18. Evie
EVIE
Briggs can go ahead and fuck all the way off.
He wants to text me funny pictures like we’re going back to being pen pals who happened to hook up once over Christmas break. This isn’t that. This was never going to be that, and he damn well knows it.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a more spineless, emotionally constipated man in my life—and I work with Phil.
The whole no girls on the road thing was probably bullshit, too.
If he weren’t still grieving his brother, and if I weren’t on his payroll, I’d have told him exactly where to put his heads-down stretch. Because I’m a woman of principles. I have high standards for myself. And I do not chase men who sprint for the airport at the first sign of trouble.
“I’m telling you,” Hazel says, holding a fringed suede jacket against herself in the mirror. “They play the Aces next Tuesday. You should hook up with one of his teammates while they’re in town. I can find out where they’re staying in one phone call.”
We’re at Retro Betty’s, a vintage place off Main we’ve been coming to since college.
I finally told her everything—the flirting, the texting, how Briggs ate me out like he had something to prove. And then, subsequently, how he dipped without a word. It all came out after the fact, which spared me weeks of her live coverage.
She took it exactly how I expected. First fury on my behalf, then strategy. Hazel doesn’t do wallowing; she does damage control.
“I’m not hooking up with a teammate,” I say. “They travel as a herd. It’d be back to him by breakfast.”
“That’s the whole point, Evie.”
“That’s pathetic, is the point.” I flip through a rack of band tees, my hand stopping mid-motion. I spin on my heel and gasp. “Do you think Grant is still interested?”
“Grant’s interested, obviously. You’re you.”
She’s right. I’m not a woman who indulges in wallowing—it’s a waste of perfectly good momentum—and I’m sufficiently attracted to the man that a date feels like a logical choice.
I need something to scrub the static of Briggs Maxwell out of my skull, and a charming litigator with expensive shoes seems like a solid start.
“I’m going to message him. Set it up for Tuesday night while the Kings are in town, so I’ll be too busy eating Mediterranean food to notice the score.”
Hazel pauses, studying me with that terrifying lawyer-precision. “Grant’s a decent guy,” she says carefully. “If you’re planning to use him as a temporary bandage, you should probably be honest about it.”
“It’s just one night, Haze.”
“Mmhmm.” She trades the suede for a leather jacket, checking the line in the mirror. “Verdict?”
“I like it.”
“Maybe not, then.” She makes a face at her reflection. “Too much authority.”
Life at the Maxwell house has settled into a quiet, functional routine.
Murphy is healing with a stubbornness that would be impressive if it weren’t so irritating, already graduating to the walker for short trips to the kitchen.
I’ve spent the week batting away every mention of his son like a nuisance fly.
Murphy has spent most of our shifts grumbling at Briggs on my behalf, a performance I didn’t ask for and which I’m currently refusing to find endearing.
Briggs has tried to call twice. He left a three-minute voicemail on Wednesday that started with an apology and ended in silence.
I’ve closed that door and locked it; I made sure he understands that our communication is now strictly limited to the professional requirements of his father’s care. Medication logs and PT schedules only.
He forfeited the rest of me the second he sprinted for the airport.
The plan for Tuesday is already set.
Danny is taking Murphy to the arena—tickets provided by the hometown hero himself, a fact Murphy has repeated four times today with a look of pure, unadulterated glee. It’s the perfect alignment of data points.
Murphy will be out, I’ll have the evening off, and I’ll be across the valley in a great dress, drinking gin with a man who knows how to stay in a room.
“Speaking of dates,” I segue, because I’ve been hogging the emotional floor for an hour, “what ever happened with that bartender? The one with the forearms like tree trunks.”
Hazel scowls at herself. “He asked for my five-year plan. On the second round of drinks.”
“And you obliged him?”
“The whole spreadsheet. Senior partner by thirty-three, a house with a wraparound porch, the two kids, the dog named after a Supreme Court justice.” She rehangs the blazer with a sigh. “He told me I was ‘a lot.’”
“Well, you are a lot.”
“I’m aware. I’d just like someone who says it like it’s a compliment.” She says it lightly, but I catch the sharp edge of hurt. Hazel’s been sitting in her own version of this frustration all week, unable to find a single man who isn’t terrified of a woman with a road map.
“He’s out there,” I say. “Some sunshiny optimist with a label maker of his own.”
“He better hurry. I’m starting to price out egg freezing.”
I wrinkle my nose. “You’re twenty-seven, Hazel.”
“Every day is an invoice.” She hands me the leather jacket. “Try this on and message Grant. In that order. If you’re going to make a bad decision, you might as well be well-dressed for it.”
The jacket fits like it was tailored for me, which I take as a sign. I shoot the text to Grant before I can find a reason not to. He replies in under sixty seconds.
Grant
Tuesday is perfect. I’ve got a spot in mind.
Hazel leans over my shoulder, reading the glowing screen.
“A well-dressed bad decision,” she says, clinking her hanger against my arm. “My favorite kind.”
My car disappears from the Sutton’s lot on Friday while I’m tied up with the Whitfield service.
Danny
Grabbed the Corolla to deal with that alternator. Don’t even start with me.
It’s back on Saturday, the engine working so quietly I keep checking the instrument cluster for a failure light. When I ask about the invoice, Danny dismisses me with a mumble regarding a family discount.
I’m well aware whose checkbook settled the account.
Monday afternoon finds Murphy waiting by the threshold with his jacket already zipped, looking like a man with an assignment.
“I need a driver,” he announces. “But we’re making a stop at the florist on Eastern first.”
He remains tight-lipped about the destination, though I don’t bother asking. There is only one type of errand a man runs with that black coat and a bouquet. I’ve navigated this exact route in a hearse more times than I care to tally.
He requests a dozen dahlias in a deep berry pink. I wait until we’re settled back in the sedan—the bouquet riding upright in his lap like a fragile passenger—to finally break the silence.
“Did Zig like them? The dahlias?”
“His mother did,” he says, his gaze fixed on the windshield. “Managed to grow them along the rear fence in caliche soil, which is a miracle. That woman possessed a talent for keeping things alive.”
I think of the black ink climbing Briggs’ throat—petals spreading over his shoulder. He performs a version of a man who barely remembers her, yet he wears her favorite flower where everyone but him has to see it.
The realization does a slow lap around my chest, but I keep my focus on the road.
“Ziggy was the one who drove me out here,” Murphy adds as we clear the next mile. “Every month since the stroke. Always made sure there were fresh ones for her stone.”
The iron gates are already open when we arrive. I’ve logged plenty of hours in this cemetery, but navigating the gravel with Murphy makes it all feel new. We approach from the main walkway, retracing the same path I mapped out for his son’s burial.
“You pick this spot yourself?” I ask, managing the weight of the chair.
“Twenty-four years ago. I was still hauling cable and climbing ladders then—spent my life wiring the big hotels downtown.” He sinks into the seat and takes the bouquet back. “Bought the pair of them the week she passed.”
Ziggy’s plot sits a dozen feet to our right, the granite still polished to a high gleam.
The earth has settled since the funeral, and the grass is finally taking in stubborn, uneven patches around the border.
I have to resist the professional urge to drop to my knees and start weeding the perimeter myself.
Beside it sits the Maxwell double stone—DEIRDRE and her completed dates are on the left, while MURPHY is etched on the right, his birth year waiting for a sequence of numbers that hasn’t arrived yet.
I’ve passed a thousand pre-need markers in my trade. This one still manages to find a way under my ribs.
Murphy divides the dahlias—half for his wife, half for his son. He sits between the two stones and retreats into a silence that lasts for a long, heavy stretch.
“Watching the boy play tomorrow,” he says finally. “Got good seats. Wish the two of you were there for it.”
My throat goes tight, and I find the tree line suddenly fascinating.
“Give me a minute with my people,” he says without turning around.
I retreat to the main path, staying within sight but out of earshot. He speaks. His unaffected hand moves in the same frantic gestures he uses in the kitchen. At one point, his head drops, and I stare hard at the horizon to grant him that much dignity.
When he signals me back, his eyes are bloodshot but dry.
“Your mother,” he asks while I maneuver the chair. “Where’s she?”
“Palm, on the other side of the valley,” I tell him. “My dad does a run every year on her anniversary. Buys two coffees and drinks his sitting right next to her. Some years, I join the rotation.”
“Why coffee?”
“They met on her break. He’s recounted that meeting a hundred times.”
Murphy nods. “A good man, your father.”
“The best.”
The return trip passes in silence. He’s kept a single berry-pink stem and rolls it between his fingers the entire way back to the car.
At the trunk, he stops me before I can collapse the chair. “Come to the game tomorrow. Briggs left four tickets. One for you, one for Ray.”
The information sits between us. He told me he’d be heads down, and he still left me a ticket. I don’t know what to do with a man who behaves like that, so I’ve decided to do nothing at all.
“I can’t,” I say. “Got a date.”
Murphy’s eyebrows climb. He studies me for a split second, arriving at a verdict. “Good for you. Hope he’s a decent one.”
“He’s a lawyer.”
“Christ.” He passes me the dahlia and waits for me to load him in. “Well. Nobody’s perfect.”