There was a very long pause before she spoke again.
“It was for your own good.”
More silence.
Then, exasperated, “I was trying to protect you!”
Mag made a turn through nothing coming verbally from Evie and then she spoke again.
“Don’t be sweet when I’m mad at you. If you have something to say, say it to me. Don’t interrupt Danny’s work.” Pause and, “I call him Danny. He’s Mag to everyone else.” Silence and then, “We can’t. Some other time. We’re having dinner with Gert.”
Her next was quieter.
“Yes, Gert. And yes, that means what you think it means.”
Mag started smiling.
“I think you knew that before you went to his office and interrupted his day,” she went on. “And no, I can’t chat about this now because we’re on our way there.” Pause, then, “No, I’m not talking and driving, and yes, I pay my insurance, so I know my driving record. Danny’s driving.” A heavy breath and then, “Tell me about it. But he refuses to ride in my Prius, and he won’t let me drive his truck.” Her voice was pitched higher when she said, “Only you would approve even more of that ridiculousness. Okay, I gotta go. ’Bye and love you.”
Mag knew on the other end of Evie’s line that Sidney was saying she loved her sister back before he saw out of the corner of his eye Evie’s phone hand going down.
“So, your sister approves?” he joked.
“Shut up,” she muttered.
He got serious and advised, “You should spend time with her, have a long talk. I think she has things to say you’d wanna hear.”
“She’s part lunatic.” Evie was continuing with the mutters.
“Baby, met her once and she did not hesitate to impress on me how deep her love is for you and how you worry her. I got no opinion on how she lives her life because it’s not my life and she’s not my sister. But from the little I know of her, you might be giving her a bad rap.”
He knew she was talking to her side window when she replied, “She wants to escape her way and I want to escape mine. It’s just that her way opens her up to being hurt by outside forces, whereas my way opened me up to the same, but by inside ones.”
Yeah, his girl was smart.
He didn’t have a free hand to touch her like he wanted to so he just said as gentle as he could, “Yeah.”
“And since you heard it,” she started, “I get in a lot of bust-ups in my car. Nothing serious. I blame it on multitasking.”
Excellent.
Now he had an excuse always to be the one to drive when he was already always going to be the one to drive, just before, he’d have to squabble with her before he did it.
“Then it’s good I’m driving. I’m busted up enough,” he said.
“Shut up, Danny,” she repeated, though with a smile in her voice.
He gave her that for a beat.
But then he had to give her something else.
“I had two good doses of your family today, Evie, and you made some big decisions on a day some huge shit went down. You seem cool. You seem like you’re good to just keep on keepin’ on. And that’s your MO. But in the now, you need to know that isn’t where you’re at anymore. You don’t gotta forge ahead because you have no choice. You got someone at your back. You got someone you can unload shit on. And you got someone who can help you process it. That’s me, and from what I saw today, it’s also your sister.”
Her hand was clenching and unclenching his thigh as he spoke.
And she did the sweetest thing she could do when he finished.
She didn’t lavish the gratitude or try to tough it out and make him believe she was okay.
She said, “You know, I think about it a lot, how we grew up. And I wonder what was worse. To be a nonentity, treated like she almost wasn’t even there, like Sidney. Or to be used, like me.”
“Not sure there’s a worse in that, baby. They’re both equally bad,” he murmured.
He knew she’d turned to face him when she asked, “Why don’t you like your sister’s fiancé?”
“Because she ceases to exist when the NFL is in season,” he told her. “I get digging football. I dig football. But I don’t lose sight of everything but the television schedule and my fantasy football league for six months out of the year. He refuses to do anything Monday or Thursday nights and all day Sunday. I get it. Enjoy what you like. But with him, there are no exceptions. So, when a good friend of hers got married on a Thursday ’cause folks are doin’ that kind of thing ’cause it’s cheaper, she had to go alone. And she was in the fucking wedding party.”