by Kait Nolan
She grabbed at a pale gray color, something called “Rare Gray” on the flimsy card. It recommended accents in a yellowy beige and a darker, greener gray. Together, it reminded her of how the sky above the ocean looks just before a rain. She loved it. “Can you mix me up a sample of this?”
He took the card from her, nodding slightly. “Yes’m. Want to do the Haint Blue for your porch ceilings?”
Evie wrinkled her nose. “Just this. Maybe a sample of the accent colors on there, too. I’ll be back after lunch to pick it up.”
~*~
Her phone beeped once, then again, as Evie sat down at the Seagull Cafe, where her mother was already sipping on a mint iced tea, one eyebrow raised.
“Well,” said her mother, “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it.”
Evie tried not to roll her eyes and reached for the menu.
“I already ordered us the crab cake salad,” her mother said, pushing the little piece of laminated cardboard away from her daughter. “Don’t look at me like that. I was hungry. And I didn’t know if you were coming. I thought I could take yours home to your father. He always complains when I don’t bring him anything. He thinks I don’t think about him.” She took a long sip of her drink. “As if I don’t spend my entire life making sure that man is happy.”
Evie’s phone beeped again and she snuck a look at it.
LUC: You still with me?
LUC: Tell me if I’m pushing too fast with you. I don’t want to be someone who smothers.
Evie smiled.
EVIE: Not at all. I had fun getting to know you, too.
LUC: Good. Most people just seem to be so self-absorbed. Like they’re living one big high school drama. But not you. You’re different. I can tell.
“Evie, honey, don’t slouch like that. It’s so bad for your posture. You’re going to be a hunchback before your time.”
Evie put down the phone and looked at her mother. “Do you mean there’s a proper time for me to be a hunchback?” Her shoulders were tightening into white-hot knots beneath her skin.
“Oh, Evelyn,” her mother said, repeatedly smoothing her napkin in her lap. “I just mean that you could at least try to look attractive. Would it hurt you to put on a little lipstick? A little mascara? It looks as if you barely got out of your work coveralls.”
“I don’t wear coveralls,” Evie muttered, still looking at her phone. Luc was typing something; the little ellipses in the bubble were flickering at the bottom. Evie waited but then the dots disappeared, without a new message coming through. Disappointment settled over her, and she looked back up at her mother, putting the phone face down on the table.
“Please focus on me for just a few minutes.” Her mother made an exaggerated sigh. “I barely see you as it is. You are just too busy with that place.”
“My house, you mean? Too busy with my home?”
Evie picked up the phone and typed a response.
EVIE: I can have oodles of charms when I want to.
She hoped he would get the reference to Vonnegut, one of her favorite authors. She put the phone back down, the corners of her mouth twisting into a smirk. “I’m sorry, mother. Truly.”
Her phone beeped and Evie had to press her lips together in an effort not to turn the phone over and see what Luc had written.
“You are quite the popular girl today.”
“Well, Mommy dearest, I seem to have met myself a man.”
Evie’s mother’s eyes grew two sizes. The waitress came and placed two plates in front of the women. Evie wasted no time in digging her fork into the round lump of pan-fried crab and shoving it into her mouth. “This is damn good. Damn good.”
Her mother blinked once, twice. Evie’s phone beeped again.
“Well, answer the boy!”
Evie did as her mother told her, though she took her time, relishing the torture she knew her mother must be feeling.
LUC: And she can quote Vonnegut! Hot damn.
LUC: Breakfast of Champions is one of my favorites.
Evie smiled. She knew that this app would be useful, but she had no idea she would have this much fun. Her mother was squirming in her seat, and Evie could see how much it was killing her not to bombard her eldest daughter with questions. Evie would enjoy this. She took a long sip of her tea, looking at her mother over the rim of the glass. Oh, how she would enjoy this.
Chapter Three
“I can’t believe you didn’t mention anything earlier. What exactly did you tell Mom?” Anne sat across from her sister at the kitchen table and looked at her expectantly. Anne had come by that afternoon, right after she had spoken to their mother.
Evie smiled and lazily stirred her tea, watching the white milk swirl into the dark liquid. She wasn’t looking at Anne, but she could see that her sister was practically bursting with excitement. Anne was trying hard not to show it, but her enthusiasm for seeing her sister hitched up to someone—anyone—was bubbling just under her skin, trying to get out and explode all over the room.
“Well, fine. Don’t tell me.”
Evie looked up at her sister. “There’s not much to tell. I met a guy. He’s nice.”
“Nice. That’s it. Nice. You’ve got to give me more than that. Mom will never let me hear the end of it if I don’t tell her something, just a little something she can hold on to.”
“You mean something you can hold on to?” Evie let the milky spoon clatter to the table. It made more of a sound than she had intended.
Anne’s hands flew up into the air. “Fine. Mom just said that you texted on your phone for most of y’all’s lunch. She said you seemed happy.”
That last word stopped Evie. She was happy. And beginning to feel more than slightly guilty. Her mother believed she was dating someone. Now her sister believed it. She had never lied to them before. Not like this.
“I am happy.” Evie spoke quietly, like a little child confessing a wrong.
“So tell me about this mystery guy who makes you so happy.”
“We met at a party. Mutual friends. Out in New Orleans.”
“I didn’t know you went to the city. When was this?”
Evie glared at Anne. “Are you going to let me finish or not? We just hit it off. His name is Luc. And he’s pretty hot.”
Anne nodded her approval, shifting in her seat. “God, this kid is kicking me in the ribs. Tiny soccer player, I think. So what does Luc do? Is he coming to the shower?”
“He, uh, travels a lot. I don’t know if he’ll be around.”
“Ev, have you asked him? If he really likes you, he’ll make time.”
“How are the shower plans going?” Evie took a long sip of her hot tea, which was lukewarm by now.
Anne rolled her eyes. “You know how Caitlyn is. She’s not taking any of this seriously. I mean, I practically had to send out the invites myself. Did you know that I ordered them myself from Etsy? Addressed them and all. Even bought the stamps. I mean this thing is happening in two weeks. TWO WEEKS. She says she has it under control, but I talked to Aunt Sue, and she said that Cait doesn’t even have a food menu planned. And she wants to make that punch that she always makes. You know the one with the coffee?”
“The one with the coffee and weird calorie-free ice cream she always buys?”
Anne snapped her fingers. “That’s the one. There are just some things in life that need calories. And sugar. And caffeine.”
They shared a laugh, and Evie took a long sip of her now-cold tea. Anne waited a moment before breaking the silence.
“Can you help her?”
“Anne,” Evie said, shaking her head. She stood up to take her mug to the kitchen sink.
“Just talk to her. Find out what she has planned. Maybe you can even add a few ideas of your own? You know, things that will make it an actual baby shower and not just some randomly thrown together thing with a bowl of nuts and a cheese plate thrown on her kitchen table.”
The image made Evie both laugh and feel pity for h
er sister. “Okay. I’ll see what she’s got planned.”
“Yay.” Anne clapped her hands together. “That’s all I want. Just make sure this won’t be a disaster. Oh, and maybe you can suggest a few things to her?”
“And there’s the catch.”
Anne looked shocked. “There’s no catch here. I just have been looking at a few ideas on Pinterest.”
Evie groaned.
“No, nothing over the top. They just have the cutest ideas now for couple’s baby showers. Like putting alcohol shots in those tiny little baby bottles, you know, to make the guys there feel like it’s a party and not some stuffy girly thing. Oh! And I saw this one baby game where you take these little plastic babies, like the ones they bake in the King Cakes at Mardi Gras, and put those in ice cubes. Everyone gets one in their drink and when the ice melts and the baby is free, they yell, ‘My water broke!’ The first one gets a prize.” Anne’s eyes were wide with excitement. “It’s so much better than some dumb game where everyone tries to guess my belly size with toilet paper.”
Evie nodded. “Whatever you need me to do.”
A squeal actually came out of Anne’s mouth as she jumped up and gave her sister a hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Anything for my baby sister.”
Anne smiled. “Good. Then you’ll ask Luc to come.”
Evie nodded again, though a lump was beginning to form in her stomach.
“What do you have planned today?” Anne asked, as she was heading towards the door. She had stopped to look at the nail gun that Evie had rented from the hardware store earlier in the week.
“I was hoping to repair that crown molding. I got a look at it, and I think it just needs some nails and spackle and paint. I watched a video online, and I think I can do it. Save some money in the meantime.”
Anne looked at her sister suspiciously. “Just be careful. It makes me nervous to think of you out here by yourself.”
“I’m not the problem,” Evie said. “I just want to work. It’s everyone else.”
Anne’s mouth went to a hard line.
“Not you,” Evie said. “It’s everyone else. The dunce-heads on the city council. They’re backing up the Historical Society on the reno of the back porch. Apparently porches in the 1840s were both minuscule and not screened in. Apparently they loved mosquitoes. But I don’t.”
Anne smirked. “And they all died of malaria at age 28.”
“Exactly.” Evie sighed. “I just thought this would be a bit easier since some of Henry’s relatives are on the council. But they just tabled my request for further review.”
“I’m sorry, sissy. Let me know if I can help.” She walked to the foyer.
“I’ll be fine,” Evie said, following her sister to the front door and seeing her off.
The truth was Evie herself was starting to get a little worried. She knew she was in over her head. No amount of watching house flips on HGTV could make her equipped to handle a nail gun. Or to handle the letters that kept coming. Or the fact that she was hearing noises in the house. She had been warned by her contractor when she had started these renovations to keep things locked up tight because local thieves liked to pillage work sites like this, mainly for the copper pipes and wiring.
None of her walls had been destroyed, yet her house still had an uneasy feeling, like someone other than herself had been inside. The ladder had been moved upstairs, the crown molding restacked. She sounded crazy, even to herself, but she could swear that even the orange extension cords had been recoiled, tied in a way that she hadn’t done. She had snake-coiled them loosely on the floor, too tired after a late night of work to properly put them away. But now she found the cord tightly wound into an eight-shape and tied neatly around the middle. She had managed to tell herself that her contractor had been back to the house, perhaps to finish up a job or to pick up a tool he had left behind, but she knew deep within her belly that wasn’t the case.
In the past twenty-four hours, she had gone through every conceivable scenario, and even a few that didn’t make much sense. Perhaps she had an eccentric neighbor who liked to sneak in and tidy things up. If this was the case, maybe she could leave a note for next time—she needed her upstairs bathroom cleaned out before that remodel could begin, and whatever was growing in the tub looked absolutely toxic. Or maybe she had a ghost—that was a real thought she entertained.
That thought left her desolate, thinking that ghosts may exist, yet her Henry had not come around at all, hadn’t tried to make contact with her. Grief had never been a part of Evie’s life before her husband had died from a brain aneurysm. The house had been his dream at first. It had, at one time, belonged to his family—though a few generations back it had been sold—and Henry had bid on it when it finally went up for auction, for a cheap price even considering the disrepair. They had planned to renovate it together, make it their perfect home.
Now she was making it her perfect home. Her perfectly haunted home.
Evie sat down on the bottom step and leaned against the banister, looking at the closed door her sister had just left through. Normally, Evie was a solitary creature, just fine with herself and her own thoughts. And most of the time, she could carry her grief around very easily. After all, she had the house to keep her occupied, which was more than she could realistically handle.
Her blood simmered beneath her skin, and anger rushed to the forefront, followed closely by a profoundly heavy grief. Today was a day that she felt Henry’s loss immensely, with every pore and every cell of her body. She welcomed it, desiring for it to wash over her in a thick and consuming wave. Some days were easy, and then some days she wanted to rip open those barely healed wounds and peer into the crimson-black blood and feel the rawness of the pain all over again.
She thought of Luc then and reached for the phone, hoping for some quick salve. Instead, she wept until her throat was throbbing and she was finally emptied.
~*~
The next day, Evie put on her big girl panties and went to plan a baby shower. She looked at Caitlyn, who was sitting across the little table of The Brass Monkey, blinking at Evie.
“I’m glad to see you out among the living,” Caitlyn said.
Evie nodded, taking a bite of her shrimp. Caitlyn had suggested they meet for coffee, but Evie was fairly sure that she would need something stronger to get through this.
“So,” Cait said, opening a little gold notebook, “I have a few ideas. I don’t know what you were thinking, but I was thinking a Parisian Ballerina theme would be perfect. We could do the color theme in pink and black with hints of gold, maybe even more metallics as accent colors. Tiny little Eiffel towers. Tulle. It’ll be adorable.” Caitlyn looked at Evie, who was still stuffing her face. “You don’t look like you like it.”
Evie swallowed and took a quick drink of her margarita. “I just don’t know what my sister will think of that. I mean, she’s never been a ballerina, unless you count that one class she took when she was five, and I have never heard her once talk about Paris.”
“Everyone wants to go to Paris,” Caitlyn said. “Besides, what says little girl more than ballerinas and Paris? Like a little Audrey Hepburn.”
“Still not sure how that says baby,” Evie said. “Isn’t pink enough?”
Caitlyn closed the book in front of her and pursed her lips. “We can talk theme later. Any thoughts on games? Because I was thinking...”
Evie cut her off. “I think she said something about a baby in ice? She doesn’t want people touching her belly.”
“We have to do some games,” Caitlyn whined. “Everyone likes the one where you melt the candy in the diaper.” Evie made a face. “Everyone likes it,” Caitlyn repeated. “Plus boys will be there too, I guess. They’ll think it’s fun because it is so gross. I thought we could also get baby pictures of some of the guests and have people try to guess who the pictures belong to. Oh! And I made a list of songs that have ‘baby’ in the title.” She flipped through her little not
ebook and slid it to Evie.
Evie looked through the list. “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” “Ice, Ice Baby.” “Baby, Baby.”
Oh, there was so much she wanted to say. Instead, she just smiled and slid it back to Caitlyn.
“Any thoughts on food in there?” asked Evie, spearing a roasted potato with her fork.
Caitlyn smiled and reached into her massive purse, pulling out a pink file folder. Evie’s eyes opened wide as she watched Caitlyn open it, pages spilling out onto the table.
“I have recipes,” she said with a smile. “At first I thought we could stick with the baby theme, like the music. You know, pigs in a blanket, pretty much any finger-sized foods that we could consider ‘baby-sized.’ But then I thought we should do something more elegant, you know? So I thought we could do a dessert bar, with classic French pastries. Definitely some of those colored macarons. And a cheese plate. We could have a suggestion card with wine to match each cheese. Oh, and watermelon-mint skewers and those little prosciutto-wrapped melon balls.”
Evie nodded. “I have to say that sounds pretty good.”
“Oh,” said Caitlyn, clapping her hands together, “I almost forgot the best part.” She slid a piece of paper over to Evie. “A fruit salad, but we cut the watermelon rind to look like a baby in a bassinet.”
Evie picked up the picture. Sure enough, the watermelon was carved into a basket, complete with a baby’s head made from cantaloupe with cut grapes for eyes and real pacifier stuck where the mouth should be. Before she could say anything, Caitlyn yanked it from her hands.
“Isn’t it just the most adorable thing you have ever seen? Look, they even put lace around the edges just to make it look more like a baby. I just can’t even, this is so cute.”
Evie smiled. “Well, I guess you have this all planned out. What are you thinking for a cake?”
One of Cait’s eyebrows arched and she flashed a devious smile. She produced another picture and pushed it to Evie. It was a cake shaped like a pregnant woman’s torso, bulging breasts, belly, and all.
