wrote what she called “occupational biographies.” The last one had been about logging, and Evvie had transcribed almost two hundred hours of tape for it. She could tell you what a whistle punk was. She knew logging had the highest per capita death rate of any U.S. occupation. This did not come in handy at parties—or, it would not, if she went to parties.
Nona’s email said that she was planning a book on Maine lobstermen, and she wouldn’t be starting the work for at least a year, but she wondered if Evvie was interested in helping with the research. Not just transcription, but the interviewing, too, and helping Nona navigate. This would be a promotion of sorts. “I always try to team up with a local,” she’d written, “and I naturally thought of you right away. I don’t know what your schedule is like these days, and it’s still a long way off, but let me know when you have time to talk.”
Right now, though, Evvie’s attentive ear was mostly on hiatus—and she hadn’t yet answered Nona. She did little jobs here and there so she wouldn’t be broke, but the very thought of going out into the towns up and down the coast, having her work interrupted by condolences that would make her circle back into her marriage was too much to even think about. Most things were too much to think about.
So instead of returning emails to clients, she devoured books that moved with her from table to table, chair to chair, as she read and stopped and read more, sticking a scrap of paper between the pages to mark her place. On this occasion, she was a third of the way through a fat Southern novel she’d been wanting to read ever since she heard the author on Fresh Air, talking about how he grew up living above a beauty parlor with his family and their illegal pet monkey.
She was stretched out on the sofa, trying to ignore the Do something, do something voice, when she heard a knock that had to be Andy and the potential tenant. She hopped up and started for the front door, but along the way, she stopped. Her eyes settled on the fireplace mantel, which held two marbled scented candles and a driftwood sculpture she didn’t like from somewhere salty where she and Tim had once had a lobster roll. She yanked open the drawer of the writing desk in the corner and pulled out her silver-framed wedding portrait. She’d loved the gazebo; she’d hated her dress. But propped up between the candles, the photo would perhaps testify on her behalf that she was properly grieving and was not a monster, monster. She walked to the door.
When she opened it, Andy wasn’t there. There was only a man, strikingly tall, with green eyes and dark hair flecked with gray. He had a sunburn on his left arm, likely from hanging it out a car window. “Oh,” she said. “Hi there.” Andy hadn’t mentioned that the guy was particularly good-looking, but he probably didn’t even know. Andy was such a decent guy, and he was such a dummy about this stuff.
“Evvie,” he said.
“I bet you’re Dean,” she said, extending her hand.
He clasped it and said, “Good to meet you. I hope you don’t mind. I was afraid if I brought Andy, you’d feel like you should say yes to shut him up, so I left him at home.”
She looked at his eyes, his wrists, his high cheekbones, all the years of sun on his skin, and the way he didn’t look as young as she’d thought he would. “Sure, come on in, it’s fine.” Remembering to let go of his hand, she stepped to the side, and he squeezed past her into the house. As she closed the door, she encountered his shoulder and got a whiff of detergent and maybe bacon, which she figured Andy had been putting in front of him all morning, next to the same frozen waffles the girls favored on the weekends. “When did you get to town?” she asked.
He looked around the living room a little. “I got here yesterday afternoon. I caught up with Andy and his kids. We haven’t seen each other in a few years.”
“That sounds like fun. Did the girls ask you about where you live? They’re very into geography right now. Maps and globes, the shape of the coast.”