Chapter Thirty-One #2
“Come in,” David said, welcoming everyone inside.
“If you would just leave your shoes by the door. I try not to trudge dirt from the farm inside.” He began pulling out mats, before pointing down one hall and up the stairs.
“There are bathrooms down the hall and upstairs on the second floor, if you’d like to freshen up. ”
Half of the entourage went to find the restrooms. Jared, however, had become fully focused on a small writing desk, sitting at the entrance to the living room. Kneeling down, the rock star ran his hands across the wood. “Is this an eighteenth-century Charles Duvall?”
David rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure.”
“It looks like one.”
“I picked it up at a flea market in town.”
From there, the conversation between Jared and David quickly moved from writing desks to a ceramic milk jug that was resting on a built-in shelf in the hall.
The farmhouse was old, its layout a puzzle of small rooms connected by one central hallway.
Evelyn tried to keep a safe distance by lingering in the foyer, but due to the size, it was impossible to get away from them.
Her gaze fell to an Edwardian-style console, pushed up against a wall by the stairs.
A repurposed basin and pitcher sitting atop it, its white ceramic dotted by delicate purple flowers. It reminded her of spring. Of April.
When they were married, they used to talk about taking a long weekend together, heading upstate to check out antique stores and flea markets.
They had always wanted to do it . . . but it never happened.
Evelyn was always working. Her eyes drifted toward the stairs, where a gallery wall full of photographs rested. She took a moment to review the images.
Some of the photos she recognized. David and his niece, Jesse, at her first birthday. Friends from college and med school that she knew, including Vikram . . . but there were also images of David with people she didn’t know. She landed on a picture of David backpacking through Tibet.
David reappeared with the crew.
“You went to Tibet?” she asked.
“Oh,” he said, shifting a little in the tiny and dimly lit hallway. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I did a group trip there.”
“Group trip?”
“For folks in their thirties and forties. It was nice. Met a lot of cool people.”
“You mean a group trip for single people?”
A tense beat passed between them. “I guess you could call it that.”
“This is good,” Jared said, slinking past David in order to interject himself into the conversation. “Finally, we’re getting down into the lower pelvic region area of our feelings, uncorking the deepest places where—”
“When?” Evelyn snapped at David.
David hesitated. “Come on, Evelyn . . . don’t do this now.”
“When did you go to Tibet?”
Jared’s entourage responded to her question with tsked teeth, low whistles and whispers. She ignored them, waiting for an answer.
“After our divorce was finalized,” he said finally.
“Right after?”
“I mean, not right after . . .”
“But soon?”
“Yeah. Pretty soon after.”
Bile gathered in the back of her throat.
He had celebrated leaving her by taking a trip to Tibet and engaging in his own personal rendition of Antiques Roadshow.
She considered grabbing that pitcher from its resting place and chucking it straight at his head, when Leila appeared in the hallway.
She was carrying a large roasting pot between her hands, a giant slab of raw beef resting in the center.
Evelyn clenched her jaw. David’s shoulders slumped, defeated. Leila took a beat to survey the scene, her head on a spigot between them, before wisely giving them both an out. “I’m going to start on dinner,” Leila said bluntly, diffusing the tension. “Evelyn, why don’t you come help me.”
Evelyn let out one deep and shaky breath and then followed Leila toward the kitchen.
She just needed to survive the night, return to New York and wrap her production of A Christmas Carol successfully.
And then she would never have to see David again.
Maybe she would even celebrate that fact by taking a vacation.
Evelyn stood in her ex-husband’s kitchen, watching Leila gather up carrots and potatoes, placing them on the counter in order to prepare dinner for their guests.
Meanwhile, she did her best to hide the surge of painful emotions rising up inside her chest. One moment, she was angry.
The next, a raw sadness appeared beneath her heart.
The pain was palpable. She took a deep breath, trying to release the tension, the memories .
. . but her hands were still shaking. Suddenly, Leila placed a glass bottle and two shot glasses down in front of Evelyn.
“What’s this?” Evelyn asked.
“Etrog vodka,” Leila said, popping the cork.
“You know it’s Hanukkah, right?”
“Etrog vodka is good anytime of the year.”
Leila poured two large glasses worth, offering Evelyn one.
“I really shouldn’t,” Evelyn said, before adding, “Migraines.”
In the living room, Evelyn heard a commotion.
She was fairly certain that Jared was beginning to remove his clothing.
Evelyn figured what the hell. She took the shot, and almost immediately, her taste buds responded, zinging with outright delight.
It was freaking delicious. It had all the sweetness of a well-made limoncello, but richer and earthier due to the etrog.
“Oh, wow,” Evelyn said. “That is good.”
Leila laughed and drank her shot before returning to cut some carrots.
“You’re prettier than I imagined,” Leila said.
Evelyn smirked. “I don’t look like the harpy bitch David always described to you?”
“Actually—” Leila glanced over her shoulder “—David’s never said anything bad about you.”
Evelyn found that hard to believe. Then again, maybe he was so busy rescuing chickens and going antique shopping he didn’t have time to bad-mouth her.
“Would you like to know what he does say?” Leila asked.
“I honestly don’t even care.”
“You sure?” Leila egged her on. “Not even a little bit curious?”
“Fine,” Evelyn said. “Tell me.”
“He said that you were tough, smart, stubborn. He told me a story once, that there was a young female intern being harassed at work . . . and how you were the only higher-up at CBS7-T studios that would do something about it. He said that he admired you.”
“That’s sweet,” Evelyn deadpanned. “Did he also tell you he walked out on me?”
“Yep.” She nodded. “And I told him he was an ass.”
Evelyn bit back a smile. “Well, I appreciate you having my back.”
“Hm.”
By the time dinner came around, Evelyn was four shots of etrog liquor to the wind.
Her headache had returned, and along with it another round of nausea.
Every minute with David and Jared felt like torture.
She couldn’t wait to get back to New York.
Yet the rock star was taking his sweet time, waxing poetic at the end of the table.
“The thing about animals,” Jared mused, “is that they’re quite honest about their feelings. It’s why I wanted to come to your farm. I thought it would be healing for all of us.”
David smiled politely. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“Animals are much more honest than humans,” Jared continued. “I think that’s why I relate to them so strongly. If you squeeze an animal too hard, it yelps. It tells you when your love for them has gone too far. You’re cuddling me too hard, Mommy. You need to let me go. Don’t you agree, Evelyn?”
Evelyn glanced up from her hands. “What?”
“Have you ever loved something so much that you went too far?”
She blinked in Jared’s direction, her head throbbing, her heart aching. “What do you know about love?”
“I know quite a bit,” he said. “I know that I love music. I know that I love Mr. Puddles, my goldendoodle, back in Britain, even though he’s got bad eyesight and has bitten three people.
And I know that I love my entourage, and the experience of being on this farm in the middle of winter, with you and David .
. . and that, when I take six new people into my bed, there’s six more chances that one of them will finally be the one. ”
“Great.” Evelyn pressed her lips together. “I’ll keep that in the mind for the future.”
“But what I don’t understand, Evelyn, is why it’s so hard for you. The universe wants the best for you. It wants to hold you, and love you . . . sometimes so much that it makes us yelp, but that’s only because it’s squeezing us even tighter—”
She had heard enough. She rose to her feet, spitting out the words, “Will you shut up!”
The entire table fell silent, all eyes on her.
“You know what?” David said, rising from his seat. He headed over to a cabinet, pulling out a menorah. “I totally forgot that it’s the seventh night of Hanukkah. Why don’t we do a quick candle lighting before dessert, and then we can head back to . . .”
“Oh,” Jared interrupted David. “That’s it. Now it all makes perfect sense. The connection between you two, the walls erected everywhere, all this bad energy. Something squeezed you until you yelped.” A beat passed. “You lost someone.”
Her lower lip quivered. It wasn’t enough to forget. She wanted to disappear. Quickly, she made up some excuse about needing air and, grabbing her jacket, rushed for the front door. She could hear David calling after her, asking her to return, as she made her way through the dark.
She ran until she was out of breath, mud sloshing around her knees, tears blurring her vision. She ran past the alpacas and the barking livestock guardian dogs, making her way down the lane and in the direction of the chicken coop, where she tripped on a small rock.
She fell face-first into the mud, and the shock, alongside the pain and pressure sitting in her chest, brought all the feelings she had been holding back to the surface.
She cried, striking the ground. She shook her head, cursing God and her life.
And she thought about how easy it would be to end it all, to be with her baby .
. . when a chirpy, high-pitched voice from behind her drew her attention away.
“He’s a real idiot.”
Evelyn glanced over her shoulder to find Delilah, one of the rescue chickens, perched on a rock behind her.
Weird. She squinted in its direction, looking out past its fluffy headful of feathers, to see who had spoken, before deciding it was just her imagination.
She returned to her pity party in the grass.
“So unfair,” she said, hitting the dirt. “So totally—”
“Excuse me?” the chicken said. “I was talking to you.”
Evelyn full-on screamed. Twisting around, clutching her heart, she found herself nose-to-beak with the rescue chicken once more. “You’re . . . you’re talking.”
“So?”
“You’re a chicken!”
“Why does everyone always point that out?” It flapped around her in a small circle. “I mean, obviously I’m a chicken. I have feathers, a beak . . . the better question to ask is why would a talking chicken appear to you on the seventh night of Hanukkah?”
It didn’t take her long to put it together. “You’re the seventh heartbreak of Hanukkah.”
“Of course I’m the seventh heartbreak,” she said, and did a little chicken dance.
She needed help.
She also had no interest in going on another field trip.
She had a good idea, after all, where this one would lead her .
. . The very thought caused her chest to close in on itself.
She couldn’t breathe. She was certain she wouldn’t survive it, and she debated just sitting in the mud forever, praying that God and the whole of the earth would swallow her up in one giant gulp .
. . when from up the hill by the main farmhouse, Evelyn saw lights.
David, Jared and the entourage were searching for her.
“Mommy!” Jared called out through the darkness. “It’s okay. Come! I have my nipple all ready for you.”
The rescue chicken flapped her arms. “It’s your choice.”
She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with Jared. And so, rising from the mud, she acquiesced to the seventh heartbreak of Hanukkah, following the talking fowl into its chicken coop.