Evelyn, After: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

Tonight she wasn’t exhausted. She wasn’t even tired. As a matter of fact, tonight she’d listened to music as she’d made dinner. She’d danced a little over the stove. After dinner, she’d even snuggled on the couch with her son, and they’d watched a few funny YouTube videos together. Tonight she felt happy, and before bed she’d emailed her supervisor in the school office to say she’d be returning to work the next day.

  After the two hours she’d spent with Noah, she’d assumed that he would get in touch in a week or so, let her know the piece was framed and hung, but he hadn’t waited a week. He hadn’t even waited a day.

  It’s done, was all his first text said.

  When Evelyn saw who the message was from, she scooted higher on the pillows, paused the TV, and cradled the phone in her hands to stare at it. She read the text several times despite its simplicity, then did the same for his name. Noah. Just Noah. Four letters to make her feel giddy and bright.

  She took a deep breath and texted back. The Beckenbauer piece???

  Yes.

  Already??? She hit “Return” and immediately regretted the preposterous number of question marks she’d managed to send him in just two messages, but when he started his next text with a silly winky face, her self-consciousness faded away.

  ;) I couldn’t wait. Stayed late to frame it up, and I’ll hang it first thing in the morning. Still need to frame the other two to hang inside, but maybe you could come see the window tomorrow?

  She laughed out loud. Before remembering that she didn’t care what her husband thought anymore, she glanced at the bedroom door to be sure it was still closed. What a stupid impulse. He’d been screwing someone else and she felt guilty for laughing at another man’s texts? She’d do whatever the hell she wanted. I can’t, she typed back. I’m working tomorrow.

  Where do you work?

  At my son’s school.

  Really? My wife is a teacher.

  Yes, I know. She teaches second grade at your children’s school, and she stays late to tutor other kids, and she won teacher of the year last year because no one knows she’s a whore, not even you.

  She didn’t type that. In fact, she didn’t type anything about his wife at all, which was strange even to her. This was an opening to ask more questions, to dig deeper. But after the lovely day she’d had, Evelyn didn’t want to invite Juliette into her bed.

  I’m not a teacher, I just help out at the school.

  Art department?

  Principal’s office.

  !!!

  She laughed and used too many question marks again. What???

  Do you have a pair of little black glasses? Because if you paired them with that black skirt and heels, you’d be intimidating as hell.

  Her? Intimidating? She pressed a hand to her grinning mouth and shook her head at his flirting. The truth was that she worked in that office in stretchy slacks and comfortable shoes with her hair up in whatever clip was closest at hand in the morning. She wasn’t intimidating; she was invisible.

  Not at all . . . she started typing, but then her fingers refused to finish. Didn’t she rule over the volunteer programs with an iron fist? Didn’t people avert their eyes when they saw her coming? She could be strong and sure when she wanted to be. She could make her presence known. Maybe she should start dressing the part.

  Evelyn deleted her original words and went with something entirely different. Be good, she wrote back, or you’ll get detention.

  She was rewarded with another smiley face. This one wasn’t winking; it was a wide, delighted grin that matched the one on her face.

  :-D Sorry. I couldn’t resist. So you can’t come by tomorrow?

  No. She had to work. And she needed to buy groceries. And bake cupcakes for her son’s water polo team. And try to catch up on the hundred things she’d dropped so abruptly.

  Jackie had written to say the book fair had been a fund-raising failure and everything still needed to be packed up and shipped back. No one else knew how to take care of that. Evelyn couldn’t drive back out to Noah’s gallery just to see a painting she’d seen already this morning. She had responsibilities, and she’d been neglecting them for far too long.

  But.

  This wasn’t just flirting, was it? This was part of solving the mystery. Did Noah flirt with everyone? Was he a womanizer? Was that why Juliette had given herself permission to sleep with Gary? Not that a faithless husband could explain away all of Juliette’s heartless behavior.

  No, talking to Noah wasn’t just flirting. It was also personal justice. A secret for Evelyn to call her own. Gary wasn’t the only one dissatisfied with this marriage. Juliette hadn’t cornered the market on taking a husband’s attention from his wife. Was she right there beside Noah while he texted another woman?

  Evelyn hoped she was.

  She finally answered Noah’s question with a coy response. I’m off at four.

  I’m here until seven . . .

  Dot, dot, dot. Those three periods were a tease, a little question that he must know the answer to already. She wanted to go. But would she?

  A girl was dead. A marriage was ruined. And the world just kept going on as if that were all okay, when it wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay.

  Despite her promise to her sister, Evelyn wasn’t ready to move on. She wasn’t ready to forgive Gary. She certainly wasn’t ready to let Juliette escape unscathed.

  She’d been right about Noah. He was the last piece of the puzzle. But she still hadn’t figured out how he fit in. Old Evelyn might have been satisfied to let everything drop and move on, but new Evelyn wanted more than that. She deserved more.

  A few tiny bits of her awful pain dissolved like salt in warm water as she typed out a new message.

  Tomorrow, then. I can’t wait.

  She spared a glance at the empty space on Gary’s side of the bed and smiled.

  CHAPTER 8

  BEFORE

  She didn’t drink often, and she never drank hard liquor—but she’d also never accused her husband of a crime, so Evelyn poured herself a shot of his most expensive Scotch. Single malt. Twenty-five years old. She downed it and poured herself another.

  Smoky, fruity, nuanced, rich. Bullshit. All she tasted was the burn of alcohol. She wished he was there to watch her waste each fifteen-dollar ounce by tossing it down her throat.

  He’d killed a teenage girl. Run over a human being and left her on the side of the road like any other dead animal. That was why he hadn’t been able to call the police or a tow truck.

  So he wasn’t only a cheater and a liar—he was a murderer. Her own husband.

  Evelyn had assured herself that she could believe his stupid excuses because of course he wouldn’t call her with his mistress in the car. Of course he wouldn’t! Who would be that dumb?

  But it hadn’t been dumb. It had been Gary’s only option. Off the record. Just a call to his wife. The only witness a sympathetic one. At best, he’d hoped Evelyn would never see the news, never connect the dots, maybe never even remember picking him up, thanks to the sleeping pill. At worst, he thought he could talk her out of turning him in because she was his wife.

  Could he?

  Hell, no. This wasn’t about a personal indiscretion. This wasn’t about Evelyn’s hurt feelings. Someone was dead.

  He was a monster. She was married to a monster.

  She closed her eyes and let the room spin around her. The whisky wasn’t working fast enough. She could still feel everything.

  This was going to be awful. She had a son. A life. A community. A future. That cheating, selfish asshole had ruined everything.

  And, she reminded herself, he’d killed a young girl.

  She poured another inch or two of Scotch, letting it glug, glug out of the bottle in a way that would have made Gary scream. Her stomach turned at the smell, and she knew if she drank more she’d be sick. She might be sick anyway. At least if she drank more she wouldn’t care about vomiting.

  Before she could force herself to pick up the g
lass, the whir of the garage door motor stilled her hand and her heart and all her thoughts. The sound filled the room. She knew it wasn’t that loud, but she could feel the shaking of it in her bones, dissolving all her certainty and resolution into sand.

  If she got up right now she could ditch the bottle, race upstairs, and be under the covers and feigning sleep before Gary was even in the house. She could pretend this hadn’t happened, or at least put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow was Saturday. She could get a good night’s sleep, think it through, make a plan. Maybe she wasn’t being rational. Maybe there was another explanation.

  There had to be.

  Evelyn jumped to her feet and lunged for the bottle, but her sloppy grab pushed it across the table, and when she tried to save it, she knocked it to its side. Bowmore splashed across the table and pooled at the edge. She righted the bottle immediately, but whisky was dripping onto the floor.

  A car door closed with a crack. The garage motor began to rumble down. Evelyn stood there paralyzed, whisky falling in a drip, drip, drip that somehow kept her brain from working.

  The door opened and Gary was there, putting his keys on the counter just as he had a million times before. “Evelyn!” he said when he finally noticed her. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

  She should have been. She should have taken her pill at nine and fallen into her normal coma, and she wouldn’t have seen the news report and she’d never have known anything.

  His gaze fell to the table, eyes ice blue and never missing anything. “What the hell?” he snapped. “Is that my Bowmore?”

  “Yes.”

  That was all she said. Yes. More a hiss than a word. But what burned in her lungs was, Yes, it’s your Bowmore, and even though you killed a person last night, you still have it in you to be irritated about a fucking bottle of overpriced alcohol.

  “It isn’t cooking sherry, Evelyn! Why the hell would you even get it out?”

  Cooking sherry. Because that’s all she was good for. Cooking his meals. Piddling around the house. Taking up hobbies and learning how to bake and definitely not worthy of single-malt Scotch.

  “By all means,” he said, “just stand there.” He marched over to the counter and tore a bunch of paper towels off the roll, making sure to mutter his disgust as he bunched them up with exaggerated movements.

  “She was seventeen,” Evelyn finally said, her voice a strange, low croak.

  “Who was?” he bit out, lip curling as he approached the table like a holy warrior wielding a paper mace. It isn’t cooking sherry, Evelyn. He pressed the towels to the table and she watched gold spread into the white between his fingers.

  “The girl you killed.”

  Gary turned to stone. The tendons of his hand strained against the skin, but his face remained scrunched in irritation at the mess she’d made. He stared at the table as if he were having trouble making the transition from stupid wife to criminal accusation.

  “They haven’t released her name yet.” Her voice was working better now, the words smooth and steady, like they were having a conversation about random vandalism in their neighborhood. “They said she was seventeen, but they didn’t give her name.”

  “Who said?” he asked the table.

  “What?”

  “Who said that?”

  “The news.”

  His tight shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly before he straightened and finally looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You hit someone last night.”

  “No. I almost hit a deer, but I swerved to avoid it.”

  “Maybe that happened too.”

  “That’s all that happened, damn it!”

  “Then why haven’t you taken your car to the dealer?”

  He lifted his hand to gesture toward her, and Bowmore splashed her fingers. “I didn’t have time. I don’t get up at nine and go to work at eleven, in case you’ve never noticed.”

  “Ah. I thought it was because there was a dent in the bumper from hitting that girl. Or maybe because—”

  His fist hit the table with a sloppy thump. Several dollars’ worth of Bowmore sloshed over the edge and onto the floor. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t going to wring the towels into his mouth.

  “Or maybe because,” she tried again, “your custom paint job could be smeared all over her skull. Isn’t that what happens in the movies?”

  “You’re insane,” he snarled. “Where was this girl even found?”

  “A mile or two south of where I found you.”

  “Then what the hell are you even talking about, Evelyn?”

  She should have felt rage rush through her then. That was how their arguments worked, not that they argued often. She was careful with him and he kept his more hurtful opinions to himself. They worked at it. But when those artfully constructed safety nets failed, he said nasty, snide things and she gathered her hurt up into anger and screamed at him like the irrational animal he knew she was.

  But this time she felt weak. Drained. Terrified. She let her legs give out and sat down hard in a chair. Cool liquid soaked into one side of her yoga pants. “Just tell me the truth. I’m your wife. And even if that means nothing to you, this is going to affect me too.”

  “I didn’t hit that girl.”

  God. She honestly didn’t matter to him. She was just another chink he needed to patch up to keep this story solid. Evelyn set her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands. Whisky fumes burned her nose and eyes. “Then why were you so careful to direct me to White Oak Road? Why would you care which way I took?”

  He stayed silent. Still. The whisky dripped more slowly now, the sound of some old, abandoned building, rain dripping through the deteriorating roof. It would collapse around them soon, and that would be the end of it.

  “Gary. Please. Tell me the truth.”

  He inhaled a long breath. Held it. Then, “I wasn’t driving.”

  “Gary . . .” she sighed, slumping a little more into her hands.

  “I wasn’t driving. She was.”

  Evelyn raised her head. “You said she was drugged up.”

  “That was a lie.”

  Of course it was. Of course. “So she wasn’t at your office because she was having a breakdown.”

  “No.”

  “You were in the car together because you’re sleeping with her.”

  “Yes.”

  She’d hoped the terrible circumstances would soften this blow, but the shock of it still hit her hard. She wondered if the impact was visible around her, a ripple of force as the air gave way before it.

  A girl was dead and the police were investigating and Gary might be arrested, but this . . . this was what mattered to Evelyn. That her spouse had chosen another woman. That something belonging to her had been stolen. “Who is she?”

  “Evelyn . . .” Oh, he wasn’t sneering her name now. He wasn’t mocking or chastising or correcting. He was pleading. Please don’t make me be honest. Please don’t make me tell the ugly truth about who I really am.

  “That would be a strange coincidence,” she said.

  “What?”

  “If her name were Evelyn too.”

  “Don’t be snide.” A slipup, but he corrected it with a very gentle, “Please.”

  “Who is she?” Evelyn repeated.

  “She’s . . . It doesn’t matter. I took her to dinner because I was trying to end it—”

  Evelyn snorted her disbelief.

  “I was. We argued, and I had one too many drinks. She said she wasn’t going anywhere with me like that, so I told her to drive. I just wanted to get out of there. I wanted to get home.”

  “Home,” she muttered. “How long have you been seeing her?” Such a civil sentence. What she meant was, How long have you been screwing that tiny blond bitch? Evelyn looked down at herself. At the yoga pants and fleece shirt stretched over the round hump of her belly. She’d never lost the bulge after having Cameron. Even when she’
d been thinner, her belly had still been there, soft and striped with pale-silver stretch marks. She would have looked dumpy in a gauzy white sweater. She wouldn’t have looked like a beautiful forest spirit drifting in the night. “How long?” she repeated.

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters.” But then she realized it didn’t, because the perfect solution was right there waiting to be plucked like ripe fruit. She sat straight and met his gaze. “I know the truth now, so you can turn her in.”

  His whole face crumpled, collapsing into a horrified frown. “What?”

  “You didn’t want to be caught with another woman, but it’s out now. You can call the police. Tonight. Tell them she was driving. Then we’ll be done with this. We’ll . . . we’ll move on.” Whoever the blonde was, she’d be too occupied with her arrest and trial to spend time with Gary. Evelyn wouldn’t have to worry about her at all. Problem solved.

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Yes, you can. We’ll need counseling, I’m sure, but maybe it would be good for us to—”

  “Evelyn, I am not calling the police. You’re being irrational.”

  The fury finally woke inside her, stretching out as it roused itself, then clawing higher in her chest. “You’re going to risk everything?” she growled. “Your freedom, your marriage, your work . . . everything for this whore? And I’m the one being irrational? What if the police track you down? Do you think they’re going to believe some story about letting someone else drive your car after you’ve been arrested? You have to tell them now.”

  “I can’t do that to her. She has children—”

  “You have a child!” Evelyn yelled. “You have a wife! Not that we mean a goddamn thing to you, apparently.”

  “Calm down.”

  “I won’t calm down!” she screamed, but it was an empty threat. A door opened upstairs, and they both looked toward the staircase in horror. Evelyn snapped her mouth shut.