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“I thought we could trade,” she says, holding out Gwyn’s keys so she can see them, a strange peace offering. “That you’d want your car. I drove it down here for you guys to take home.”
Gwyn turns to her, and takes them. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“We left yours in the van. Thomas seemed to think it would be okay. He put them in the glove compartment. I hope he was right to do that.”
“He was,” Eve says, and goes to stand next to Gwyn by the window—looking in on them. “About that.”
“About that,” Gwyn repeats.
“How is Georgia doing?”
“She’s fine. Just a little shaken up. We would take her home, to what’s left of it, but she’s probably better off here. So she’ll stay here for the night. I’ll go home and get her some things, make it comfortable for her.”
Eve nods and Gwyn wonders what she sees when she looks at Thomas and Georgia. Does she see her future stepdaughter, who is the same age as she is? Does she think about having her own child with Thomas? Or is she not thinking about any of that—just hoping that he’ll look outside, so she can catch his eye, and be sure that, despite tonight, he still loves her?
“She looks peaceful,” Eve says.
“Her father has that effect on her.”
They are silent, both continuing to look through the glass at the man they share. Even being with Eve out here, she still feels it rising in her—a generosity toward Thomas again. She feels generous as she watches him with their daughter. He loves their daughter. He loves Nate. He even loves Gwyn. He has done the best he thinks he could for her, for as long as he could for her. Now he is going to go do something else. He has given himself permission.
She turns and looks at Eve. “The storm’s over?”
“Yes,” Eve sa
ys, a little enthusiastically. A little too happy to offer some good news. “It’s dry as can be outside, almost like nothing ever happened.”
“Except I have a tree through my roof to prove that it did.”
“As if you need proof,” she says.
“As if I need the proof,” Gwyn says, and smiles. In spite of herself.
Eve smiles too, and it lights her face up, almost makes her pretty. Not quite, but almost. When Thomas starts retreating from Eve years from now—when she gives up on him and heads back to Big Sur—she smiles at him in this exact way, but he has a different thought than Gwyn has now, or at least, he names it to himself in a different way. He thinks, just leave. He will tell Gwyn this, and she will laugh because they are friends by then. And because she knows Thomas misses her, misses telling her things, and just misses her. He never abjectly notes that he made the greatest error of his life in leaving her, in how he left her, but after Eve is gone, Gwyn knows he will wonder if this is true. Even if it is too late for him to do anything about it. Even if it is too late to even admit, fully to himself, the cost of it. Who can ever admit that, Gwyn wonders? Probably someone who wouldn’t have left in the first place.
Only right now, Eve is still in front of her, present. More than present. And she is waiting for something more from Gwyn. This is her own fault, Gwyn thinks, for the shared smile—for the joke. It has probably made Eve think that things are about to go another way.
“I really do love him, Gwyn,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“Tommy. I love him. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone, for whatever that is worth.”
Gwyn reaches for the doorknob, her hand starting to turn it. This could go one of two ways. At the end of the day, how big of a person is anyone really supposed to be? “Not a lot,” she says.
“Fair enough,” Eve says, and gives her a final, sad smile, and starts to walk away.
She starts to walk away, out toward her vine van to wait at home for Thomas’s call, to listen as he says he isn’t coming to her tonight, but he’s coming tomorrow. He’s coming soon.
Gwyn clears her throat, turns to look at Eve’s retreating back. “But thank you,” she says.
“For what?” she asks.
“For tonight,” she says. “For doing such a nice job. The food was great. Everyone thought so.”
Eve smiles. “Thank you for saying so, Gwyn.”
