“Well, I’m glad to hear from you,” Nona told her. “I was about to give up and call somebody who’s not nearly as good as you are.” They did not talk about condolences or regrets. They didn’t talk about Tim, because Nona didn’t know him, and she didn’t care. They didn’t talk about Dean, because she didn’t follow baseball. She knew only Evvie. She knew only Evvie’s work. Not family, not good deeds, not the broken-legged birds she might have saved. Just her work.
They agreed to collaborate on a book examining the effects of industrial fishing operations and climate change on the lobstermen of Maine. The work would start in April. Nona sent her a new voice recorder and a bottle of champagne with a note that said, “We’re going to do great work together. Thank you.” Andy took her to dinner to celebrate.
* * *
—
At Thanksgiving, her father carved the turkey, and when he told everyone what he was thankful for, he said that he was thankful for his daughter, “and everything she does every day to make me so proud, even though she lost so much.” It was a start. Maybe someday, she’d tell him more, about the blue suitcase and the bruise on her back. But Dr. Talco had assured her that she shouldn’t unless she wanted to. “You have nothing to confess,” she’d said.
* * *
—
For Christmas, Andy and Monica gave her a gift certificate for a spa day at a resort in Bar Harbor. When she opened it at their house on Christmas morning, Monica leaned toward her and said, “We’re going together, if that’s okay.” Evvie nodded. When they got their massages in January, Evvie breathed deeply and blissfully while a woman spread a hot clay mask across her back and shoulders. But when the woman moved a bit of her hair out of the way to keep it clean, Evvie gasped, struck by a sense memory of Dean nudging her hair off the back of her neck with his fingers. Her eyes stung.
* * *
—
In February, Evvie moved into Kettlewood, and a week later, she went to Thunderous A-Paws, a dog rescue in Thomaston that Diane Marsten had recommended to her. Evvie stepped up to the desk and said, “Hi. I think my new house needs a dog.” The woman at the desk grinned at her.
Back in what they called their “dormitory,” she went into a small room where a brown puppy with big feet was dragging around a plush baseball as big as his head. She laughed out loud and bent down close to him. “Oh, hi, buddy.” The pup kept the ball in his mouth as he made his way over to her. Without letting go, he looked directly into her eyes and said, Rrr?
Evvie sat on the floor. The puppy dropped the baseball and devoted himself fully to what seemed to be an effort to touch every part of her with his nose before leaping into her chest through her rib cage. She kept talking to him, feeling his soft coat under her fingers, laughing when he tried to crawl up onto her bent knees and landed in a heap on his side, still wagging his entire back end.
Four days and a home visit later, she was lying on the floor of her new house with a puppy stretched out on her chest while she skritched his ears and watched his sleepy, moony eyes droop shut.
* * *
—
Evvie had been in her house for a few weeks when she decided it was as good a night as any to hook up the speakers she’d bought used from a friend of Andy’s. The system was all wireless, with a long sound bar in the living room and smaller ones for the kitchen and the bedroom. She connected it all to her phone, and as soon as she pressed play, she jumped. The dog jumped, and his ears stood up like a kangaroo’s. It was so loud. She started to reach for the volume, but she stopped, amused by the feeling of her feet, in socks, buzzing with vibrations in the floor.
The nearest neighbor wasn’t close. There was no one trying to sleep upstairs, or trying to make a phone call, or trying to get work done. So she stood for a minute, and she let the soles of her feet thrum. She walked over to the wall and laid her hand against it,