“I can always use a hand in the garden,” Ray said.
“Or whatever you need done around the house. Hey, I could help you with typing your architecture book. I’m a really fast typist.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’m an absolutely wretched one.”
“So then you wouldn’t mind having me here?” Ingrid asked, and ducked her head, suddenly shy.
Evelyn felt a stab of fear. She had meant to gain some leverage in the conversation, not actually invite Ingrid to live here, not yet.
“We’ll have to talk it over,” she said, and the other two looked at her. “I mean, with the school, before anything gets decided, I’m sure there are considerations we’ll have to…consider,” she finished lamely. I’m a jerk, she thought. But this was supposed to be an interview, not a promise.
“Oh.” Ingrid suddenly looked smaller, as if she had shrunk into herself. “Um, okay.” She turned to Ray. “You heard about me from Ms. Luce—I don’t know what she said, but maybe you could talk to one of the other teachers at my school. Mr. Carberg, the physics teacher, likes me.”
“Oh, Liz Luce didn’t speak ill of you at all,” Ray said quickly. “I think Evelyn meant logistical considerations. In any case, I imagine your parents will want to speak to us.”
“My dad’s pretty hard to get hold of. Better just talk to the school.” Ingrid put down her teacup. “Well, I should go. If I could just get my sweater—”
“Of course.” Evelyn jumped up.
Ray looked toward the windows. It was still raining. “We’ll drive you back to Newell,” he said.
“Don’t bother, I can bike it fine.”
“It’s no bother,” Evelyn said, coming back with the sweater, “Ray will take you.”
“I like biking in the rain,” said Ingrid. “I’m fine, really.” She crossed her arms over her chest to emphasize her position of fine-ness; under the high ceiling, a dark, small-boned girl in damp old clothes, she looked absolutely lost. “Well, see you around.” She went to the door, opened it herself.
Ray followed her, feeling furious at Evelyn for raising the girl’s hopes like that if she didn’t mean it. What was she trying to do?
“I’ll call Liz,” he said. “By the way, what’s your last name?”
The word she mumbled sounded to him like ‘slay’.
“Sleigh? As in jingle bells?”
“Slade.” She spelled it for him.
“Well, we’re pleased to meet you, Ingrid Slade.” He gave her a smile he hoped was reassuring and she smiled back, finally. Ray thought he saw the reason she hadn’t smiled earlier: she had the most lopsided grin he’d ever seen; only one side of her mouth curved up while the other side remained neutral. The effect was not unpleasant, but it was strange—the kind of thing he imagined a self-conscious teenager might take pains to suppress.
He watched her run down the porch steps and across the lawn, hike her leg over a black ten-speed and ride bumpily across the brick path and down the driveway, head bent against the rain.
Evelyn was collecting the saucers and teacups.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?”
“What’s going on? What was with the tea party business? My grandmother’s Spode china and the sugar tongs, and why did you tell her she could live here, in so many words, and then in the next breath take it back?”
“I can’t explain.”
“Try, why don’t you.”
Evelyn stared at him a moment, then went out of the kitchen. He had no idea what was going on. You thought he was so smart until he did something and you saw that he was missing half the action, like he’d fallen asleep in the middle of the movie and missed the big scene. Well, she would show him. She would go and get the rock from the study, she would tell him she was the one who threw it. Then he would see.
She went up the stairs but the rock wasn’t there—the glass, yes, all over the place, and the blood on the desk and the carpet. But the rock was gone. Had the police taken it? To fingerprint? She stared at the glass on the floor, at the rain coming in through the broken window, then looked out the window at Ray’s herb garden. There was the garden’s perfect border, nothing missing. He must have put the rock back himself. Just put it back as if nothing had happened.
She went downstairs again, through the kitchen with its smooth, gleaming appliances, past Ray and out the back door onto the porch. She would get the rock, she would show him how bad and crazy she was. Then he would see.
But as she stepped out from under the eaves and the rain hit her face hard and cold, she came to her senses. Are you kidding, Evie Lynne? Ray would throw her out and then what would she do? Go back to Jones and Wallace and sell popcorn? Live in her sister’s trailer?
Rain foamed from the square-mouthed gutters, the driveway was lined with flattened daffodils. Evelyn stepped back under the eaves and wiped the rain from her eyes. What had Ingrid said when she was leaving? I like biking in the rain. Obviously Ingrid had not grown up in a falling-apart trailer with a leak over her bed. What was to like about rain? For years she had driven pickup trucks and trailers through it, she knew all about patching leaks in aluminum roofs to protect herself from it, about sleeping with towels thrown over the blankets in case the flashing did not hold. It was raining the night Joe died, an autumn thunderstorm.
Evelyn began to shiver. Why did Ray think everything was all right? It was dangerous to think that, to be so off-guard. If he would just realize how far from all right everything was, maybe he could figure out how to fix it. Because she had no idea.
She went back up the porch steps and into the kitchen. Ray had taken the overdone cake out of the oven and was standing at the sink rinsing teacups. He turned around and looked at her rain-soaked face, brown rivulets of mascara streaking her cheeks, her soaking clothes, the mud on her shoes.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said.
Evelyn inhaled the fragrance of chocolate, a tiny shelter.
“I’m sorry.”
Ray was silent a moment, looking at her. Then he said, “You don’t have to be sorry, but sweetheart, I’m worried about you. This isn’t good, that you’re—” she could see him search for the tactful phrase—“that you’re feeling so bad so often. Why don’t I ask Marseille for the names of some people, and you can go talk to someone—”
“No,” Evelyn said quickly. “I’m all right. I know I’ve been acting like a freak, I just—” she stopped. It was me who threw the rock, she wanted to say, the words were right there on her tongue, she could taste them: glass and blood.
I’m dangerous, you have no idea.
“I just, it was—” she tried. And then fell silent.
Ray came and put his arms around her. The rain in her clothes soaked into his, sticking them together so that she felt the warmth of his body seeping into her cold skin. She breathed in the scent of him, skin and clean clothes and soap, a scent that had always produced in her a feeling of comfort, safety. She did not feel safe now. She rubbed her cheek against Ray’s shirt, breathed him into her lungs again. Twelve weeks after they met, he’d asked her to marry him. At the time she was too high on endorphins and the delirium of winning the love lottery to consider it from any point of view except her own. Now she drew back and looked at her husband. He had made her part of the architecture of his happiness, had drawn her into his plans and now there she was: a solid structure before him.
Shaking, ready to fall down.
She couldn’t