“So what’d you do?”
“I told him, if that was the way he dealt with difference of opinion, then it was no wonder his wife wanted him to have counseling.”
Evan smiled. “Are you even supposed to be telling me these things? Aren’t they confidential?”
Selena tipped her head from side to side. “As long as I don’t mention any details, like names or anything, it’s kinda like a case study, and those get printed in magazines and books all the time.”
“With the client’s permission.”
“I’d say once he spit at me, his permission was given.”
Evan laughed and glanced at Shaun, whose head was almost touching the table, his eyes closing and opening with long blinks. Selena noticed at almost the same time.
“Oh, poor baby,” she said, putting a hand on Shaun’s shoulder.
Evan dried his hands off with a dishtowel and came to the table, unfastening Shaun from his seat.
“He’s exhausted. I forgot he didn’t have his afternoon nap.”
“Didn’t he sleep good last night?”
“No, we actually had to take a nighttime cruise into town.”
“What? You’re kidding, what happened?”
Evan related the events of the night before, his throat trying to close up when he described Shaun’s seizure. He left out the parts about seeing Becky and the toes in the closet, skimming over the rest of the day’s details quickly as he picked Shaun up and carried him to his room.
“Sounds like you guys did a lot of cleaning,” Selena said, as he came back into the living room.
She handed him his glass of wine and sat on the sofa. Evan considered the chair but then rested beside her, a little distance between them. The sun held above the tops of the trees across the lake, a forest fire in the sky.
“Yeah, quite a bit.”
“You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?”
Evan sighed, took a sip of his wine.
“Tomorrow.” He chanced a look at Selena and saw a resigned look on her face. “I’m sorry, it’s just not working out here.”
He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t, you don’t. You’re great,” he said, scooting closer to her, until their knees almost touched. “You’ve really brightened things up for us. It’s me—”
He floundered for a moment, trying to think of how to explain. “I’m afraid.”
Selena looked up at him. “Afraid? Of what?”
“Of this, of what’s happening between us.”
“Evan, I—”
“No, you don’t have to say anything. It’s me, it’s the life I have. I worry, constantly. I’m afraid all the time. I’m terrified that Shaun will have an accident or another seizure and I’ll be completely alone, and I couldn’t withstand losing him too. I’d break.”
Selena moved closer still, as he lowered his head, her thigh touching his.
“But what does that have to do with us? With ...” She shrugged. “Being happy?”
Be happy.
“It’s everything.”
He stood and paced across the living room, watching the sun fall slowly. His heart beat fast, faster, faster still. He could see his pulse in his vision.
Tell her everything. Tell her about your plans for the clock. Tell her about what you’ve seen, what you think you’ve seen. Tell her about— “When Elle got sick, I was hopeful. She was young and vibrant and strong, not the kind of person to ever even get a cold,” Evan said, facing away from the couch. “I thought, she’ll beat this and it will be a courageous story to tell our grandchildren someday. But she got sicker, and sicker, and none of the treatments worked.”
He paused. “Like I told you before, I took money from my work, stole it to try some experimental treatments that weren’t covered by insurance. The experimental stuff worked better than the traditional medicine did, but barely. It was like she got a toehold while sliding down a steep mountain. Then my confidence started to slip. I caught myself wondering what it would be like raising Shaun alone, and damn me for being selfish, but I was. I suppose we all are on some level, but I kept thinking, I can’t do this alone, I won’t be able to.”
Evan laughed, a choked sound that he drowned with more wine.
“That was when the fear hadn’t fully taken over yet, when part of me believed everything would still work out all right. That’s sometimes the worst and best quality people possess, you know? To hope in the darkest times. Sometimes it pays off and faith is redeemed, and others—”
Evan swallowed. A lump was forming in his throat, and no matter how many gulps of wine he took, it wouldn’t move. He knew what it was, and knew the only way to make it go away would be to keep talking.
“Then one day, I knew. I knew she wasn’t going to get better. She’d had another round of chemo two days prior, and it was painful to look at her, to see how much less she’d become. She told me she hurt and she couldn’t take much more, and I—here’s the selfishness again—I told her she couldn’t quit, not on me and not on Shaun.”
Evan tipped the last of his wine down his throat.
“She told me to go to her bag, that there was something in there she wanted. She was too weak to get out of bed on her own. When I reached inside, there was a bottle of pain pills one of the doctors had prescribed for her when she was still able to be at home. It was almost full, and I remember how heavy that bottle felt, so heavy. She told me it was too much and she didn’t want to suffer anymore. She asked me to help her, to count out a dozen or so into her hand and then get her some water. She told me to pull the bag close to the bed, so it would look like she’d reached down and got them herself after I left.”
A vein of tears ran down the right side of his face, and he wiped it absently.