Page 82 of Home Sweet Home

Evie turned back to her dough, trying to keep calm even though that wasn’t what she felt. She hadn’t slept the night before, her mind reeling. It had taken all her willpower not to storm back into Josh’s room and make him explain himself. He was the problem that was under her roof, the one she maybe had a shot at fixing, but her attempts so far hadn’t yielded the results she’d wanted, so she’d stopped herself.

“Are you okay?” Josh asked, settling into a chair at the table.

As Evie’s fingers gripped the wet dough, she pondered how to answer the question. Her mind drifted back to all the times she’d sat where Josh was, watching her mom look over the bills, make a meal, or bake something, her brow furrowed in concentration, dark bags under her eyes, hair frizzy from the heat. Some part of Evie had always known that what her mom was doing was hard, and it was clear she felt it by how she carried herself. But she always did it with a smile, even if it was a thin one, put on as a mask not to worry Evie.

So with a sigh, Evie wiped her hands off on a kitchen towel already crusty with dried dough, sank down into a chair across from Josh, and decided on the truth. “Not great. If I’m being totally honest.”

“You and West broke up?” Josh asked.

The question was so absurd and so heartbreaking that Evie laughed. It was the only reaction she could think of that wouldn’t widen the aching hole in her heart. “I don’t know if we were ever together, but yeah. Things aren’t great. The bread was supposed to be a peace offering, but given how it’s turning out, he’s probably more likely to get food poisoning than forgive me.”

Josh’s mouth twisted to the side as he bit the inside of his cheek. “And we almost lost the house?”

Evie nodded. “We almost lost the house. But it’s under control now.” She glanced toward the pile of bills on the counter. She hadn’t looked at them in a while, but that didn’t mean they had gone away. She wasn’t sure there would ever be a day when the stack of envelopes wouldn’t sit there, taunting her. “Except I might not be able to afford that class for you. I’m sorry.”

She expected him to be angry because she’d tricked him—it hadn’t been on purpose because she’d truly believed she would figure it out because she always did. If he was upset, though, he didn’t show it. He only bit his lip and fiddled with a coaster, turning it over and over.

“Mrs. Jenkins said something weird the other day.” Evie tried to keep her voice casual and light. “Something about you getting upset in her class? You want to talk about that?”

Josh’s hand froze, and the coaster clattered to the table with a loud thwack. Evie didn’t say anything more, just leaving room if he decided to talk. Even so, she was still shocked when he opened his mouth.

“We were practicing writing college essays,” Josh said. “They gave us a few examples from kids in our high school that had gotten into college.” He paused. “One of them was yours.”

Evie’s eyes narrowed. She barely remembered writing it, and she was sure enough time had passed that someone could have shown her the words and she wouldn’t have recognized them as her own. As if Josh could read her mind, he added, “It was about Mom, how she raised us on her own. How you wanted to be half the person she was when you grew up. It was really good. I read it and then…”

The mystery of Josh’s behavior for the last few months started to come into focus, and when he stopped talking, she held her breath, worried if she exhaled she might scare him away.

“I lost it. I barely made it to the bathroom. I was crying. I couldn’t stop shaking.”

Evie’s eyes welled up at the idea of Josh hurting. She’d spent every moment of every day trying to prevent it. She put her hand over his, and to her surprise, he didn’t jerk it away. “Reading about Mom made you that upset?”

Josh shook his head. “Kind of. Not really. It just sort of hit me.” He looked up at her. “What you had to give up, because of me.”

Evie pulled Josh to her. His body was stiff in her arms, but only for a second before his limbs loosened. She didn’t remember the last time he’d actually hugged her, but she knew he’d been shorter than her, his head tucked underneath her chin. Now hers was tucked under his. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to say, but it hadn’t been this. “I would do the same thing again. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

“I know. But… you’re so stressed all the time. You try to hide it, but I’m not stupid. And I’m just trying to say… I know it hasn’t been easy. And… thank you for taking care of me.”

He’d never said it before, not once. Evie could have gone her whole life without hearing it, but when he said it, it was as though everything she’d done had been worth it.

But something still didn’t make sense.

“Wait,” she said, shaking her head. “What does this have to do with Oliver?”

Josh sighed and stared at her for a long time. “He came to the bathroom. To see if I was okay or whatever.”

“He saw you cry.”

“He kept asking me if I wanted to talk about it,” Josh said. “Like at lunch or when we were doing Minecraft builds.”

For the last seven years, she’d been so single-mindedly focused on making sure they had dinner on the table at night, clean clothes, and gas in the car that she’d forgotten about the other part of providing for Josh, perhaps the most important, which was setting the right example.

“I’m not one to talk,” Evie said. “Obviously, based on what you heard outside that window. But let Oliver carry some of this for you. That’s what friends are for.”

Josh nodded, and there was a long silence before he said, “Can I show you something?”

A few minutes later, eggs, butter sticks, and bags of flour flashed across the screen of Josh’s laptop.

“You need to click the ones on the recipe,” Josh said from behind Evie. “And the right number. The recipe has an amount.”

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