Whit’s free hand clenched the bench beneath him for reasons unknown. Fine, half-known. Okay, reasons fully known.
“She’s the one who’s helping me,” he said after too many seconds. “With Helen’s book.”
The silence on the other end of the line suggested that his voice had done something weird. And just when he’d been desperately trying to make it sound normal, too.
“And now she’s coming to parties with you?”
Whit let out a huff of exasperation. “Yes. Don’t.”
“Okay,” Evie said, trying and failing to sound casual.
“That is not why I’m calling, Evie.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“But you’re implying—”
“How can I be implying anything, Whit? I asked two questions and then said ‘Okay.’?”
Whit, the writer of the two of them, did not have the words to respond to that.
“Fine. Whatever.” A weak defense. Whit rubbed a hand down his whole face.
“But if I were...” Evie began.
Whit laughed despite himself.
“No, it’s not like that,” he said, fully aware that he was lying. It was at least partially like that, though speaking it aloud felt impossible. He wanted to ask Evie,Am I evil for even thinking ofkissing another woman? Would Helen be horrified? Am I going to ruin Annie’s life? Should I be shunned?
“But,” he said instead, “Annie found this picture of Helen. And she begged me to keep it, and she was so happy to have found it, but I could tell she was sad, too. And she just won’t talk to me about it or anything, and I don’t know what to do.”
He paused. He sensed her waiting for him to say more, so then he added, “That’s all.”
“Of course you don’t know what to do,” Evie said, slowly, measuredly. “No one tells you how to parent a child who’s lost her mother.”
“Well,” he mused, “there are books.”
She laughed.
“Has it gotten that bad? Are you reading the grief books Mom sent you?”
Whit smiled, too. “It has not gottenthatbad.”
He stood up. He hardly ever sat still while talking on the phone, and he was feeling a bit more like himself now. Whit leaned against the stone wall that limned the back terrace, comfortable in the silence.
“I think this is all normal,” Evie said eventually. “Everyone processes loss in their own way, including kids, and—I’m about to give you unsolicited advice, so brace yourself—but I think the thing to do is just to be there for her, and be patient with her, and let her know that her feelings, whatever they are, are allowed. She knows she’s safe with you. When she’s ready, she’ll talk. So don’t freak out.”
“I’m not freaked out.”
Evie laughed at that, and even over the phone, Whit had the sense she was laughing in his face.
“Whit, you called me. To talk about your feelings. Two things that are enough to make me consider the possibility that you have beenbody-snatched.”
Whit was pacing in the grass now. He paused to look at the popcornlike clouds above him.
“Tough but fair,” he said through a sigh.
“Anyway,” Evie said, with an air of finality, “I need to go, but I have a couple of things to say to you, and I’m trying to figure out what order to say them in.”
