Dust Eva Everson (story reading txt) 📖

with me. One that began simply enough, then deepened. “Happy New Year, sweetheart,” he said.

Who needed a coat? Warmth melted through my veins. My arteries. Every muscle in my being went to flame and marshmallows—something that had not happened in a while. I wasn’t blaming anyone—least of all Westley and certainly not myself. Between our jobs, Michelle’s schedule, and keeping up with a halfway decent social life, we had fallen into a “too tired to care” pattern. Or, perhaps we cared, but had become too tired to worry about it. But tonight, having shared a fun evening and a bottle of champagne …

“Westley,” I breathed, his name forming a cloud around us.

His brow raised. “How quickly can you pack all this up?”

“How quickly can you drive us home?” I countered.

He stood.

I stood. “Go warm up the car.”

But by the time we arrived home and put the girls to bed, Westley complained of being “just too tired.”

That had been Thursday night. Or, Friday morning, according to how one calls it.

Friday evening the weather went from cold to frigid. Rain that had fallen intermittently during the day turned to ice and grabbed hold of thick branches and limbs and snapped them like twigs. The electricity went out before nine. While Westley lit a fire, I pulled sleeping bags from our camping supply closet, then gathered the necessary items for making s’mores. After roasting and eating, we fell asleep to the sound of nature giving way to nature.

The next morning the sun rose from her slumber to create even more of a mess. By midafternoon, Westley declared war on the chaos defacing our lawn, and insisted we all head outside to tackle “this unsightliness” as a family. For nearly an hour I gathered limbs and twigs, fanning pine needles and prickly cones that littered the front while Westley did the same in the back. Michelle carted the wheelbarrow back and forth between the two, all the while singing some song she’d learned at church, loud and off-key. I grinned at her enthusiasm, humming a little myself as the warmth of her childlike abandon filled me with contentment. This was life, I told myself. This was living. I had everything I never knew I wanted—a loving husband, a beautiful little girl, a job I enjoyed, a lovely home. We had friends we enjoyed and money enough in the bank that we could breathe and enjoy the time God blessed us with.

I gathered what I hoped would be the last of the cones, then pulled off my gardening gloves in time to see Michelle darting around the corner of the house. Her arms and legs flailed about and her eyes held concern too mature for someone so young. “Mom!” she said, using a new term of endearment. “Daddy says come quick.”

“What’s going on?”

She stopped a few feet in front of me, hands dropped beside her powder-blue puffy jacket, her panting breath forming a cloud in the cold air. “He just says he needs you. He also says I’m to stay put.”

There is a moment we can all look back on. A split second. A timestamp that divides everything from the beginning to that which will, eventually, play out to be the end. A moment when we don’t know something that is immediately followed by the knowing. Or … a knowing.

I ran the same path Michelle had arrived on until I reached the expanse of our backyard. Westley sat on the edge of one of the Adirondack chairs that encircled a firepit in the far-right corner of the property. He’d been wearing a baseball cap earlier, but it now lay at his feet. His head was down, his shoulders dipped forward. Even from a distance I could see the pallor of his skin.

I reached him, breathless. “What is it?” I asked.

He looked up then, his eyes watered in fear and his face devoid of color, his skin glistening with sweat. He held his left arm against his chest with his right hand.

“What is it?” I asked again.

“Ali,” he breathed out. “Something’s wrong.”

I dropped to my knees in front of him, the still-wet grass immediately dampened my sweatpants. “What? Westley? What?” I gripped the arm of the chair and began to cry. “Oh, God,” I said, which was more prayer than exclamation.

“Listen to me,” he said softly. “I don’t want to scare Michelle. So dry your tears, you hear me?” I nodded. “I need you to go inside and call an ambulance.”

“Why?”

“Sweetheart … do not scare Michelle.”

“Are you—”

“Allison. Just. Do. This.”

I stood and, when I did, he released his arm to grab my hand. “Tell them—tell them no siren. Hear me?”

I ran inside and dialed 9-1-1, giving them Westley’s instructions, explaining that we had a young child who didn’t need to be unduly frightened and telling them that we would be in the backyard. I ended the call, then dialed Sylvie’s mother. “I need to send Michelle to your house,” I said, my voice quivering. “I think Westley’s having a heart attack or a stroke or something.”

“Oh, Allison,” Nikki said. “Of course. Do you want me to come get her?”

“No,” I said. “That may scare her. I’ll send her to you on her bike.”

I hung up the phone, ran to the kitchen, and peered out the back window. Westley hadn’t moved and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. “Okay,” I said to no one, then turned and dashed to where Michelle lay on her back between the trunks of the pines, arms and legs spread wide, face peering out from around her coat’s hood. She stared at the clear blue sky as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do in the middle of a cold, desperate January day. And, I suppose, for a child, it was.

“Michelle,” I said, steadying my voice.

She sat up, her expression focused. “Hey, Mom? Is it okay if I call you that? Sylvie calls her mother ‘Mom’ and I think I’d like to call you