Page 8 of When Alec Met Evie
“I don’t know what to say.” Juno’s crying escalates, so I put her carrier down long enough to check my landlord’s note one more time and type the code into the front door lock.
Ruth sets the pie down on the porch railing behind her and picks up the carrier, swinging Juno just like I was. “Beautiful baby,” she says. “Look at those big eyes.”
Juno quiets at the sound of Ruth’s voice as I push open my front door. It creaks as it swings inward, and a wave of musty, damp air washes over my face. Frowning, I take one step into the living room, and the carpet squishes under my foot, water seeping up on either side of my sneaker.
So…that’s fun.
There’s a lake in my new living room.
CHAPTER 3
EVIE
I fightto steady my breathing as I survey the damage in my new house. Every inch of carpet that I can see from the door looks wet, and from what I can see of the kitchen, just visible around the corner, there’s standing water there as well.
“Uh-oh,” Ruth says from behind me. “That doesn’t look good.”
Emotion pinches my chest, and tears rush to my eyes. My logical brain knows this isn’t the end of the world. That whatever randomly flooded my house, my landlord, who has so far proven to be both helpfulandkind, will very likely fix it. But my logical brain checked out somewhere along I-85. Dreaming of this house, this cute little cottage where Juno and I can start over, has been a big motivator through all the stress and emotion of the past few months.
I imagined Juno’s room, crib set up next to the big window I saw in the rental listing, a fall breeze fluttering the curtains. I imagined my tiny couch and overstuffed chair positioned in the living room, full of fluffy blankets and throw pillows, warm lamplight casting the room in a cozy glow.
That feels so impossibly far from where I am now. I swallowed the missing porch swing. But a flood? I just don’t have it in me.
As if to punctuate the hopelessness of the moment with an exclamation point, Juno lets out an extra loud wail, and my milk lets down, seeping through my bra and soaking the thin cotton of my t-shirt. I look down at my leaky, too-large boobs and sigh.
“Now, now,” Ruth says quietly beside me, her hand squeezing my shoulder. “You wipe those tears away.” Her words are soft and lilting, her Southern accent touching the edges of every syllable. “We’ll get your landlord on the phone and sort this out in no time.”
We can’t, actually, sort anything out. At least not anytime soon.
Ruth manages to trace the flood to the still-leaking water heater and turns off water to the whole house, but that doesn’t do anything to help the inches of water already pooling on the floor. The carpet is soaked, the wood floors in the kitchen are warped, the baseboards and several inches of drywall are completely waterlogged.
And I can’t get my landlord to answer his phone.
Though I’m not sure how much help he’ll be until he’s home from his backpacking trip, even if he does answer. I don’t know a lot about water damage, but I’m guessing this is going to take days, maybe even weeks to fix.
Which means Juno and I are essentially homeless.
It’s too cold to sleep in my car, which means…I can get a hotel, maybe? Or…I guess that’s my only option. A hotel.
A wave of nausea makes my skin feel clammy, and a cold sweat breaks out on my forehead.
I can’t afford a hotel. I was basically scraping the bottom of the barrel to pay for the move and get myself down here. I’ll get another deposit from my ex-inlaws at the first of next month,and I have savings. But there isn’t an ounce of wiggle room in the spreadsheet I made for myself, in the meticulous calculations I did to make sure those savings will stretch and supplement my income for the entire nine months of my apprenticeship.
There’s no way I’ll make it if I have to spend a week—maybe longer—in a hotel room.
Ruth walks into her living room, where I’m sitting and nursing Juno, and sets a huge helping of chicken pot pie on the coffee table in front of me. “I know this won’t help us solve the problem,” she says as she hands me a fork, “but it won’t hurt either.”
My chest tightens, and another round of tears threatens to spill over.
I have never liked being a burden to other people. I’m a middle child, the only daughter in between two brothers. An older one, Charlie, who spent his teenage years challenging my parents at every turn, and a younger one, Brady, who was diagnosed with leukemia the week before his fifth birthday and spent the next seven years in and out of the hospital. He’s completely healthy now—a senior in high school, a state champion swimmer, and cancer free going on five years.
But there’s no undoing the way his illness impacted my childhood. I know my parents loved me—they still love me—but they had their hands full. I quickly learned the best thing I could do to help was stay quiet and out of the way.
It’s why I spent so much time with Megan. She lived two houses down, and it was always easier at her place. I still hated it—hated realizing how many gaps Megan’s mom had to fill because mine had too much going on. Having Ruth talk like this is a problem we’ll solve together is almost enough to unravel me.
“Thank you for being so kind,” I say to Ruth. “But I don’t want to put you out. Once I eat, I’m sure I can…”
“You can what? Look a lonely old lady in the eye and tell her you don’t want her help? As long as you let me hold that baby when she’s finished her meal, you can stay here all afternoon.” She sits down across from me. “Have you heard from Alec?”
