to sneak into his hotel room naked, trying to block the view of himself with a towel and an electric guitar.
“I still can’t believe you got this ridiculous, enormous TV,” she said, settling in for Halls of Power, “that I really love.” He’d mounted it on the wall opposite the club chairs, so she flopped into her seat and threw her feet over the arm. “Remind me where we were,” she said.
“The lobbyist you hate was paying off Special Agent Flathead of the FBI.”
“Ah, right.” She rubbed her arms through her sweater. “And the president was…”
“Giving the VP the old pocket veto.”
Evvie turned toward him. “If we watch this show long enough, I’m going to find out how many governmental sex euphemisms you have.”
“I don’t even know myself. Try me again.”
“Okay. What was the president doing?”
“Giving the VP the old advise and consent.”
“Stop.”
“Well, stop laughing.”
Evvie stretched in her seat. “It seems cold in here, are you cold?”
“Little bit.” He went to pour her a drink.
She got up and went to her kitchen, where she fetched a foil-wrapped brick she’d sometimes used to flatten roasted chickens. She propped open the apartment door. “Better air circulation,” she said. She sat back down. “So, how was today?”
“Actually, I was going to tell you something. I don’t know if you heard, but the Drakes are setting up a scholarship at the school.”
Evvie nodded. “I had heard they might do that. I’m not surprised.”
Dean shook his head. “Guy casts a shadow, huh? I mean, if I can ask.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, went off to California and came back. Worked in town, lived in town…it was a big deal.”
“Just that he came back and lived here?”
“Yeah.” She took the glass of whiskey from him and shook her head when he held out an open can of Pringles. “A couple of years ago, somebody told us that Tim—who was class of 1999—was one of only two valedictorians from our high school who graduated after 1994 who still lived here.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s demographics and economics and stuff.”
“Go ahead. Tee it up, nerd. I went to college.”
She laughed. “Well, basically a lot of eighteen-year-olds with good options don’t stay in a place like this. And when they leave, they don’t usually come back. So the town gets older, tax base gets smaller, things get harder. Long story short? Too much leaving and dying; not enough arriving and being born.”
“Oldest and whitest state in the country.” He nodded.
“Exactly.” She took another drink. “So with Tim, I think a lot of people knew that if he were their kid, they might have encouraged him to get out. But he didn’t, and they loved him for it.”
“I guess I can understand that.”
“Besides, he was cute, he was friendly as long as you didn’t live with him, and he married his high school sweetheart. He just had that thing. That thing that makes certain guys kind of glide across everything.” She skimmed her flat hand through the air. “To some of the people who had watched him grow up, I think he was…a unicorn.”
“He didn’t want bigger things?”
“No, he did.”
“Then why come back?”
Evvie shrugged. “Because anywhere else, he’d just be a nice-looking horse.” She smiled and pointed to the TV. “Show’s starting.”
* * *
—
When she went to bed that night, she moved the brick and shut the door, but when Dean came into the kitchen to share a pot of coffee with her the next morning, she waved her hand. “Put the brick back,” she said. After that, they closed it only at night.
EVVIE HAD SAT OUT THANKSGIVING the previous fall. She’d sent her father off to eat turkey with Andy and his kids and Kell, and she’d spent most of the day in bed with a book, putting on the nightstand a bottle of wine, which she opened at noon and finished at ten thirty at night.
This year, Andy had started working on her a month ahead of time, telling her he wanted her and her dad to come with him and the girls to Kell’s in Thomaston. Kell had invited Dean’s parents as well, and they were so eager to see him and so enticed by the pictures he’d sent that they’d decided to make the trip. Evvie promised to go, then planned to cancel, then got a supermarket flyer in the mail for frozen turkeys and cried in the bathroom, then called Andy and promised him she would bring the pumpkin bread.