“It was a long time ago,” Nan repeated. “When the men came to look at Shaun’s room—” Nan stopped short and looked up from the papers, blinking at the cupboards in front of her.
“What men?” Evie asked.
“Oh, policemen, I think,” she said.
“And they looked in Shaun’s room?” Evie felt a sudden urge to run up the stairs, to somehow protect his privacy from the strangers who’d already been here weeks earlier.
“They looked in Shaun’s room,” Nan agreed, but she sounded as if she were assuring herself, not Evie.
“And Sherrie never came back after that?”
“Oh no! Sherrie moved away a long time ago.” Nan smiled again.
They were going in circles. She’d never talked to Nan this much in the entire time she’d known Shaun. Was this what every conversation with her was like?
Shaun was a totally different person with Nan at his side. Not the invincible, not the king, but just a boy, fussing affectionately over the unsteady old woman who’d raised him. Guilt stabbed at her again. For not being here for Nan after he’d died, for not loving Shaun when she’d had the chance.
“Nan,” she said, “do you mind if I look in Shaun’s room too?”
“Oh, I’m sure he won’t mind,” she said, eyes twinkling with water.
Evie left Nan in the kitchen and climbed the stairs to his room.
It still smelled like him. Familiar and warm and boyish. It was as messy as ever, clothes all over the floor, broken skateboards, posters curling. She stepped gingerly over it all, looking around.
His dresser was littered with loose change, deodorant, a pair of pliers with a broken tip, a sealed package of white sport socks, elastics for his long yellow hair. His last movements preserved in patterns of clutter, things resting just where he’d dropped them, peaceful as a museum.
His cell phone sat in a sealed plastic bag amid it all. She lifted the edge of the bag and saw a receipt from the police marking it Released To Family.
Had it been sitting right here the night she’d called his voice mail?
For some reason, that made her think of a book she’d read once, about a submarine crew searching for the source of a distant radio signal after a nuclear war. Even after everyone on earth was dead, technology would whisper mysteriously on.
Evie took the bag and dropped it into her backpack, then slumped at the edge of Shaun’s bed, looking around at the mess.
On the floor between the night table and bed frame, a box of condoms spilled an accordion line of shiny blue packages. She and Shaun had mostly used these. Obviously, not every time. She didn’t know why she’d never expected the worst to happen, except that it was Shaun, and the worst never happened with him.
Evie sighed. She couldn’t pretend much longer that this thing wasn’t inside her. This looming future. It was growing every day and eating everything she had—literally. All her strength and energy and will, all the food she put in her mouth. Every second of rest she stole was never enough for it. It was Shaun’s kid, sure enough.
She’d been sleepwalking with it for nearly four months, drifting on its tide, pretending it wasn’t really happening. And soon it would be too late to do anything but exactly what Shaun’s mom had done—ditch and run.
She lay down on the bed, curled up and cried.
A gentle voice broke through her dreams, a hand on Evie’s shoulder.
Evie opened her eyes, confused. She blinked at the room, trying to piece it into something familiar. Oh God, she thought, and bolted up.
“I’m so sorry, Nan!” she gasped. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” She rubbed her eyes, swollen and sticky with dried tears.
Nan sat down next to her. “You’re a friend of Shaun’s, aren’t you?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap.
“Yes, Nan,” she said. “I’m Shaun’s girlfriend. We met before.” But Nan said nothing. Evie took a shaky breath. “Nan, I have to tell you something. About Shaun.” Nan just kept on smiling. Evie looked down at Nan’s old hands, so fragile and bony and blue. “I—I mean, Shaun, that is, we—” Oh, just say it, she thought, kicking herself. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “And, um, it’s Shaun’s.”
The words felt heavy as weights. The only other person she’d ever spoken them to wasn’t even alive anymore, and she felt like she’d just confessed to his murder. She collapsed into tears all over again. “I’m sorry, Nan. So, so sorry…”
Nan reached for her hand, squeezing it in her own more firmly than Evie expected. “Oh dear,” she said, “it can’t possibly be as bad as all that.”
“But it is, Nan. It’s really, really bad,” Evie practically wailed.
Everything she’d been pretending not to feel, everything she’d buried and ignored and covered up—it all rose up and crashed over her, sucking her out to sea. “I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. “I’m so scared. And I can’t tell my mom.”
“Well,” Nan said, “I think you probably can. She’ll still love you, you’ll see.”
Evie blinked at her tears. The wise words hardly seemed to match the person who’d been randomly stacking things in the kitchen, who’d seemed confused about who Evie even was. “Do you still love Sherrie?” she asked. Even though she dumped Shaun on you? Even though she ran away to be crazy and drunk?
“Of course I do!” Nan said. “Sherrie is a good girl. She does her best.”
God, Evie thought, some best.
“And I got my grandson from her,” Nan added. “My bright star. I can’t be angry about that now, can I?” She beamed proudly now.
She patted Evie’s hands and then stood up, shuffling toward the door. When she got there she turned and smiled sweetly. “If you see Shaun,” she said, “will you please tell him to come home?”
Evie ached as she watched the lucidity drain out of the tiny, fragile woman, watched her slide right back into lonely confusion. Should I tell her? she wondered. Should I break the awful
