Chapter Two (Evie)

Chapter Two (Evie)

I spent that night in a motel near the train station.

Early the next morning, a call from the building manager woke me up.

"Ms. Lawson, those big boxes you shipped are piled up outside the front door. Several residents have complained. Please come take care of them as soon as possible."

When I'd come back this time, I hadn't planned on leaving again.

Seven years of my life, I'd packed up piece by piece and shipped ahead to Nathan's apartment.

Now my things had arrived.

But like me, they didn't have a home anymore.

It was pouring outside. I hurried back through the rain to Nathan's building.

The front entrance was empty. There was nothing there at all.

Paige was shuffling toward the stairs in her slippers. When she saw me, she stopped.

"Evie, what took you so long?"

"Those boxes were blocking the door. They were such a pain." She pointed toward the corner. "Nathan said you two broke up and all your stuff is trash, so I threw it out for you."

My ears started ringing. I turned and ran to the trash area on the corner.

The cardboard boxes had gone soft in the rain and fallen apart. My clothes, my books, my picture frames were all soaking in filthy water.

I knelt on the ground and went through everything, piece by piece, until I finally found my stuffed dog.

It was bloated with rainwater, and one of its eyes had come off.

It was the first gift Nathan ever gave me. For seven years, on all the nights he didn't come to see me, it had been there with me.

Last year, I was in a car accident and broke my left leg. Nathan had already booked a flight, but then Paige sprained her ankle.

On the phone, he only said one thing, in a hurry: "Once she's better, I'll come see you."

That night, the pain kept me awake. I sat up in my hospital bed hugging this stuffed dog until the sun came up.

I picked up the dog and held it to my chest. Then I saw a high heel beside it with the heel snapped off.

I'd bought those shoes six months ago.

That day, a proposal I'd spent a month on had been deliberately wiped clean. I hid in the little garden outside my office building and cried until I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't get through to Nathan. He didn't call back until after midnight.

"What's going on with you now? Paige had a fight with her roommate. I just brought her home."

The next day, I went to the mall and bought those heels.

I told myself: Evie, stand up straight. If no one's coming to take you home, you'll walk yourself home.

For seven years, I'd gone back and forth between two cities and lived on my own. These things were what had gotten me through.

Now all of them had been thrown in the trash.

"Paige, what gave you the right to throw out my things?"

Nathan's voice came from behind me.

"Evie Lawson, what are you yelling at her for?!"

He was holding an umbrella, standing in front of Paige.

"It's just a few boxes of junk. So what if they got thrown out?"

Paige hid behind him and started to cry. "I thought... I thought you didn't want any of it."

Nathan looked at the mess everywhere, and his face got darker and darker.

His thoughts came crashing toward me.

Why are there so many boxes?

Wasn't she only back for a few days?

That stuffed dog... she still kept it?

His eyes fell on the dog in my arms, but the words that came out of his mouth were still full of disgust.

"We broke up and you're still shipping your stuff to my place? If your stuff isn't trash, what is it?"

I held the dog tighter and looked up at him.

"Nathan, my things aren't trash."

"You are."

The rain blurred my eyes. A crowd was gathering, and a few neighbors huddled together, whispering.

"Isn't that the couple from upstairs?"

"They've been living together, what, six months? I see them at the grocery store all the time."

Someone looked at me, voice full of contempt.

"Then who's she? An ex here to make a scene?"

"You don't think she's the other woman, do you? Got kicked out and now she's digging through the trash. How pathetic."

My heart had already gone numb, but it still twisted hard.

So they'd been living together for six months.

For six months, they'd gone grocery shopping together, come home together, walked down this street under one umbrella. To the neighbors, they were the perfect couple.

And I, who'd been in a seven-year relationship out in the open for everyone to see, had become the other woman making a scene.

Nathan's face looked terrible, but he didn't say a single word to explain.

Paige tugged lightly at his sleeve. "Nathan, let's go up."

He was silent for a few seconds. Then he tilted the umbrella toward her and walked her into the building.

I stood in the rain and watched them walk farther and farther away.

His thoughts grew fainter and fainter too.

Evie isn't the other woman.

She's the person I love most.

I didn't listen any further.

Because I couldn't understand it myself. Why would anyone hurt the person they love most?

What kind of person does that?

The rain came down harder. I crouched back down by the trash and tore open the soggy boxes one after another.

I was looking for my grandmother's old pocket watch.

It was the only thing she'd left me. The year I left home for college in New York, she tucked it into my pocket herself and said, "Evie, time will remember all the good things for you."

But I went through every single box, and I couldn't find it.

I'd been in the rain for too long. Suddenly, everything went black.

I collapsed into the icy water.