Chapter 22

I ran up to Sheila's room and was relieved to see a light shinning under her door. I knocked, “Sheila?”

“Come in?”

I opened the door and stuck my head in.

“Hey you,” she said from bed where she sat with her laptop wearing Calvin and Hobbs pajamas. I could see the concern and sympathy in her eyes as she asked me, “What's up? Are you okay?”

I smiled an uncertain teary smile, “Probably. Evan's coming by to pick me up. I need to get out for a while. Can you keep an ear open for Sulamith? She's been sleeping straight through the night lately but I still feel paranoid that she'll wake and be upset if I'm not here.”

“Sure. Go get me the baby monitor.”

I flipped on the monitor by my bed where Sulamith slept, and put its partner on Sheila's night stand.

“See you in the morning,” I said, gently closing her door behind me, and then the baby gate at the top of the stairs after that. I pulled on a jacket and stepped out into the freezing night air locking the door behind me, then down the stairs, through the gate, and into Evan's car.

“Where to?” he asked, looking at me.

He held my gaze and I looked back at him seeing what Audrey wanted me to see, there in his green eyes. I looked away. “Anywhere.”

He nodded, flipped on my seat warmer, turned on some music and just drove. We watched the city lights slide by in silence for a long time, not saying anything, and after about an hour I asked, “How do you want to die Evan?”

He gave a small ironic laugh and shook his head slightly as he shifted and took a curve on Marine drive, “I'm still working on how to live.” He was silent for a minute thinking, then sighed, “I suppose that I would like to die with fewer regrets, or at least knowing that I'd done what I could to make up for them. You?”

“I don't know. I feel guilty for being alive sometimes. And then I feel guilty for wasting time feeling guilty instead of living. Which is . . . you know, stupid. There are some things that I'm trying to wrap my brain around but, Audrey didn't have the easiest life in the world. Her life was deeply affected by WWII but she picked up and moved on I . . .” I sighed. “I hope that at the end, I'm like her.”

“Have you figured out what to tell Sulamith?” he asked.

“I'll tell her that Audrey died but that she had a long life that was full of love so even though we'll miss her it's okay. Does that sound alright?” I asked Evan.

“Yeah. That sounds fine. I think she'll understand. She's pretty perceptive for two and three quarters.”

I sighed again.

“Hey, I keep forgetting that you're over nineteen,” Evan said to me. “I could use a drink let's swing by the pub near my place and we can toast Audrey.”

“Sounds good.”

*

“To dying well,” Evan raised his glass.

“To dying well.” I lightly tapped the neck of my cider bottle against his glass.

“I've never lost anyone that I was close to, except for you.” Evan looked at me and I felt at ease under his gaze as he spoke. “I can't tell you how much the way I believed you had died bothered me. It still bothers me knowing that your parents were in the house that night . . . Even though your dad hated me,” Evan raised his eyebrow ruefully.

“I know,” I shook my head. “It took me a year to stop feeling sick to my stomach every time I thought about it. But if it makes it any easier, they always knew that something like that might happen someday. I didn't know that until after but . . .” I shrugged, at a loss for words and still reluctant to tell Evan the more improbable aspects of my past. But thinking back I realized there were things I could share. “For the record, my dad didn't hate you,” I told him.

“Could have fooled me. I hated picking you up at your house. He'd stand there looking at me and even though I'm pretty sure that I was eye to eye with him I always felt about six inches shorter. And the look he'd give me . . .” Evan shuddered.

I couldn't help laughing, “I'd never thought about him from your perspective, but I guess he would have been pretty intimidating.” I shook my head thinking about the way my dad had stood by the door looking like a giant, eyes narrowed as I would join Evan on the landing of the front porch. “He asked me about you once or twice but I just looked at him like he was crazy and told him, 'Trust me Dad, Evan is just a friend.' I don't know if he believed me but I think that he would have been suspicious of any guy coming to the house to see me. Truth is he probably would have hated Rowan even more because Rowan always made his intentions so damn obvious, and Raphael would have put him through the roof.” I looked at my cider telling myself to slow down before it loosened my tongue to a point I'd regret and hoped that Evan would let Raphael's name slide.

“Raphael?” Evan fixed me with a look.

No such luck.

“Who's Raphael?” Evan asked, all amused curiosity.

I thought about it. I didn't have to tell him that Raph was an angel. It wasn't as if Evan avoided all mention of people he'd been romantically involved with and he had a long string of ex-girlfriends.

“Former lover,” I told Evan, because ex-boyfriend wasn't the word.

“Really?” Evan's eyebrows went up.

“Really,” I confirmed nodding. “I think your mum met him once.”

“What's he like?”

“Charming, oddball, devastatingly good looking, completely infuriating.” I took a sip of my drink. “He drove me insane but we had good chemistry.”

“Before or after Rowan?”

“That's messy and complicated.” I tried to brush it off.

“Now I'm really curious.”

I tilted my head thinking about it, “I suppose in a way there was some overlap. I was never unfaithful to Rowan, but I couldn't deny that Raphael had a way of getting under my skin, and Rowan knew that. Raph and I spent an afternoon together after Rowan was gone. I think that it was his way of reminding me that I wasn't dead. Typical complicated Raphael,” I shrugged. “Audrey was trying to give me the same message but I get scared whenever I think about living my life more loudly. I'm still standing on the edge of a cold lake trying to work up the guts to jump in, worried that I'll sink.”

“You're not the only one guilty of that,” Evan said shifting his glass back and forth on the table from one seam in the wood to another.

“So how's teaching?” I changed the subject.

“It's fine, actually,” Evan answered me, relieved for the change as well. “There's a rumour flying that I'm being considered for a promotion, so all is well. I'm enjoying it and I'm not apprehensive before giving lectures anymore. I always wondered what I would do after I had my PhD. I remember you teasing me about it every time I tried to get you to go back to school. I wasn't sure I could picture myself teaching full-time so it's a relief in a sense, to be where I am.”

I smiled, “You used to get so mad at me. What was it I said?”

Evan grinned remembering every word, “I would say, 'Krista won't you please consider going back to school,' and you'd give me a scathing look and say, 'Why, so I can get a job working for your mum at the garden centre? Grade twelve would be about as useful to me as a PhD in Literature',” Evan laughed, “I don't know why it seems so funny now but I was pretty uptight back then. And I don't think that there would be any point in you finishing grade twelve now because even if you did decide to go to university, you're almost old enough to go as a mature student.”

“I wouldn't want to commit to something like that until Sulamith was older anyway,” I said.

*

It was a good night. We talked and drank, said some things that needed to be said without crossing that boundary into the issues that we both seemed to be avoiding. I would look at him sometimes and I could see that he loved me, and I couldn't believe that I hadn't recognized it years earlier, but Evan never presumed too much. The nonphysical closeness remained and a part of me wondered if he would ever follow through on his feelings for me. Another part of me wondered if he had given up on that, but I always remembered what Sheila had said when I'd asked about him, “He never got over you.” And he hadn't had a girlfriend in years now. In any case, Evan had held his feelings for me back before, and I wasn't sure that I was ready for someone else's feelings. I was still trying not to be afraid of my own. That night after we had left the pub and Evan had walked me home he said to me, “Call me tomorrow if you need a breather. I can take Sulamith to the Aquarium for an hour or two.”

“Yeah, thanks I might . . .”

He looked at me for a moment, the street lamp catching the angle of his cheekbone, then said, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” I said, and watched him walk away, pulling the collar up on his grey wool coat and adjusting his scarf against the chill. But as I turned and opened the gate and hurried into the house I had this disappointed feeling. I should have kissed Evan goodnight.