Page 10 of Home Sweet Home

Kayla grinned. “Ah. So that’s who you would think about when you ‘brushed your teeth.’” Once, under the influence of enough Cabernet to tranquilize a large cow, Evie had told Kayla she used to use her electric toothbrush to masturbate when she was a teenager. “I’m right. You’re bright red. You ever tell him?”

Evie had considered it and even practiced saying the words, whispering them to herself in her bedroom at night when everyone else had gone to sleep. She’d imagined turning to him as they drove, putting her hand over his on the gearshift.

“Nope,” Evie said.

“If he doesn’t know, why were you in such a hurry to get out of there?”

Evie could still hear the words that had come out of West’s mouth almost a decade ago, floating in through the rolled-down window of his Jeep, so clearly it was as if he were standing right next to her. He’d thought she couldn’t hear him—that was the only explanation for the way he’d glanced at her through the front window when he said it, an amused gleam in his eye. He didn’t have to know she’d heard because it had shattered the illusion. Any hopes she’d held that West was interested in her crumbled like shortbread.

The words were etched in her brain, permanent and unforgettable, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell Kayla. The sting had mostly worn off, tamped down deep, but still there, not entirely forgotten. His sudden appearance had brought it all up to the surface. “It’s nothing. We were kids. We’re different people now.”

Evie glanced through the bar window, where West was laughing, his head tilted back.

“Maybe,” Kayla said. “But that dude is like wine. He’s only gotten finer with age.”

Evie stole one more glance then refocused her attention on a loose thread of her shorts. “He won’t be here for long.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Whatever you say, Ice Queen.” Kayla shrugged then gripped the gearshift, sliding it back and taking her Beetle out of park. “Now, how about we get out of here?”

As they exited the parking lot, Evie watched West’s bright-yellow Jeep fade in the rearview mirror. So he still had it. In all the chaos before, she hadn’t noticed it. She didn’t know what brought him back home after all these years, but she hoped it wouldn’t keep him here for long.

* * *

As Kayla drovedown Main Street, Evie Googled ways to make money fast. Creek Water had a small set of businesses, practical ones that supported daily life. A gas station. A diner. A pizzeria. An ice cream shop that only opened in the summer and staffed itself with high schoolers willing to put up with the hot kitchen and no AC. None of the jobs paid particularly well, so getting another job wasn’t a solution, not unless she wanted to drive forty minutes each way to West Greensburg. She would spend more on gas than she would earn at any job she could get without a college degree.

“Your grandma’s a real charmer,” Kayla said.

Evie looked up from her phone to see they were driving down Oak Street, where a few rusted Airstream trailers sat on either side of the road. The lawns were overgrown with weeds and overloaded with all the junk that didn’t fit inside the trailers, all of it completely ruined from years of being exposed to rain and heat. An old woman was sitting on the porch of her trailer in a fold-out lawn chair, cigarette perched between her thumb and index finger, wisps of smoke rising up off the ends. She had short blue-gray hair and was wearing a tattered flowery nightgown with no bra. As they passed by her trailer, she gave Kayla’s car the stink eye.

Evie sighed, sinking down into her seat. Evangeline Cauley was her father’s mother. In the twenty-four years they had lived in the same town, Evie had spoken fewer than ten words to Evangeline Cauley. Evie didn’t know much about her because she’d never really had the chance to get to know her grandmother. Her mom had never told her why, but she didn’t have to. When Evie was little, she’d overheard her parents arguing and learned that Evangeline didn’t believe Evie was actually her father’s child. She’d held onto that belief long after Evie was born, even though Evie had come out the spitting image of her father, with auburn hair and a constellation of freckles stretched across the bridge of her nose.

As Evie glanced out the window, she wondered what might happen if she showed up at her grandma’s front door and asked for money to help them keep the house. She would probably laugh in Evie’s face and tell her she was just like her mom, leeching off others to fix stupid mistakes.

“I’ll never understand why your mom agreed to name you after her,” Kayla said, shaking her head as she turned onto Main Street, Evangeline’s scowl disappearing in the rearview mirror. Kayla’s eyes widened at something Evie couldn’t see, and she added, “Quick pit stop.”

As Kayla parked, the mortgage sat on the tip of Evie’s tongue. Her Google job search had been fruitless, and her one relative still in Creek Water wasn’t an option. Kayla was her best friend. She would want to help. Evie opened her mouth just as the car rolled to a stop.

Kayla stepped one foot outside, a gleam in her eye. “Come check it out.”

They stood in front of a ramshackle building with rusted aluminum siding between the library and the hardware store. Weather-worn boards covered the windows. The building had sat empty for so long, Evie couldn’t remember what it was before.

She peered through into a window through a crack in the boards. It was dark inside, but from what she could see, the inside was just as run-down as the outside. “Did you bring me here to murder me?”

Kayla’s lips twisted into a smile. “As if I would ever do the murdering part myself. Too messy. I’m renting this baby, starting in a few weeks. I’m going to turn it into a salon.”

“Wow,” Evie said, her chest full and tight at the excitement running through Kayla, who looked at the building like it was the Taj Mahal and not a dilapidated piece of crap.

Kayla had a side business doing hair for people in town, and for years, she’d talked about opening her own salon. Creek Water hadn’t had one since Fran retired a few years before. Customers at the diner loved to complain about driving all the way to Bend, a town fifteen minutes down the highway, to get their hair cut.

“I didn’t want to tell you until it was final,” Kayla said. “There was some fuckery with the lease, and I was worried it wasn’t going to happen. But I got the okay this morning. I was going to tell you at the bar, but you know.” Kayla raised an eyebrow, and Evie felt a new wave of discomfort thinking about West. For a blissful second, she’d forgotten about him. “So I thought I’d just show you.”

Evie squeezed Kayla’s arm. “Proud of you.”

And she was, but another feeling pulled at her, begging for Evie’s attention. It was like they were running a race together, and Kayla had started to pull ahead, leaving Evie straggling behind.

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