needed to be arrested. She half expected to see cop cars wailing up her driveway with their lights and sirens going. What she saw was Ellen brushing dirt off the book, talking on her phone, and laughing as she walked to her car.
Forty-five minutes. That’s how long it took for Ellen Boyd to file her story, get a photo of Dean added, and throw it on the Beat Sports blog that went by the name “Off the Field.” And an hour after that, Evvie got the link from her cousin Steve, and thirty seconds after that, there it was on her own screen.
When Dean Tenney vanished from New York in September after choking as spectacularly as any pitcher in memory, rumors swirled that he was on drugs, was depressed, or might have a gambling problem. More adventurous folks suspected it might be personal. Maybe a woman whose situation was complicated. Maybe a relationship in trouble. Maybe with a man, even.
Evvie was willing to bet Ellen had started these rumors herself, assuming they existed at all.
But a month or so ago, he turned up in Calcasset, Maine, which most assumed he’d chosen because it was the hometown of longtime pal Andrew Buck, and a place where the locals probably don’t even have cellphones or high-speed Internet, let alone spend time on Twitter.
Uch. #condescendingNewYorkdouchebags.
Shortly after he got there, though, Tenney moved in with a young widow named Eveleth Drake. Drake’s husband, a beloved local doctor his patients called Doc, had died in a single-car accident less than a year before.
Evvie realized it was awfully petty that out of this scurrilous pile of crap, the word that was sticking in her craw was “beloved.” And didn’t patients call every doctor Doc?
Drake answered the door at her house (a great big but still cozy property that looks like something out of a movie) earlier today, but when I asked, she claimed Tenney wasn’t around. After admitting they were living together, she refused to answer questions about whether he’d been drinking and insisted she didn’t know anything about any mental problems he might be having.
But how did a widow from Maine wind up living with a guy who was a New York Yankee two years ago? Could this all have really come about just in the time since Doc died?
Whatever the answers to these questions, when she was asked whether she was involved with Tenney prior to her husband’s death, the former Mrs. Drake ended the interview and threw in a threat of violence.
“I didn’t threaten violence,” Evvie muttered. “Or I threatened very little violence, anyway.” She had to give it to Boyd: the reporter had made all she could out of nothing. And even though it was innocent, it didn’t look innocent. And everybody she knew would read it. Her father would read it, Tim’s parents would read it, everybody who already thought she was a bad wife would read it. And, of course, Dean would read it. Why hadn’t she closed the door?
* * *
—
Evvie was watching TV on the couch when she heard his key in the door. Dean came to the living room doorway and stood there for a minute. Finally, he raised his phone in one hand. “Saw it,” he said.
She put her hands over her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said into her fingers. “I’m so sorry.”
He came over and sat next to her on the couch. “What? You’re sorry for what?”
Evvie took her hands away and looked at him. “Oh, for making it sound like we were sleeping together. I’m sure that’s not exactly what your public image needs right now.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it reflects pretty well on me. I don’t know about you. Besides, my favorite sports site recently voted me First Athlete We’d Throw into an Active Volcano, so I don’t think my public image can really be hurt.”
“I also might have threatened the reporter, which I’m sure isn’t exactly what I’m supposed to do. I’m guessing your people will not like that.”
He narrowed his eyes a little. “What people are those?”
“Don’t you have…I don’t know. People? Lawyers or agents or, like, PR people?” She waved a hand by her ear. “People with little headsets who run around barking about whether the limo is going to be on time and whether everyone is in position?”
“That sounds…like a maître d’. Or a wedding planner,” he said. “I don’t have a wedding planner.”