almost high—had kept her in the house, married to him. They were the tethers. And the rarer those moments got and the unhappier she got, the more often she picked through every bit of evidence of every day when she had ever been happy. She kept ticket stubs, dried flowers, receipts; she kept the flash cards he’d made in medical school. She kept whatever made her good memories occupy space. She threw away everything from her bad days, especially after they were married. The day after Tim lost his temper and dented the drywall throwing his phone, she donated the clothes she’d been wearing when he did it.
It wasn’t as if she’d had no early warnings, no chances to extricate herself. In the spring of Evvie and Tim’s senior year of high school, the Calcasset Small Business Association gave its Young Scholar’s Medal, and the associated $3,000 scholarship, to Zoe Crispin. She was a straight-A student who worked in the school’s tutoring program and edited the yearbook. But Tim had expected to get it himself—so much so that he’d drawn an X over the banquet date on the calendar he kept in his backpack. They were at school when he found out Zoe had won. He didn’t talk, he just bang-bang-banged his books into the locker, then he slammed the door so hard that everyone in the hall turned to look. Evvie tried to get him to meet her eyes. “Hey,” she said. “I’m sorry it didn’t turn out how you wanted.”
Tim adjusted his pack on his shoulder, shrugged, and said, “They probably had to give it to a girl.”
From time to time, late in her marriage, Evvie had fantasized about an alternate past in which she punched him in the gut and ran. But she didn’t. She nodded, she smiled, and she grabbed his hand. She said, “Probably.” And it quieted him. It ended the scene he was making, all the noise he was making. She felt older, and special, like she’d slipped through a door into the future. She knew how to settle him down; everyone noticed. She heard the next day that one of his friends had nicknamed her “TD,” and when they were having lunch outside, she asked Tim what it meant. She was afraid it would be something gross, and he hesitated to tell her, but after a while he grumbled that it stood for “Tranquilizer Dart.” Evvie blushed and took another bite of her apple.
She didn’t know then, as she would later, that he wouldn’t settle for reassurances that he’d been wronged. There would have to be justice. Tim’s father, Pete, went fishing four days later with Bill Zeist, the president of the Calcasset Small Business Association. And two days after that, the CSBA announced a new distinction: the Leadership Medal, to be given to the high school student who best demonstrated the potential for future contributions to the community. It also carried a $3,000 scholarship, and it would be given at the same banquet where they honored Zoe. The first recipient: Timothy Christopher Drake.
They’d given both medals every year since, meaning that every year, Tim’s bruised ego helped another student attend college. Every year, a room full of people gathered, without knowing it, to eat roasted chicken, honor Tim’s ego, and applaud the way his parents loved him so much that over and over, they had made him worse.
She had made him worse, too. She was the one, after all, who had graduated second in her class, right behind him, after tanking her math final because she knew how much it meant to him to be valedictorian. He first told her he loved her on the day he learned he’d edged her out.
* * *
—
Andy patted Evvie’s back, and she snapped back into her body. It was done. As people left, they gave Evvie a familiar and encouraging squeeze—some had graduated these moves from her elbow to her shoulder around the six-month mark, as a sign that it was time to buck up and stop bumming everyone out. She told everyone thank you, hugged Lila again, let Pete pat her hand again, told them all goodbye. She and Andy walked in silence to his car. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Pretty painless, actually.”
“You sure?” he asked. “You’ll tell me, right? You’ll tell me if it’s too much for you? That’s our deal.”
“That’s our deal,” she said. It was their deal, and it was too