EVELYN TURNER

She tried to ignore the voice from the road asking, “Are you okay?”

Damn. The last thing she wanted was anyone poking around in her business. Couldn’t a woman weep in peace? Crying sometimes helped. Pacing too.

If she cried at home, Donnie tried to comfort her. When he couldn’t, he got sad, and she ended up needing to comfort him. She used to sit by the old stone wall next to the Coach House, the place where it happened, grinding her spine hard into the rough rocks, inviting another pain to balance the one inside. But with the Coach House renovated and students everywhere and the old stone wall now hidden behind fancy heating and cooling equipment, these days she came to Haskell.

And now there was someone out there calling to her. She scurried behind the dumpster and held her breath. Maybe the person would go away.

The voice called again. “Who’s there? Do you need help?”

Double damn. It sounded like Gandalf. Of all the neighbors, she was the one Evelyn least wanted to see. She had to be the person with the lowest empathy quotient on the Court. The lucky part was that Gandalf was so stiff and uncomfortable around people, so socially inept, that she wouldn’t be hard to get rid of.

Evelyn stepped out of the shadow. “It’s Evelyn. Is that you, Gandalf?”

“Yes. Is something wrong?”

“I’m all right. Well, not really. I don’t need anything.”

Gandalf looked like she couldn’t decide. Like she wanted to leave but couldn’t quite do it.

“Please,” Evelyn said. “Please leave.”

Gandalf stepped back as if she was respecting the request, but then she stopped. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk?” she asked. “You seem so sad.”

Gandalf was the last person she wanted to talk to, the last person she would have expected to offer an ear on a dark and blustery November evening. But crying alone didn’t ease her sadness, so maybe talking to an almost-stranger, this aloof and generally awkward neighbor, would help. Evelyn didn’t understand why, after decades of shame and silence, she was now exposing her pain to anyone who would listen. It must have something to do with Iris being missing, with the reemergence of her anger at Dr. Blum, with the thick cloud of anxiety permeating Azalea Court.

“Yes,” she said. “I think I would like to talk.” She noted the look of surprise on Gandalf’s face. It was probably mirrored on her own.

The sound of wheels on pavement struck them both at the same moment and they turned towards the road. Headlights moved slowly, then stopped and turned off.

Evelyn held a finger to her lips, then pointed to the darkness behind the dumpster. Gandalf followed her there, and they waited.