Chapter 59
59
Evie
We contemplate the letter, and what it means, in silence. Maybe if we don’t speak, we won’t weld into reality the truth about how Annie really died. Maybe the timing of the letter was a coincidence and it was just a love note to her son? Perhaps she sensed she was dying and rallied for one last beautiful communication …
Eventually, the window lights up with the headlights of the delivery driver’s car. I clamber unsteadily to my feet and answer the door. Except when I fling it open, a chill blasts over me. It’s not the delivery driver standing there. It’s Anderson Roche. And I am clearly the last person he expects to see.
His face clouds in confusion, until he straightens, clears his throat, and says, “What are you doing here, Evelyn?” He’s such an imposing man. It’s the habit of leaning his torso slightly forward whenever he talks to you, so you feel talked down at.
I hear Drew set down his wineglass on the coffee table in the living room. His footsteps approach, and I feel his hands on my waist, moving me aside so he can face his father square on.
“Andrew, isn’t it?” Anderson says. The faux innocence enrages me. I’d never noticed the similarities in their names. Never heard Drew’s full name, actually. Not in all the years I’ve known him. “I’ve seen you at school with Oliver …” He extends his hand.
Drew crosses his arms, edging closer to me. He must sense that I am about to volcanically erupt on his behalf, fueled by his mum’s cab sav and the sheer audacity of this interaction.
“Is your mother home?” Anderson blusters on.
Bloody hell. I suck in a sharp breath and it catches awkwardly in my throat, causing me to cough. Anderson frowns at me. He’s always frowning. He’s never liked me, not from that first day we met at their house when Oliver and I were teenagers. Nobody was ever good enough for his son, especially not an anxious, introverted girl from a family of nobodies in Newcastle.
“Why are you here? What do you want with my mother?” Drew asks. There’s no trace of intimidation. Or of the grief Drew has just shown me, so acutely, in the other room. The measured way he’s rising to this confrontation astonishes me. It impresses me, given the crash course I’ve just received about their background. If I were him, this would be a shouting match by now—accusations of paternity flying.
“What’s going on with the two of you?” Anderson fires off, as if that is the worst problem we have as a trio. “Is Oliver here?”
“When did you last see my mother?” Drew steps toward him, into a moment of ice-cold silence charged by twenty-three years of rejection—much of it in plain sight. Sports sidelines. Prize-giving assemblies. Parent-teacher interviews, where they all must have brushed past each other like strangers. And I watch the dawning realization in Anderson’s increasingly panicked eyes the longer his son stares him down with the knowledge of all they have missed: Drew knows .
“Where is she, Andrew?” he says at last, a slight crack in his voice the only sign that he is rattled. “I haven’t got time for this.”
There is no love here. None. Not in either direction. It’s all so dry and callous and fraught. Anderson glances back at me, as if he’s trying to piece me somewhere into this puzzle. Has Oliver not told him we’ve broken up? That would be entirely typical. He probably thinks it’s a temporary glitch. No need to inform the family.
“Mum is in the morgue,” Drew announces in a way that shocks even me, and I already knew the information. It’s not a word you throw into normal conversation. Morgue. It’s ugly. Cold. Is that even where they took her?
I shiver, and Drew’s arm comes around me. I’m instantly scared of Anderson’s reaction to the gesture, and Oliver’s response if he somehow finds out. Drew doesn’t take his eyes off Anderson and we watch all color drain from the man’s face, so much so that I’m worried he himself will drop dead on this doorstep.
“What do you mean?” His voice is different now. All the power bled out of it.
“I don’t know how many interpretations you need,” Drew replies. “She’s dead. I found her here, dead, this afternoon.”
Anderson reels back. Stumbles. He reaches for the doorframe to steady himself as decades of history play across his face. He is horrified. Devastated? I can’t quite pick the exact emotion.
“What happened?” he asks, at last. “Was it the cancer?”
Drew’s body stiffens again and he pulls me closer to his side, preparing to voice aloud for the first time the awful truth, in light of his mum’s note.
“No,” he answers simply. “It wasn’t.”