The Long Way Back, page 14
“What are you doing?” Eva asks when Zach switches off the headlights. He even puts the truck in neutral so they drift down the road in near silence. The dark is close and suffocating.
“A lot of these places are abandoned,” he tells her, “but I know every single person who still calls Little Moose home. People will talk.”
“Am I a secret?” Eva forces a laugh, but the truth is, it’s been a grueling night, and she’s homesick and uncertain. She’s starting to understand that sometimes getting exactly what you want only makes you realize you didn’t really want it in the first place.
When they finally made it to the tiny marina, Eva was disheartened to learn that Zach didn’t have a permanent boat slip. They had to haul the boat out on a trailer. It was dismal and stormy, the lake choppy—even on the shore side of the breakwater—and Eva had to stay on the boat while Zach went to get his pickup. She swayed with the rhythm of the seething water, alone and a bit scared, and felt every unspoken worry churn in her stomach. What if she was making a terrible mistake? What if Charlie never forgave her? What if Zach didn’t come back?
He did come back after what felt like forever, in a beat-up truck that Eva didn’t recognize, and towing a rickety, aluminum trailer. It took Eva several tries to get the boat centered between the carpeted bunks, but she eventually got close enough, and Zach towed the boat—dripping and only slightly crooked—out of the lake.
The marina was abandoned and gave off an almost haunted vibe, and Eva wasn’t comforted at all when Zach drove through a graveyard of old boats on blocks and unhitched his trailer at the very back of the desolate lot. They left the boat half-hidden in the trees and tucked beneath a moldy tarp.
Now, Little Moose is emanating the same spooky, deserted aura, as if the known world has dissolved around them and they are caught in some sudden apocalypse. Eva half expects zombies to shamble out of the trees. The hair on her arms stands up, even though the vents are pumping dry heat into the cab of the truck.
“Why don’t you want anyone to know we’re here?” Eva asks, trying to keep her voice nonchalant.
Zach glances over and seems to realize that Eva is struggling. In the dim glow of the dashboard lights she can see him smile gently and reach for her hand. He laces his fingers through hers and then lifts her knuckles to his lips. “Because I want to keep you all to myself. Because I don’t want nosy neighbors bothering us. Not when we finally have a chance to be alone.”
A warm tingle zings right through her, and Eva unbuckles her seat belt and slides across the truck bench to lay her head on Zach’s shoulder. Everything is going to be okay. It has to be.
The house on the farthest edge of Little Moose is exactly how Eva pictured it: neat and square on a patch of pretty land at the end of a long driveway. It’s hemmed in by forest and totally secluded. Clouds are scudding quickly across the night sky, unveiling and then hiding the bright gleam of a full moon. But even by nothing but that sporadic light, she can tell the home has been well cared for, and she’s grateful that it’s set far apart from the shabby hovels they just passed. It could use a good power washing and a fresh coat of paint, but she can’t complain. And she doesn’t protest when Zach drives to a shed near the back of the property and lifts the wooden garage door to drive inside.
With the truck safely tucked away, Eva grabs her backpack and Zach his duffel, and they jog across the lawn to the front door. Standing just off the porch, Eva studies the house while Zach fumbles for the key in his pocket. It looks exactly like a child’s drawing: a white house with a black door framed by two black-shuttered windows and a sagging front porch. The roof is a perfect triangle. For a moment she imagines staying right here. A pair of rocking chairs, a hanging basket or two spilling over with red geraniums. She’d find curtains for the windows, maybe in a homey buffalo plaid. But that makes her think of Sebastian, and she’s speared with a longing so sharp she gasps.
“You okay?” Zach swings the door open wide, and then preempts the answer to his own question by saying: “Welcome home.”
The squat bungalow is certainly not home, but Eva steps over the threshold with a sense of relief. She’s cold and exhausted and, for some reason she can’t quite pin down, deeply unhappy. She can feel tears forming in the back of her throat and in her hot, stinging eyes. But then Zach wraps his arms around her from behind, smoothes her hair off her shoulder, and peppers her neck with kisses.
“I can’t believe we did it,” he murmurs against her skin. “It’s just me and you.”
They’ve waited so long for this, dreamed about it so fervently, that Eva feels herself melting into his chest. When a tear slides down her cheek, she wipes it away before he can see it, and then spins in his embrace to wrap her arms around his neck.
“I need a shower,” she whispers.
Zach laughs. “You’re in luck. The electricity was shut off a long time ago, but the water heater is gas. I’ll have to turn on the valve and then give the tank time to heat up, but you should be able to take a shower in an hour or so.”
“An hour?” Eva groans. “I’m cold and tired and hungry and—”
“Shhhh…” Zach tilts away and presses a finger to her lips. “I can take care of all three of those things.”
But it turns out that Eva is too exhausted and queasy to eat anything, so Zach leads her through the kitchen-and–living room combo and down a short hallway to the only bedroom in the simple house. It’s just like she pictured it: a wrought-iron bed with a quilt in a faded rainbow of pastels. There are mismatched nightstands, one on either side, and a dresser painted robin’s-egg blue with an oval mirror hanging above it. She catches a glimpse of herself in the warped glass—beanie still skimming her eyebrows, cheeks hollow and shadowed by the faint moonlight coming in through the window—before Zach leads her to the bed and begins to tug down the zipper on her jacket.
Eva’s heart stops beating for a moment, and she can’t tell if it’s from panic or longing. She lets him slide off the coat, then puts up her arms obediently so he can lift her tank top over her head. Zach carefully undresses her down to the black bralette and matching panties she chose so intentionally nearly eighteen hours ago.
Eva stands before him, trembling and unsure of what comes next, but Zach just bends to kiss her on the cheek. Then he draws back the covers and makes her lie down, tucking her beneath the heavy blankets. She’d protest if she could. Pull him down next to her and kiss away the childlike feeling of being wholly in his keeping. But his hands are pinning her arms down, and she can feel exhaustion dragging her under even though closing her eyes is the last thing she wants to do.
“I have some things to take care of,” Zach whispers, pressing his cheek to hers. “I’ll join you in a bit. Just get some rest.”
Eva tries to protest, but he covers her mouth with his own. And then he’s gone. The bedroom door closes, a thud followed by a soft click, and then a second, metallic snick. Somewhere in the depths of her weary mind, Eva wonders where he’s going and why. She thinks, briefly, that something about the door didn’t sound quite right. But the pillow is soft, the bed layered with a well-worn sheet, several thick blankets, and a quilt on top of it all that sinks her deep into the sagging mattress. Her limbs feel weighted. For the first time in hours she is still, and though her body continues to rock with the memory of Lake Superior in spring, she is sound asleep in minutes.
* * *
When Eva wakes in the morning, the sun is pouring in the bedroom window, filtered through the gauzy, floor-to-ceiling sheers. It’s a milky, early light, the color of warm cream. But the air in the bedroom is sharp-edged and cold, and Eva draws the blankets up to her nose, fully aware of where she is and why. She dreamed all night of this boxy, practical house and the man in it, and she’s breathless at the thought of Zach stirring beside her. She feels so grown-up.
Still, romance seems far-fetched when her bladder is screaming for attention and her mouth feels thick and fuzzy. Eva wants to sneak out to use the bathroom without waking Zach, but when she chances a glance at the far side of the bed, the quilt is flat and the pillow smooth and undisturbed. Not only is Zach not in bed with her like he promised, it seems he slept somewhere else entirely.
Irritated, Eva throws off the covers and hops out. The wide-planked, wooden floor is icy beneath her bare feet, but she’s pleased to see that at some point in the night Zach must have brought in her backpack. It’s propped beside a ladder-back chair in the corner of the room, and he has neatly unpacked the contents on the seat. There’s not much to choose from, but Eva grabs a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt from the small pile, and clutches her toiletries bag to her chest. She forgot socks altogether, as she had been wearing sandals on the boat yesterday. Unfortunately, her footwear is nowhere to be seen, so she tiptoes across the room to the door. It’s unlatched, open just a couple inches. Eva peers through the crack, but all she can see is the hallway and a sliver of the living room at the end. The whole place feels empty somehow. Hollow.
She pulls the door open slowly, thankful that it doesn’t creak, and then annoyed with herself for being so skittish. Why is she sneaking around? Zach brought her here—wanted her here. Last night he had said, “Welcome home.”
“Zach?” she calls, her voice dropping like a rock in the cavernous silence. “Zach?”
He doesn’t answer, so she hurries to the bathroom—the only other door—at the far end of the hall. The porcelain toilet seat is freezing, and though she only turns on the hot tap, the water that dribbles out is lukewarm at best. There’s a shard of old, blue soap veined with grit in a dish beside the sink, and because there’s nothing else to use, Eva washes her hands and her face with the pungent, antiseptic bar.
Teeth clean, cheeks scrubbed raw, and more or less ready for the day, Eva carries her toiletries bag back to the bedroom. The door has drifted closed in her absence, and Eva puts her hand on the doorknob to push it open. But the knob feels strange in her palm, and it’s not just because the tarnished metal is cold. It takes Eva a minute to realize that there’s a silver keyhole in the middle of the knob facing the hallway. When she curls around to see the other side, it’s smooth as a polished stone. The handle is installed backwards and intended for an exterior door. Instead of locking the bedroom door from the inside for privacy, the door can be locked from the outside.
It can lock someone in.
A simple architectural mistake, Eva tells herself, but the hallway warps for just a moment and she has to lean against the wall to clear her head. A part of her wonders if a key in the lock was the second click she heard as she was falling asleep last night. But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would Zach lock her in only to leave the door open this morning? She shakes off her doubts and pushes the bedroom door wide to toss her toiletries bag on the bed.
It doesn’t take Eva long to search the rest of the house. It’s really only four rooms: a kitchen with a small table beneath a window, a living space arranged around a potbellied stove—a brown couch with a dusty afghan, an ancient armchair—and the bathroom and bedroom behind. A tidy, tiny square. Zach had told her it was primitive, but this is like something out of a different era. Eva can picture Ma Ingalls at the farmhouse sink, up to her elbows in tin dishes. They can’t stay here, not for long, and a part of Eva is relieved.
She’d give anything for her phone. She’s twitchy and anxious right now without the familiar heft of it in her pocket. It would be a window to the real world that feels a universe away. Although she probably wouldn’t have coverage this far out in the boonies anyway. Eva peers out the broad kitchen window and is greeted by the sight of a small, emerald-green yard, speckled with dandelions and surrounded by dense, northern Minnesota forest.
Heavy footsteps on the porch followed by the front door creaking open yank Eva out of her reverie.
“Good morning, sunshine!” Zach says, stepping over the threshold with a small bowl in hand.
“Where were you?” Eva’s too anxious about their bewildering situation to play nice. “I woke up and you were gone.” She doesn’t mention that he was never beside her to begin with. It’s a confusing, complicated detail that she’s not ready to unpack.
“Getting breakfast.” He holds up a chipped cereal bowl filled with soft-hued eggs as evidence. They’re pale pink and green, some with tiny tufts of feathers still attached to the shell.
“Where did you get those?”
“There are a couple of half-wild hens that claimed the old potting shed as their roost ages ago. I know where to look.”
Eva can only stare at him. At his lopsided smile and the somewhat dazed look in his eyes. She can tell he’s thrown off by her frosty reception and can’t seem to figure out why she’s upset. Zach looks more like a little boy than a grown man with his cheeks pinked by the chilly morning, and though she has a dozen questions she’d love to pelt him with, she moves to take the bowl from his hands instead.
“Do you like them scrambled?” she asks stiffly, uncertain how to act.
“I was going to cook breakfast for you.” But Zach lets her take the bowl and begin rummaging around the kitchen.
On the counter beside the sink there’s a pair of paper grocery bags that Zach starts to unpack while Eva searches for a frying pan. She didn’t notice the bags last night, and doesn’t think there’s a grocery store nearby, so he had to have tucked them in the back of the truck before their disappearing act. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him unload a loaf of bread, a bag of apples, and a square carton of butter. There are also potatoes, a block of cheese, a cylinder of mixed nuts, and carrots with the greens still attached. In no time, the counter is overflowing with food, much more than they could ever eat in just a day or two.
Eva places a cast-iron skillet over one of the burners and reaches for the butter to grease the bottom. “That’s a lot of groceries,” she says, slotting her first two fingers through one of Zach’s belt loops and giving it a brief tug. She hopes she sounds sexy, teasing, because what she really wants to do is shake him. The entire front room is bathed in cheerful, morning sunshine, but Eva feels wreathed in twilight.
“I know you like to eat.”
But that doesn’t really answer her question.
They toast the bread on forks over the open flame of the gas burner and make sandwiches with the scrambled eggs. Eva is surprised by how hungry she is—ravenous, really—and she finishes Zach’s breakfast when he assures her he doesn’t want another bite. They clean up in silence, side by side in front of the large sink, while Eva tries to make sense of their strange predicament.
This isn’t at all what she imagined it would be. Zach’s job as graphic designer and web master for his father’s company allows him ample time and space to travel, but Eva had pictured a much more modern retreat. After a long, lazy morning in bed, maybe Zach would’ve commandeered the armchair, balancing his computer on his lap as he got a little work done. And Eva could curl up on the couch with Netflix, flirting with him across the room until he gave up altogether and crossed the room to join her.
She feels like his sister in this flat, functional space, and Zach isn’t doing much to disabuse her of that particular notion.
“I should text my mom,” Eva says when the dishes are put away. “I’m sure she’s worried sick.”
“We don’t get service out here,” Zach’s back is turned to her, but she can almost see the line that forms between his eyes when something rankles. She just doesn’t know what she’s said to put him on edge.
“Maybe we could go for a drive, then. There’s got to be a coffeeshop or something nearby.”
“A coffeeshop. You’re kidding, right?”
Now she’s annoyed. “It’s not like we drove off the edge of the earth. We’re still in Minnesota.”
“In the middle of nowhere. In an old mining town that the rest of the country forgot. There’s nothing out here, Eva.”
“Then let’s leave.”
Zach spins on her so quickly, Eva backs up into the counter. But he immediately softens when he sees her cowering, and folds her against his chest so gently, she automatically squeezes him back. Even though he feels different in her arms.
“I don’t want to leave,” Zach says. “We just got here. I know you’re a little nervous, but we’re figuring it out, just me and you. I don’t want you to call your mom and let her change your mind. We agreed to this, remember? Just a couple of days…”
Just a couple of days.
“I need to be back in time for the senior breakfast on Wednesday, for sure,” Eva reminds him. “Then rehearsal’s on Thursday and Friday is graduation. You’re coming, right?”
“Mm-hmm,” Zach murmurs, turning away.
But what can she do? Eva tamps down her fears and decides to go with the flow. She’s here, with Zach, something she’s wanted since almost the first moment she laid eyes on him nearly five months ago in Mugs. Peter had just given her the job, and Eva was still learning the ropes, but unlike other customers, Zach never once made her feel stupid. He sat by himself in the corner, laptop open on the table and nursing a cup of coffee that she kept refilling over the course of several hours. He ordered strawberry-rhubarb pie, and then much later a cheeseburger with French fries, which made her laugh because everything was backwards—but Zach just gave her his signature crooked grin and said that he hadn’t planned on staying so long, but what choice did he have when the service was so extraordinary?
He didn’t feed her one-liners or make her feel like her body was an all-day buffet, served up and available for his viewing pleasure. Instead, they talked about her travels, her writing, her close and complex relationship with her mom. Eva was really all they talked about, but when she sheepishly admitted who she was, Zach just gave her a blank look. He had no idea she was that Eva, the Evangeline Sutton of Eva Explores. He had never heard of it. Zach wasn’t even on Instagram.
