Evergreen Falls Read Online Free PDF Page A

ordering. My anxiety wound up a notch.
    We pulled into a car park a few minutes later and walked up the hill to the restaurant. I was having trouble in my wedge heels, trying not to stomp. Concentrate. Breathe . The main street of Evergreen Falls was quiet and dark except for the occasional burst of laughter and light from the eateries that lined the way. I looked longingly at Vintage Star, an unpretentious eatery in the front of an antique shop where I knew I could read the menu and order a good ungarnished steak. But we walked past it and were soon finding our table at L’Espalier.
    “Wine?” the waiter asked as he laid my napkin across my lap.
    “I’m driving, so I won’t drink,” Tomas said.
    “Yes,” I blurted, almost desperately. “Wine, please.”
    The waiter brandished the wine list and I scanned it, trying to hide my horror at the prices. Was Tomas paying?
    “A glass of that one,” I said, stabbing at the cheapest white.
    “We don’t sell that one by the glass.”
    “We’ll have the bottle,” Tomas said smoothly. “I might have half a glass with you.” He smiled at me across the table, his skin smooth in the candlelight. I smiled back, but it may have been a grimace. I heard my phone ring in my handbag and knew it was Mum, and realized I had forgotten to tell her I wouldn’t be home to take her regular call. Well, not forgotten so much as avoided telling her, because she would ask questions and I would either have to lie or tell her I was going on a date with a man, which would prompt her to lecture me again about the dangers of men.
    “You’re miles away,” Tomas said to me.
    “Not in a good way, I’m afraid,” I said. The phone started to ring again.
    “Do you need to answer that?”
    “I . . . It’s my mother.”
    “You know that for certain?”
    “This is when she always calls me.”
    “Every Friday?”
    Every day. I wasn’t going to tell him that. I wasn’t going to tell him she also called at least twice—random times—throughout the day.
    “Perhaps you’d better take it, then,” he said. “I don’t mind.”
    I opened my bag, removed my phone, and switched it off. Tonight, I was going to be an adult. “She’ll live,” I said, sounding more flippant than I felt.
    The waiter returned with a basket of bread and our wine, which I gulped a little too fast. Tomas didn’t seem to notice. He asked me questions about my mother and my father; I answered him honestly if not thoroughly. Dad was a science illustrator who ran his own business from home, Mum was a retired social worker who had devoted many years to caring for my sick brother, who had died recently.
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
    “Yes, it’s . . .” I refilled my glass. My head swam a little as I tried to focus on my menu. “I can’t read French.”
    “The dishes are translated in English underneath, see?”
    Still the waiter didn’t come. The restaurant was busy, noisy, a little hot. We picked at the bread, smiling at each other awkwardly until finally the waiter came for our order. Tomas ordered in perfect French, making me feel even more inadequate.
    “How many languages do you speak?” I asked.
    “Just English and French.”
    “And Danish.”
    “Of course. I’m from Denmark.” He shrugged. “I want to hear more about your brother. You must miss him.”
    Another gulp of wine. “I do, but . . . you know . . .”
    “Go on.”
    I took a deep breath. “When I described my family to you just now . . . well, it probably sounded completely normal, if a little sad. But we kind of aren’t normal. Or weren’t. Because of Adam.”
    He smiled gently. “You’d better explain.”
    Fortified by wine, I tried to get at the nuance of the situation. My brother’s illness had lasted sixteen years. From first signs at nineteen, to a lung transplant at twenty-one, to the endless panicked trips to emergency with colds that ordinary people could recover from in a day but could be a