Page 11 of Home Sweet Home

“Come on.” As if she could read Evie’s mind, Kayla hugged an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in closer. “You’re stuck with me at Joe’s. At least for the next few weeks. This place needs a teensy bit of work.”

The wind picked up, and a piece of siding blew off, dangling from the building by a thin sliver of plastic. They looked at each other and burst out laughing, then Kayla looked up to the top of the building and spread her hands through the air. “I’m thinking ‘Cuts by Kayla.’”

Kayla’s eyes were wide and bright, full of excitement as she imagined the possibilities that stretched before her, and Evie filed away what she had been about to say about the mortgage. Kayla would want to help, but Evie wouldn’t let her sacrifice her dream to fix a mess Evie had made herself. She had to find another way.

CHAPTERFOUR

Evie had a system.The bills sat on the kitchen counter, ordered based on the amount of trouble she would be in if it wasn’t paid on time. She had a routine too. Most nights, she thumbed through the stack, one by one, each dollar amount sending fresh waves of panic through her. It was the last thing she did before bed, and she wasn’t sure why, because it always gave her nightmares.

As Evie worked through the pile, she thought about all the mistakes she’d made. It had been stupid to leave a twenty-dollar bill at Mel’s when she only owed ten, but she’d been desperate to get away from West. She hadn’t thought about it until she looked at her bank account balance and saw the eighty-two dollars and nineteen cents sitting there, each paltry digit mocking her.

Josh ambled into the kitchen and started poking through cabinets.

“Doritos are gone,” Evie said. They had zero nutritional value, but she bought them because they were Josh’s favorite, even though he ripped through a bag in less than a day.

Josh grunted and continued to root around, finally settling for a box of Saltines. Evie was pretty sure the box had been there for over a month. The crackers were probably stale by now, but if Josh noticed, he didn’t show it as he shoved three into his mouth. His eyes lingered on the pile of bills in front of Evie as he chewed.

He looked so much like their mother, it made Evie’s stomach hurt. Dark wavy hair. Olive skin. Full, thick eyebrows. A thin nose that curved slightly to the right. Dimples, in the rare instances he smiled.

Josh’s jaw paused midbite. “What?”

“Nothing,” Evie said, an idea coming into her head. “Hey. How about tomorrow I whip up some chocolate chip cookies and we invite Oliver over?”

A burst of something flashed in Josh’s eyes, gone so quick that most people would have missed it. Evie didn’t. He stuffed a few more Saltines into his already full mouth. “I’m busy.”

Evie raised an eyebrow. Since school ended a few weeks ago, he’d spent every waking hour alone in his room. That was the opposite of busy, but before she could press the matter further, Josh skittered off. The slam of his bedroom door reverberated through the kitchen.

Thumbing through the bills, she found what she’d been looking for, the original letter from the bank. It wasn’t still sealed, and it was postmarked a few weeks ago. She must have thrown it on the stack without bothering to read it, but it said plain and clear how behind she was.

“You’re so dumb,” Evie said under her breath, closing her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again, the stack would magically disappear.

She had to be dumb. It was the only explanation. She’d seen her mom sit at this very table every night, going through the bills the same way Evie did. When her mom caught her looking, she would give Evie a small smile, which Evie had always interpreted as her mom having it under control. Evie had spent more time than she cared to admit trying to pick apart exactly how her mom had done it. Amelia Cauley had made it look easy, but every day, Evie felt like she was on the edge of a cliff, a light breeze away from toppling over the side. They had the same job, except her mom had two kids, not one. Little kids too, ones who’d needed to be watched. Josh was old enough to take care of himself. She was doing something wrong, but she had no idea what it was.

“You might want to consider asking—” Gloria had suggested.

Evie tapped the messages icon on her phone and thumbed down until she found the thread she was looking for. “Sperm Donor.” A few years ago, after one too many glasses of merlot, Kayla had changed Evie’s dad’s contact name. “More accurate,” Kayla had said with a triumphant smile.

His last text was dated a year and a half ago. It was a selfie of him and, Evie assumed, his latest girlfriend. The background was a giant wall of red boulders.The Grand Canyon, maybe?It was an educated guess, because Evie had never been there.“Me and Barb livin the dream. Love u sweetie.”

Barb looked like all her dad’s other girlfriends. She was mid-forties, her teeth stained yellow from daily packs of Marlboros. She probably had grown kids of her own and enough cash to interest her dad, while lacking just the right amount of self-esteem to fund his blackjack habit in exchange for his attention. It seemed like a shitty deal to Evie.

The message chain below the picture was blank. She’d never texted him back, and he hadn’t texted her since.

“Dad, we really need your help,” Evie typed. Then her thumb hovered over the Send button for a second before she erased the message and closed out of her phone.

Most of Evie’s childhood memories swirled into one another like watercolors, but one was a photograph so vivid, she could picture it. It was a mid-July, a few days after her eighth birthday. Her new elephant pajamas stank because she’d refused to take them off so her mom could wash them. The house was an oven because her mom never turned on the AC. Instead, when it got hot, she would walk from room to room, sliding open windows. “Feel that?” she would say, holding Evie’s hand to the screen. “Nature’s air-conditioning.”

When Evie woke up, her mom was sitting on her bed, Josh in her arms, telling Evie in the plainest terms that her dad would not be around anymore.

“For a little while?” Evie had asked. He’d never been a constant presence in her life, disappearing for weeks at a time. When he was gone, Evie would sit on the front porch step every day, watching the driveway, waiting for his van to turn in. Sometimes he came back with a wallet full of cash and boxes of salt water taffy tucked under his arms, sometimes with nothing but drooping eyelids and the stench of alcohol on his breath. Those times were the worst because she knew her mom and dad would yell at each other later, when they thought she was asleep.

But he always came back.

Her mom had shaken her head. “For good.”

Evie put down her phone, walked up to the kitchen counter, and pulled out a stick of softened butter before twisting the oven knob.

Since the first time she’d helped her mom crack eggs for their Saturday-morning pancakes, Evie had loved baking. She loved the precision, weighing ingredients to the gram, and how the batter bonded when she mixed the wet ingredients into the dry ones. She loved pulling her dessert out of the oven—hot, fresh, and moist—steam rising off the top. And of course, she loved eating it.

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