christmas. I’d thought you’d planned to spend it on the beach somewhere.”

  “I wanted to come home.”

  Mum looked very concerned. “This boy you were seeing. Are you—?”

  “No, it’s over.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  They drove in silence for a while.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  Evie choked on nothing. “I think we’ve established that’s not going to happen for me any time soon.”

  “There might not be anything wrong with you. Just because it didn’t work out with you and Zac, doesn’t mean—”

  “I’m not pregnant, Mum.”

  “Okay.”

  They drove anticlockwise on the motorway, cruising past the rush hour traffic that was building up on the other side. Eventually, Mum sighed but when Evie glanced across at her, rather than seeing disappointment that she’d failed to stick out her travel plans to the end, or that she’d so clearly returned with a broken heart, all she saw in her mother’s eyes was worry.

  “Do you want to start telling me who this boy is and what he did to you?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Mum reached over and squeezed her knee. “They always are, darling. They always are.”

  Evie woke in her childhood bed, in her childhood room. It was pitch black. She sat up and eased the curtain away from the window. The small narrow garden was bathed in night. She’d left her phone downstairs and had no idea of the time until she squinted at the faintly glowing hands on her wristwatch. Half past six. She yawned, irritated with herself. She’d meant to stay awake for the rest of the day, absorbing as much daylight as possible to aid her jet lag, but after telling her mother all about Adam and who he turned out to be, she’d been too exhausted to wait until it got dark.

  She got out of bed, still wearing the leggings and jumper she’d changed into when she’d got home, her mum having already retrieved her winter clothes out of the loft. As she walked to the bathroom, she noticed the light was on downstairs. Evie would go down in a minute and help her mother cook dinner and listen to what she had to say about the situation now that she’d had all afternoon to digest and consider. Evie had decided the nondisclosure didn’t include her mother and had told her everything, after swearing her to secrecy.

&
nbsp; Mum was in the kitchen holding a bottle of milk. “Morning, darling. How are you feeling?”

  “Morning?” Evie rubbed her eyes and glanced up at the kitchen clock. A few minutes after half six … the next day. So that explained why Mum was wearing pajamas and was about to eat cereal for dinner. “Did I really sleep for fifteen hours?” She had a fuzzy memory of going to the toilet at some point, but other than that, she must have been comatose. Yawning again, Evie scratched her head, her hair falling loose and messy around her face. “Are you working today?”

  “No, it’s Saturday.”

  “Wow.” Evie rubbed her eyes, wondering what happened to Friday. “I’m so confused.”

  Her mother switched the kettle on. “I looked up that boy last night.”

  Oh, God. Visions of her mother googling Michael Adams were not the visions she wanted to have right now. There were some particularly revealing groin shots of him out there, modeling skimpy swimwear that left nothing to the imagination. “He looks a bit like a young Tom Cruise,” Mum continued. “But I can’t say I recognize him or his name.”

  “I think he’s pretty famous in Canada.”

  “His wife is very beautiful.”

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  “Just because she is, doesn’t mean you’re not.” Mum handed her a mug of tea. “He walked out on his wife, didn’t he? And it sounds to me like he didn’t exactly walk out on you. Didn’t you say he came back for you in Darwin?”

  Evie’s eyes stung at the memory. “He’s back with his wife now, though.”

  “So say the media. You haven’t heard it direct from the horse’s mouth.”

  “It makes no difference whether I hear it from him or not. He lied to me. I can’t trust him. Just like …” Evie stared down at her mug, stalling on the comparisons she could no longer ignore. “Just like Noel flipping Barker, Adam’s turned out to be someone else, living another life. One that doesn’t include me.”

  “Evie.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve told you before. Don’t let what that … Don’t let your father cloud your judgment.” Her mother came to sit next to her. “There are some good men out there.”