Page 10 of No Kind of Hero
“You don’t know.”
“Know what?” She looked at him full-on for the first time, her blue eyes wide. “Did something happen to her? Oh, Evan . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He sighed. “She didn’tdie.She took off, that’s all.”
“She tookoff?And left the baby?” She looked like she was about to hop up and holler “Objection” or something.
“Yep. Well, she didn’t sneak out in the dead of night or anything. She did a whole scene first with lots of sobbing and telling me how awful she felt, how she hadn’t been able to sleep, she’d been in so much pain over it. But same difference. She took off.”
“I’m so . . . Wow.” Beth actually took a drink of her milkshake. She seemed to have forgotten to be nervous. “I’m just . . .” She waved a hand. “Flabbergasted.”
“Let’s say I wasn’t. Seems I have experience in women taking off.”
“Oh, now.” She slammed the milkshake back onto the table so hard, he was surprised the plastic didn’t split. “Oh, that’s low. I didn’t leave mybaby.I can’t believe you’d say that.”
“But I did. Leaving’s leaving.”
“Of course it isn’t.” She was drinking her shake again, maybe because she’d been waving it around and had forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to be able to drink it. “Whatwedid is breakup.I broke up with a grown man who was stronger than me. I didn’t abandon a . . . how old was she?”
“Twenty-seven. Not all that young.”
Beth sighed as if he were slow. “Not yourgirlfriend.Wife. Whatever. How old was Gracie when her mother . . .” She was slinging her glass around again. “What’s her name?”
“April. My girlfriend. Gracie was about three weeks.”
“A newborn. She left anewborn.I don’t like women who are named after their birth month anyway.”
Well, that was fairly random. “It wasn’t her birth month,” he found himself confessing. “Dumbest thing I’d ever heard. She was born in May. Her mom was hoping she’d be born in April, because she liked ‘April’ but she didn’t like ‘May.’ So she named her April anyway. I should’ve known right then.”
“Well, yeah, I’d say so.” Beth grinned at him, sipped at her milkshake, then looked at the plastic cup in surprise. “Huh. This is good.”
Evan realized he was still patting Gracie’s back, she’d burped a long time ago, and she was now, in fact, asleep. He got up and put her carefully back into her stroller, holding his breath, as always, that she wouldn’t wake up and start hollering again. She didn’t. Phew. He sat back down, swung himself around to face Beth, picked up his not very ice-creamy milkshake, took a grateful sip anyway, and said, “So. Why are you here? Why really?”
“I was just starting to feel cheerful, and you had to ask that?”
“Well, yeah. Hey, nobody gets to be cheerful all the time. It’s called life.”
“Sorry.” She sobered fast.
He sighed and drank some more not-very-freezing shake. “Forget being perfect and just tell me.”
“Oh. Right.” She fussed with her straw all the same before saying, “I had a big case. We lost. I got overstressed.”
“Uh-huh. You think you’re telling me, and you’re basically failing.”
She laughed, and he’d forgotten what that looked like. Sweet and smart, like they were sharing something special. “You haven’t changed at all,” she said.
Dial it back,he told himself. Half an hour with her, and he was falling right down that rabbit hole again. Hadn’t he learned a damn thing? “So what was it?” he asked. Of course, a guy who’dactuallylearned something wouldn’t even have asked.
She didn’t answer for a minute, just looked out at the creek, at the reflection of the willow’s branches in the shadowy water, as peaceful a sight as you could see. “I guess,” she said slowly, “that’s what I’m here to figure out. I thought I just needed a rest, because I burned it pretty hard all that time. Seven days a week, months on end. But I’ve rested. I’ve slept . . . whoa, so much it’s crazy. I’ve hiked, I’ve swum, I’ve read books. I’ve barely done a thing for twelve days. Almost thirteen. I’m halfway in, and I still don’t feel back to normal. I’m just sort of . . . blank.”
“Uh . . . you realize that twelve days isn’t exactly six months. Not exactly a cruise to Tahiti.”
“When you’re going after a partnership with a big firm, twelve days ismorethan six months. Twelve days is way too long. I asked for almost four weeks off because I thought it was a crisis. Clearly it wasn’t, because I don’t feel like the breakdown’s imminent anymore. I’m crazy to be here. I should either go somewhere else or go back to work. I know it, but it’s like I’m still drifting. Overemotional. Blown around.”
“Bet your parents have something to say about that.”
“You know they do.”
