Page 22 of Home Sweet Home

Evie smiled, exhaling for the first time in five hours. “What else is it supposed to smell like?”

Tour busses rarely stopped in Creek Water. The gas stations near Indy and Chicago were much nicer. Love’s had beef jerky that Evie sometimes dreamed about, waking up with a small pool of saliva on her pillow. The Creek Water Marathon, on the other hand, had one bathroom, the kind with a key, outside surrounded by rusted mechanical equipment. Once, in desperation after pumping gas, Evie had peed in there, and a huge daddy long-legs had skittered up the wall while she was midstream. She still had nightmares about it.

But the retirement home tour bus had hit empty just as they passed through town, and with the next closest gas station twenty miles down the highway, they’d stopped. Evie had watched in horror as dozens of people stepped off the bus, cameras and sunglasses on strings around their necks, and shambled like zombies toward Joe’s. She’d hoped maybe they would pass on by and go to the Pizza King a few blocks away, but they had stepped into the diner with huge, hungry smiles.

“You missed all the juicy gossip,” Evie said. “Millicent told me Roger is banging Ruth.”

“Was Millicent the one with blue hair?”

“Bright-purple tracksuit.”

“How do they even get any privacy?” Kayla asked. “I take Ryleigh to visit my grandma all the time. There’s always someone in there poking her with something or bringing her Jell-O.”

“Bingo night,” Evie said, her gaze landing on the clock above the counter. A week ago, it would have been almost time to go home, but now she had to drag her tired body to the baseball field. Evie sighed. “I would kill not to have to go to practice right now.”

Kayla hopped off the stool and moved to the coffee machine to brew a fresh pot. “Tell Mr. Baseball I said hi.”

When Evie got to the diamond, West’s Jeep was already in the parking lot. Evie gave her armpit a quick sniff. She’d only had time to change into shorts and a T-shirt, and by the smell, she could have used a shower or at least another swipe of deodorant.

A few minutes later, Evie had her first official task as assistant coach of the Creek Water Cougars.

“Fill it close to home base,” West said, hovering behind her. “Otherwise, it’ll get all jammed up.”

“I know how to draw a straight line, thank you very much,” Evie said, dragging the chalker toward home base as if she already knew what he’d told her.

But she didn’t, of course, because it had never occurred to her that the dirt on baseball fields didn’t sprout up with perfect white lines linking the bases. The chalk was powdery and airy, like flour, and a cloud of it sputtered into the air and into her mouth.

“Ugh,” Evie said, trying to scrape the offensive stuff, which tasted absolutely nothing like flour, off her tongue.

“Ten scoops oughta do it,” West called from the dugout.

“I’ve got it, West.”

West put up his hands. “All you.”

The chalker was harder to maneuver than she’d expected, not easily controlled like a crayon or a colored pencil. She had to use all her body weight to keep it from veering off. When Evie made it halfway between home plate and first base, not daring to look back at her surely wavy line, she asked, “How do you know how to do this, anyway?”

“Oh, right,” he said, as he took an X-acto knife to a cardboard box sitting on the dugout bench. “My mythical army of people who do everything for me.”

The machine tried to scamper to the left, but Evie gritted her teeth and wrangled it into place. “Don’t you? Have people?”

He paused, as if considering her question. “Some. Do wipe my own ass, though.”

Evie chuckled, followed by a quick glance toward him, making absolutely sure he hadn’t heard.

“Spent a lot of time out here, Peach. I may not be as smart as you, but I remember how to chalk a field.”

When Evie was somewhere between third base and home plate, the boys arrived, chattering among themselves as they settled into the dugout. Evie pushed the chalker outside the fence, hoping never to see it again, and made her way to the dugout, grabbing her clipboard off the bench to check that everyone was there. Only one boy was missing.

When Evie saw Oliver at sign-ups, she had another idea. The last thing she wanted was Josh to waste the summer holed up in his room, sulking over whatever was bothering him. When she told Josh she was coaching the team, he stared at her for a long time before saying, “Since when do you care about baseball?”

“It’s a job.” That it was also the only way they would keep the house wasn’t worth mentioning. “You should play. It’ll be good for you.” He looked at her as though she’d suggested he streak down Main Street, so she added, “I’ll enroll you in that class.”

She had his attention then. It was a thousand dollars she didn’t have, but that was a problem for future Evie.

Annoyed, Evie scanned the parking lot. They had a deal, and he wasn’t holding up his end, but a few seconds later, Josh skulked around the corner of the dugout, his black hoodie pulled up over his head even though it was almost eighty degrees out, not a cloud in the sky. He examined the bench of boys, eyeing an empty spot next to Oliver before settling into a spot on the opposite end of the bench, as far away as he could get from him, leaning against the wall.

“You’re late,” Evie said, putting the clipboard back on the bench.

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