Page 48 of Home Sweet Home

“Lots of things.” Evie shrugged, feeling nostalgic for a time when her problems were small and easily solved by a hug from her mom or a good cry.

West came around the front of the swing and settled in next to her. The poles sank deeper into the dirt under his weight. “What’s on the thinking agenda this evening?”

Evie sighed as she pictured Josh closing off, skulking into his room. “Josh. I was this close to getting him to talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Well, he and Oliver used to be best friends.”

West’s eyes widened. “Huh. Really? Never see them together at practice.”

“Yeah, well, Josh is avoiding him. Has been for a while, but he won’t talk to me about it. Every time I try to ask him, he just grunts like a caveman and runs back to his room.”

The swing had slowed to a stop, and West kicked his feet to get it to move again. “Well, as someone who’s been a teenage boy before, sometimes we don’t know how to talk about our feelings.”

There was an invisible weight in his words. She could see it all over his face.

“What happened?” Evie asked. “With Robert. It’s obvious he’s rubbed you the wrong way. And I mean, I know he’s a jerk, but I’ve never seen you like that with anyone. It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it… It’s just…” Her hand had been inching toward his, and she noticed it just in time to pull it away. “If you do want to talk about it, I’m here.”

West leaned back in the bench, kicking off the ground. The bench creaked as it swung. His attention was focused on the sky, but when Evie followed his gaze, all she saw was darkness.

After what felt like minutes, West said, “I don’t like bullies. When I heard him at the game, it just got under my skin. Because I know from personal experience that the way he’s trying to motivate Oliver isn’t gonna work.”

He didn’t say any more, and she left the silence open for him to fill in the gaps, but she was already starting to piece it together—why West hadn’t come home in years, even for his dad’s funeral, and how he’d tensed up when Evie brought up the plaque that night at dinner. The realization made her stomach twist.

“Your dad,” she said softly.

When he nodded slowly, she resisted the urge to wrap her arms around him. Guilt crept through her as the full weight of it landed on her, because it never would have occurred to Evie that Rex Hawthorne was anything like Robert Martin. With her, he’d been all charm. Each time she’d gone to dinner at his house, he’d claimed Evie’s pie was the best he’d ever had the pleasure of eating. He’d walked into the diner every Sunday after church like he was King Arthur and it was his court. He was familiar with everyone, their families, and their lives, having sold insurance to most of the farmers in town and coached their kids in baseball for over a decade.

Evie shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” West asked, a small smile pulling at his lips.

“I lived next door to you, and I had no idea.”

West rested his hands on his thighs, leaning forward on the swing. “Well, he was damn good at hiding it. You know how you said all I care about is what people think of me?” Another pang of guilt tore through Evie as she remembered the assumption she’d made. “My dad definitely cared a whole lot.”

“What did he do?” Evie asked, then she shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t know why I asked that.”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. He never hit me or anything like that. I don’t know if he would have. At some point, I got bigger than him, and he wouldn’t have been able to. He didn’t have to, though. It was the looks and the words that did it. If I made a tiny mistake, I knew. He would see, and I would get an earful about it. In the car. At home. Anywhere I could hear him, but no one else could. He would go on about what a waste of space I was if I missed one goddamned pitch.”

“I wish you would have told me,” Evie whispered, resisting the urge to clamp her hand over West’s. “I would have kicked his ass.”

West raised an eyebrow.

“Or put a laxative in a lemon pie.”

“That sounds more like your style.” West laughed. “I know I should have said something. It’s just… for a long time, I thought it was normal. That he just pushed me harder than anyone else’s dad pushed them. That maybe that’s why I was the best.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Wasn’t until therapy, I learned what it really was.”

“You went to therapy?” Evie asked. It was hard to imagine West sitting in a chair, talking about his feelings, mostly because he always seemed to be happy, unbothered by bumps in the road.

“Sports psychologist. After the injury.” He opened his mouth, shut it like he thought better of it, then he turned toward her. “He wasn’t angry at the mistakes. He was angry because he was very unhappy with how his own life turned out.”

“But he had you and Della.”

West shook his head. “Baseball was the only thing he ever cared about. He got me started. Coached. None of it was what he really wanted.”

Some of the fog had started to lift, and the answer to the question that had been on Evie’s mind since she’d seen West on the TV that day in the diner started to unfold.

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