Sweet Misfortune: A Novel (15 page)

Evalynn turned instantly red. When she stood up in place, Sophie noticed that a vein on the side of her neck was sticking out abnormally. Leaning down directly in her husband’s face, Evi whispered something through gritted teeth that nobody could make out but him, and then she turned and left. A few seconds later they heard the front door of the store slam behind her.

Everyone sat in stunned silence.

“What was that about?” Garrett asked eventually.

“It’s complicated,” said Justin, obviously upset with himself. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it in front of all of you. She’s not mad at what I said—she’s just upset that you all heard it. She doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“Know what?” Sophie asked.

Justin smirked. “I’m not sure I should say. She’s told me to keep it between me and her, but I keep telling her she needs to share her worries with her family.”

Sophie looked back and forth between Justin and Garrett, and then her eyes landed on Ellen, who was holding three letters in her hand and looked like she wanted to cry.

“I already know,” Ellen whispered. “I’ve known for a while now.”

“I wondered,” replied Justin, “but I didn’t want to come right out and ask, just in case you didn’t. Did she tell you?”

Ellen shook her head. “Not directly. But she’s said enough here and there for me to infer.”

“Know
what
?” Sophie asked again. “What’s going on?” Though she already had a pretty good hunch of what was bothering Evalynn, she still wanted either Justin or Ellen to confirm her suspicion.

Justin looked at Ellen and nodded, as if giving her permission to enlighten the others.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, Ellen said, “Evi just
…
isn’t sure she wants to be a mom. And given that she’s four months pregnant, that puts her in quite a jam.”

Justin nodded. “It’s been rough. I thought she’d see it different once she was pregnant, but if anything it’s gotten worse.”

“Is she afraid of the labor pains or something?” Randy asked.

“No, nothing like that,” said Ellen.

“Then what?” Randy asked.

At first, nobody spoke. Then Ellen sat up in her chair and tried to smile. “Ever since she was left in my care, she’s had this notion that her mother just up and abandoned her—that she wasn’t loved. I told her time and again, until I was blue in the face, her mother did what she did out of love. But that concept never took root. Eventually I decided that even if I couldn’t convince her that her natural mother had loved her, I could at least show her that
I
loved her. I hoped that would be enough. And to some extent, it was. But now that she’s pregnant, she’s worried that maybe she’ll be more like her natural mother and less like me. She’s afraid that she won’t love her child.”

Justin gave a confirming nod.

Ellen fidgeted with the three letters in her hands, then continued speaking. “I could tell Evi was struggling by the way she skirted around the fact that she was pregnant. So for the past couple months I’ve been trying to find a way to
prove
to her, once and for all, that she was wrong about her mother not loving her. Because her mom died a number of years ago, I couldn’t go straight to the source, but I think I’ve found an eyewitness, of sorts, who agreed to send a personal account of Evi’s mom. That’s what I was looking for in this big mess tonight, but I haven’t stumbled across it yet.”

Now Sophie, Justin, and Garrett looked as confused as Randy had just a few minutes earlier.

“What?” asked Justin.

Ellen handed him the three letters she was holding. “They’re all from a woman’s prison about thirty minutes northeast of here. I did some digging into Evi’s mother’s past and found her best friend from high school, a woman named Carly. I met with her last month and explained who I was, and she said she’d help out any way she could. So when the whole want ad thing took off, I figured Evi would be reading the responses, too, which made this an easy way to get this woman’s story to her without anyone knowing I had a hand in it.” She paused and looked at Sophie. “I know how you girls hate me meddling. Anyway, several other inmates decided that they wanted to send letters, too, just as a way to pass the time. I’ve found a few of them, but I haven’t found Carly’s yet.”

Justin stared at the letters. “And you think what Carly has to say will help Evalynn?”

Ellen shrugged. “Can’t be sure, but I like to think so.”

“Then we should all look for it,” suggested Garrett. He looked directly at Sophie and added, “Together.”

Everyone agreed. It took twenty minutes of concerted effort, but finally Sophie stood up excitedly and declared, “Found it!”

As much as she wanted to open it, Sophie knew it wasn’t for her. She handed it to Justin.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’d better go track her down. Hopefully she’s had enough time to cool off. I think we’ll just head straight home once I find her. You guys gonna be okay here without us?”

Sophie nodded. “Actually,” she said, looking around at the mess, “we’ve probably all had enough fun for one night. We’ll just clean up a bit and then call it good for now.” She thanked him for all their help, and then Justin took off in search of Evi.

“H
OW YOU DOING
?” Justin asked, as he sat down next to his pregnant wife on a bench two blocks up the road. “I was getting worried about you.” He could tell she’d been crying.

“Been better,” she said, refusing to look at him.

He put an arm around her, half-expecting her to swat it away. “I’m sorry,” he offered. “That was a stupid thing for me to say back at Soph’s.”

She didn’t disagree.

“I brought you something,” he continued. “It came in with Sophie’s mail, but it’s really for you.”

“It’s not even opened,” she replied, as she took the letter from him. “Why do you think it’s for me?”

“Just a hunch,” he said. “Call me psychic.”

“Psycho, maybe.”

Justin chuckled. “So, you going to read it?”

Now Evalynn turned her eyes to meet Justin’s stare. “You honestly think this letter is for me?”

He smiled. “Only one way to find out.”

“If it’s for me, then why did it come to Sophie?”

“I’ll explain later,” he promised. “Just read, Ev.”

Evalynn didn’t say anything more. Flipping the letter over, she carefully slid a long fingernail beneath one edge of the adhesive flap, just behind the stamp, until the paper tore. Then she ran the same nail along the full length of the envelope, carefully pulled out a stack of folded papers from within, and began to read.

Chapter 23

To shoulder the responsibility for a mistake is noble.
Less noble, of course, than not messing things up in the first place.

October 26, 2009

To Whom It May Concern:

I recently saw your ad in the
Seattle Times
, in search of happiness. I have to say, it made me laugh. Thank you for that—I don’t often have good reasons to laugh. I have even fewer reasons to be happy. But that’s not to say I don’t know a thing or two about happiness. If you saw me, you’d probably think I was the most miserable woman alive. My life is not grand. It is not even fulfilling, in the typical sense. It is what it is, and I have accepted that. But along the road to the 12 × 12 cell that I currently call home, I have had glimpses into what happiness is, and I’d like to share.

I think to fully appreciate where I’m going with this, you need to understand my past. It’s a colorful past, to say the least. Not to lean on excuses, but my childhood was far from ideal. No—that’s being too generous. It was crap, pure and simple. My parents were dirt-poor, so we had next to nothing growing up. That alone would have been fine. I didn’t need material things (though three meals a day would have been nice), because they don’t last. Let’s face it, even the fanciest designer jeans can only be worn a few times before they start to fade or rip up the back. What I wanted was something that remained—something permanent.

I wanted love.

Do I think my parents didn’t love me? Who knows. They cared for me, I guess, at some level. But I wasn’t their first priority. That distinction belonged solely to “Mary Jane and the hero,” which is who they said they were going to visit whenever they wanted to get stoned (which was pretty much any time that they weren’t already high). My parents wasted almost every penny they got on drugs; heroin mostly (the hero), but they dabbled in everything, so long as it buzzed.

I was just a hair older than ten when Mom and Dad invited me to join them to smoke pot (Mary Jane) for the first time. Before that I’d settled for the euphoria that came from breathing the air around them. From then on, they gave me an “allowance” of illegal substances, but only if all my chores and homework were done. It was all very twisted. The two people who should have been protecting me from harm were using drugs as a carrot to get me to do things. But it worked—I made sure the house was spotless, and my grades were always solid, and I was “rewarded” for it.

I never really had close friends as a little girl, because other parents were smart enough to keep their kids far away from our family. No birthday parties with other children, no sleepovers—nothing really that resembled a normal childhood. My first real friend didn’t come along until I was a freshman in high school. She was a good student—very smart—and pretty. She wasn’t really the type who should have been hanging out with the likes of me, but I didn’t question why—I was just glad to have someone to talk to during lunch.

In time, I came to understand that she faced trials that were far greater than my own. Unlucky her. I won’t burden you with the details, but her stepfather should have been skinned alive for what he did to her.

Between our freshman and sophomore years, while my parents were at work, I invited my friend to my house, and did something to her that I have always regretted. Ignoring the obvious fact that she had enough problems to worry about already, I stupidly added to them by sticking a joint in her mouth and teaching her how to properly inhale. I thought it would help dull the pain of other things in her life. Unfortunately, it did. She took to drugs like a maggot to a turd, and soon everything else in her life became crap as well.

Before long, she was paying me to steal drugs from my parents. Later, when my family’s leftovers were not enough, she would steal things from stores to earn money to buy her own smack from dealers on the street.

I’ve always struggled with what I did to my friend. I knew that drugs wouldn’t really help her, but I gave them to her anyway. Still, I couldn’t have imagined back then that I was kick-starting a habit that would one day kill her.

By now you’re probably asking yourself what any of this has to do with happiness. Like I said, I’ve had glimpses—thanks to my friend, who showed me that happiness is sometimes the saddest thing in the world.

A few years after high school my friend became pregnant. She loved her daughter like crazy. Only problem was, she couldn’t ditch the drugs that I’d introduced her to. She tried, believe me. She sought all sorts of help, and would go clean for periods of time, but she always relapsed. Eventually she landed in jail on drug-related charges, and her daughter wound up in foster care. It tore my friend apart. She wanted to be with her daughter so bad. Four months later she got out of jail and was told she had to stay clean for another two months to get her daughter back. Physically, it nearly broke her, but she stayed clean so she could see her daughter. I was with my friend when she went with the state’s social worker to pick up her daughter from the foster mother. We were to meet them at a park. But when we pulled up, my friend saw her daughter playing on the playground with another little girl, just as happy and healthy as can be.

“She’s the best girl in the world, isn’t she?” she asked me. I agreed one hundred percent.

Other than her daughter, my friend hadn’t had much happiness in her life. While she watched that little girl of hers on the swing, she started to cry. “She deserves better than me,” she said. “She needs someone who will keep her out of trouble and give her a future.” Then my friend looked right at me and asked, “How much do you think I love my Little Angel?” That was what she called her; or sometimes, “Angel Ev.”

“A hell of a lot more than my parents loved me,” I told her.

“That’s a fact,” she said quietly. Then she promptly told the social worker to go see what the foster mother would think about making the foster situation more permanent.

The biggest tears I’ve ever seen cried were those of my friend when we pulled away from that park without her little girl. But they were tears of happiness. She was glad to be able to give her daughter a gift. A gift of stability and safety. A life free from her own demons.

That was almost twenty years ago. I hope to God that that little girl, “Angel” Evalynn, knows how much her mom loved her.

I’ve thought a lot about happiness since reading your ad in the paper, and I can’t think of greater happiness than this: Having the courage, like my friend Marion, to do the hard thing for those you love, even if it breaks your heart.

Carly Gibbs