The Absence of Evelyn by Jackie Townsend

Author:Jackie Townsend
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress
Published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

It took what felt like a lifetime for Rhonda to get home from Italy to find Olivia in the last stages of a fever that wouldn’t relent. She had headaches and wasn’t sleeping. She could barely eat and had lost weight. She’d been on the antibiotics for three days and while her fever was down, it still hovered at one hundred degrees. Rhonda took her to a variety of doctors for second and third opinions (the first opinion, “It was probably something she ate,” being far too vague), demanding a battery of tests, each of which came back negative, alongside a doctor’s derisive look: You’re only making it worse.

She just wanted answers. Was that too much to ask?

Rhonda was resigned to sit by Olivia’s bedside where she lay half asleep, her face aglow with sweat, staring off, detached, but in a dreamy way (it was hard to tell what was going on inside her), and Rhonda, on some last ditch effort to come up with an answer to fix this, wondered if Olivia hadn’t fallen in love.

“I never went to Taos.”

“I had a feeling.”

Olivia’s eyes found Rhonda’s and stayed there.

“How did you find him?”

Olivia, looking confused, said, “He found me.”

“Oh,” Rhonda said. But what did he tell you? Did he tell you? There seemed to be no sign that he did in the girl’s eyes. So Rhonda did her best to remain silent, knowing that she must stay quiet and non-judgmental if she wanted Olivia to tell her anything at all.

“We scattered Evelyn’s ashes.”

Rhonda clenched her jaw so tight that it hurt.

“He couldn’t do it alone.”

Rhonda searched her daughter’s eyes—still nothing. She dropped her head into her hands as Olivia began describing her journey with Marco to the cave with the dragons that Rhonda had already dreamt about so many times, the way her sister had described it in such vivid detail in one of the journals Rhonda had burned. Olivia went on for some time about this journey, meanwhile, the light in the room shifted colors, and Rhonda remained silent wondering how it would end. If it would ever end.

“Weren’t you afraid?” Rhonda finally asked, when Olivia described how she and Marco had at last parted ways.

Her daughter looked away. “I was angry at you. And it was that anger that fueled my courage. Not to retrieve Evelyn’s possessions as he’d asked, but to find out about this man who lived in your whispers.” She looked back at Rhonda now. “Yes, I heard your and Dad’s whispers, Mom. What do you think I am, deaf? I wanted to see your face when I told you I had been with Evelyn’s lover.”

Rhonda put a hand over her mouth.

“For that was how I’d planned to say it. Lover, a word I knew you would despise. There’s no respect in the word lover. And no, Mom, we didn’t have sex. That’s not what I meant by been with. It wasn’t like that.

“I suppose I wasn’t prepared to actually fall in love with him, if that’s what I’ve done.

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