“No, I don’t think I would pull out my own tooth with pliers.”
“That’s what I always tell people about therapy. It’s not a question of whether you could try to do it by yourself. You can always try it. But it can be dangerous, and it’s harder. Trying to buck yourself up is the tooth pliers of mental health.”
She remembered Monica saying Mental health metaphors are a mixed bag, and it made her smile. She sort of bought this one.
“Evvie, if it helps you to hear it, given everything you’ve said in the last five minutes, this is a whole lot to tackle alone.”
“So you think I’m a candidate for therapy.”
“Oh, practically everyone’s a candidate for therapy. Myself included. The question is, do you want to give it a try? Do you want to talk about you?”
Evvie nodded. “Yeah.”
* * *
—
Evvie put the Bancroft house on the market. It sold fast once she let her realtor sweep in and remove half of what was in it, making it look even bigger, even emptier. They replaced the living room rug, meaning whatever remained of the spots of her blood from the glass that Tim broke went out the front door. One last time, she lay on the floor in the apartment, pushing her palms into the floor, missing Dean so much that she felt dizzy. And then she packed, and she left, and she lived with her dad for a couple of months and looked for a new place.
She picked it out on a chilly fall day when she’d just taken her heavier jacket out of storage. Betsey, her real estate agent, brought Evvie in her boxy little red car across the short bridge from Calcasset to Kettle Bay Island, sometimes shorthanded as KBI. The island was mostly little cottages with one or two bedrooms, some of them were rented out in the summer. “I think you might like this one,” Betsey said. “I thought of you as soon as I saw it. It’s not big, but it looks right out at the water.”
It was a house with a name—Kettlewood, they called it. When Evvie opened the door, she saw a woodstove in the corner and the kind of cheap and durable carpeting that was common in rental houses, with a worn path from the kitchen to the living room and then out to the sitting room facing the harbor. Most of the water side of the house was picture windows, and then there was a small deck, big enough for a couple of lounge chairs and maybe a charcoal grill. The kitchen was small, and she’d have to replace the appliances. But it turned out the furnace was sound, the roof passed muster, and when her father came and walked around, he said, “Yuh. Looks like a good one, Eveleth.”
* * *
—
Before she finished emptying the Bancroft house, Evvie had invited Tim’s mom, Lila, to have a look around and see if there was anything that she’d like to take as a keepsake. Lila wandered around the house, and Evvie knew she was staring at all the places Tim had stood, sat, or held court about medicine. Whatever else he had been, Tim had been hers. “Sometimes I still can’t believe it,” Lila said. “It’s so sad.”
Evvie didn’t even know which sad thing she meant. So much was sad. Everything was sad here. Sadness lived in the walls like a poltergeist, and it was time to run. When Lila left an hour later, after a cup of coffee and a chat about the scholarship at the school in Tim’s honor and the work Evvie had to do at Kettlewood, she said, “I hope you’re as happy in the new place as you were here.” It didn’t even feel like lying when Evvie hugged Lila again and pretended to want the same. It felt like dropping a gift into her pocket, passing a talisman to someone for whom it could do some good. It was just giving Lila back Tim’s death to grieve as she would, like she’d given his shirts to Goodwill. And like she’d finally made a fire in the fireplace and burned her box of receipts and ticket stubs and his flash cards from college.
* * *
—
While she waited to move, she called Nona and managed to catch her between classes.
“Nona, it’s Evvie Drake. I’m so sorry it’s been such a long time. I’ve had a