Evergreen Falls Read Online Free PDF

death sentence for him, to the various diagnoses of other horrors that the medications wrought upon his body and the related surgeries, to the slow tortured wait for the transplanted lungs to give out. Some people get a good ten years, they told us. Adam got fourteen. All the while we waited, held together by his awful sentence, afraid to go out in the world lest we bring back a germ that would kill him. My mother’s brain rewired to see certain death for her offspring everywhere. Her caution was not just for Adam; as the surviving child, I was her only consolation, and shecouldn’t bear to lose me, too. She kept me in. She begged me to undertake my university degree remotely, and I didn’t bother to finish it because I felt so divorced from the experience. She asked me not to go out to work, but instead she employed me to help her with Adam, and he did need a lot of help, a lot of our time. She kept me as close under her watchful eye as she kept her terminally ill son. The four of us, in that house, held close by illness, all hearing the deafening tick of time’s passing for sixteen years.
    Tomas was a wonderful listener. He knew when to ask questions, when to sit back and let me be silent. His watchful eyes occasionally searched for our waiter, and occasionally alighted on my hand as it went for the wine bottle again. But he didn’t stop me and, truly, once I’d started it all came pouring out.
    “Wow, I’m really drunk,” I said when I was done and Tomas was gazing back at me with empathy. Immediate regret. Why had I told him everything? I was an idiot. “I shouldn’t have told you all that,” I said.
    “I’m glad you did.”
    “Where is the waiter? I’m really hungry and my stomach feels kind of . . .”
    “I think they’ve forgotten us.”
    I glanced around the room. It spun a little.
    “You don’t drink often, I take it?” he asked.
    “Hardly ever.”
    He stood, dropping his napkin on the table. “Come on. I’ll take you to my place and make you a sandwich. We need to get something into your stomach, and I don’t think anything rich is going to sit well with you.”
    The waiter dashed after us calling apologies, but Tomas waved dismissively and handed him a fifty-dollar note for the wine.
    On the hill down to the car, my body’s ability to balance on thewedge heels failed me completely. Tomas caught me, arm around my waist, and guided me to the car. I was aware dimly that the night was going very badly, that I was a drunken mess after four glasses of wine in less than an hour and I had confessed to him that I had lived my adult life like a character out of Flowers in the Attic . But all his concern seemed focused on getting me in the car and then on the way home.
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “For what?”
    “For embarrassing you.”
    “You haven’t embarrassed me.”
    “For embarrassing me.”
    He pulled the car to the side of the road and turned to me, reaching for my face with a warm hand. “Lauren, there is no need for anybody to be sorry. Now, I’m taking you to my place, all right? For food. Nothing else.”
    “Right.” Nothing else? What did that mean?
    The car sped off again. The last blush of sunset on the horizon. Everything seemed to whir and blur around me. I pressed my hands to my forehead.
    “Nearly there,” he said.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You’re going to have to stop saying that.”
    Then we were outside his house and he was helping me out of the car. He got me inside. Things got a little woolly for a while, but it seems I had hot tea and a toasted cheese sandwich, and then Tomas was sitting beside me. “Why do you like me?” I said. “You’re so wonderful and I’m so . . . me.”
    “Just drink your tea,” he said gently.
    “But . . .”
    “I like you because there’s something very real about you, Lauren.Your heart is in your eyes. I don’t know. I’m not good at saying these things.”
    I finished my tea and sandwich while he watched. He was so