When Evie cut me loose, I had to let go. That meant almost no contact. Trying to resist social-media stalking. Finding a new “first person to call” when I had any kind of news. Being out of her life for good was hard, but if I’d stayed, it would have been worse. Besides, it’s not like she gave me a choice.
“Here’s your mum and dad’s details.” Rose passes Evie the information, written on the back of a bookmark from the shop. Evie holds the card like it’s precious. “Don’t phone ahead, okay?”
Great. Apparently, it’s more strategic just to blindside them. Her advice hardly fills me with confidence. My mind skips forward to what I’ll do if Adelaide is a bust and I’m stuck picking up more pieces.
As we exit the shop, Evie is shooting daggers at me. I want to explain why I kept it from her, but I don’t know how to say it in any way she’ll find palatable.You ditched me. Pretending I didn’t know you was the playbook you handed me …
The real reason is scarier.What if I tell you the truth and you completely unravel?
I’ve done enough of that for both of us. You spend years getting over something—a betrayal—and rebuild your life,thinking it will never implode again, because you’ll never allow it to. That’s how I feel about this woman. She seems innocuous and fragile now, but history has shown she has the power to destroy me.
I need a plan to keep my head for the Adelaide trip. And to keep her at arm’s length. Because this version of her … This is the person I first knew, and first liked. It would be so easy to be swayed.
We’ve got a few hours to kill before our flight, and what I’m craving is time with the camera. More specifically, time and space away from Evie. Photography is the only thing that keeps me grounded when everything else is out of control. Through the viewfinder, I forget who I am and can focus on whatever’s in the frame. Tiny details, caught in shifting focus. Tricks of the light.
But right now she’s standing in front of me, glaring up into my face in the street. A whole world of tiny details is being revealed across her features and blasted at me. All of them point to her being furious.
“Evie, I didn’t know how to tell you without …”
Confusing you? Destroying you?
“How do you expect me to trust you now?” she challenges me, fairly.
“All I can say is I had your best interests at heart. Even if the execution was off.”
“Off?”she splutters. “Drew! First, I thought you were an Uber driver. Then a paparazzo, then some sort of long-lost mourner at my husband’s funeral. Now I find out you knew Oliver from school. Then that you knewmefrom school. Worse, that you were mybest friend. And, apparently, I hate you?”
I recoil at that. “Hateis a strong word …”
“And what about Bree? Did you know her too?Doyou know her? Is she in on this mystery?”
I wish I could fill this part in, but I haven’t spoken to Bree in several years. We didn’t fall out. It was probably just that staying in touch was too painful and we allowed ourselves to drift apart. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d kept in touch with her.”
A light seems to go out in Evie’s eyes. I can see how much she’s been hoping her other best friend will ride in to salvage this situation, but unfortunately she’s got only me.
“Whose judgment do I trust here?” she powers on. “Sixteen-year-old me who first made you her best friend? Or twentysomething me who shut you out of my life for some reason you refuse to divulge?”
I try to place my hand on her arm, but she shakes me off, and I get that familiar sense of dismay that I felt toward the end, when everything collapsed. My phone starts vibrating again with a call from Chloe. This time I can’t ignore it.
“Maybe try twenty-nine-year-old you starting fresh with someone who is just trying to help you. I promise,” I say, lifting my phone to my ear. “Sorry, I have to take this call.”
28
Evie
This man!I find it impossible to believe I would ever have seen something in him that suggested “best friend potential” when he is so cagey about our background. Yes, he’s been doing a lot to take care of me, but he’s been keepingyearsof history from me in the process.
Now he’s wandered along the footpath, having averyearnest phone conversation under a tree outside the antiques store, presumably with the woman who called yesterday in the car. He doesn’t realize the breeze is carrying his voice.
“I’ll take Harriet to the zoo on the weekend,” he promises. “How’s Sunday?” He glances over, notices me staring, and angles his body away. It takes me back to primary school and the time I was inexplicably dropped by my two best friends, who’d whispered about me behind their hands and left me stranded awkwardly on the playground, trying to look busy.
“Sure, put her on!” I hear him say. There’s a pause, and then a shift in everything as he turns around. Tone, volume, body language. He’s like a whole different person. Guard down. Lit up. “How are you, sweetheart? How was kindy?”
There’s a long pause while he listens and I catch the smile on his face, crinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes andwashing away all the stress of our encounter to date. Eventually he gets a word in.
“I thought I could take you on an adventure,” he suggests. And even I can hear the squealing, a few feet away. As he holds the phone out from his ear and laughs, his gaze falls on me, and I’m the recipient of a full-bodied smile so genuine and warm it floods me with refracted adoration. But the smile dissolves just as fast, and I find myself willing it back, wanting to bask in its warmth even a second longer. Wishing I wasn’t its kryptonite.
I’m certain that child is Drew’s flesh and blood. Which means Chloe is whom, exactly? His ex-girlfriend? Worse, his existing partner?
