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Evelyn would bring her own set of issues with her. How many people would she want to bring along? Some of the people Ian worked with traveled with attendants: some one or two, others had even more, all the little tugboats necessary to get a ship out of harbor. For those who felt they needed a personal assistant, makeup artist, hair stylist, trainer to keep the body in shape, security, the body count could get high. 

In response to her questions, he said he thought she might possibly bring one person and that was it. She sometimes had a personal protection agent who traveled with her. A bodyguard. It sounded ridiculous to Jane to bring such a person to the farm. What was she afraid of here? All he said was, “Honey, we don’t get her mail.”

The day she finally did arrive, she came alone. The bell from the gate rang. Jane buzzed her in, and walked outside to be there to greet her. Evelyn drove up in a black Lexus SUV with shiny, raven-black windows, so dark Jane wondered how Evelyn could see out. The vehicle rolled up slowly next to Jane and stopped. The driver’s side window slid down. There she was, her trademark red hair pulled smoothly back, her pale skin smooth and slightly waxy. Up close Jane could see she had ginger freckles sprinkled across her face. It looked like her head was floating against the dark background of the car seat. She wore dark sunglasses. Two sets of shade. How did she see where she was going?

“You must be Jane. Evelyn Kenny. I was going to park around the back if that’s okay.”

“Yes, of course. That’s where I park.”

Jane headed back toward the house as Evelyn drove around the corner. She turned her head up toward the sun and closed her eyes, feeling the heat on her forehead and eyelids. A last moment of peace. 

The quiet jingle of keys announced Evelyn’s return. 

“Hey.” Evelyn smiled. That smile. The famous one. She held out her hand. Jane shook it. Despite the smile she looked a trifle ill at ease. 

“I hope I’m not imposing. We only met that once. Ian said it was okay, but I don’t know how you feel about it.” She swung her keys around in a rapid loop on her index finger. 

“Oh, no, I'm happy to have you.” The situation was awkward for Evelyn, not just herself. “Please come in, let’s not stand out here.” She opened the front door, leading the way into the living room, and took Evelyn’s bag out of her hand to put it by the stairs. “Have a seat. Do you want some water or anything?”

Evelyn shook her head, took off her thin black knit duster and draped it over a chair. She sat down on the sofa and rubbed her legs. Buttermilk appeared. He jumped up on the duster and settled himself. Evelyn eyed him, but didn't say anything.

“That was a long drive. I wanted to have my own car, not a rental, so I decided to drive. I don’t know if you even have rentals out here, in the flyover states.” She ventured another smile, fingers drumming on her leg.

Jane took a seat in the big chair, folding her legs underneath her. “You drove all the way from Los Angeles?”

“Yes, I know, me, road-tripping, who knew? Once I stopped to get gas, and this guy was looking at me at the gas pump, and then I got on the road and he was behind me and I was like, oh my God. What the hell, people, can't I drive down the road? But I’m pretty sure it was because he thought I was, you know, pretty, not because he recognized me. Because without makeup, I look like this.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “I’m not really recognizable.” 

Jane looked Evelyn over, who still wore her dark glasses, unsure of how to respond.

“So, anyway, he got off maybe seven exits later and by that time I was sorry because I have to tell you, he was fine. Even though he was driving a Beamer and I’m so over that. I’m into hybrids, only I couldn’t bring mine because this trip was way too long to be cramped, so I brought the Goliath. Anyway, I can always call the police if I have a problem with a stalker or whatever, I have 911 on speed dial. Of course, if it’s out in the middle of nowhere I don’t know how fast they can get there, but it makes me feel better.” She took a breath, running her hand back over her smoothly swept-back ponytail. “I’m beginning to think it’s crazier not to do things like this than to do them. It’s too easy to live like you’re in a bubble.” She flopped back against the sofa. “I don’t want to be a prisoner of myself, you know?” She looked around the room. "I think I'm safe now." Her deadpan tone made Jane smile.

"You're funny."

"Ian didn't tell you? He's been holding out on you." 

Evelyn had a self-deprecating way of saying vaguely offensive things. Jane wasn't quite sure how to take her. "He lets me find out some things for myself."

"That Ian. He's something else."

"You guys should work together."

"Yeah. Well. He's the ACT-or. I'm the rom com lightweight. What can you do? Where's the kiddo?"

"She's at school. She'll be home soon."

"Don't worry, kids like me. They're in my demographic."

"I have no qualms about you."

Evelyn pushed her sunglasses back on her head and looked around, as if seeing the room for the first time. “This is kind of plain. I mean, if you’re into that aesthetic I get where you’re coming from, but you could really use some accent colors for contrast. It would brighten up the place like you wouldn’t believe. I know an artist out of Santa Fe who could do a mural on that wall—it would blow you away, I’m telling you. I could get you his number.”

Jane smiled. Her lips stuck to her teeth. She ran her tongue between her upper lip and her front teeth. “Um, that would be great.”

With Evelyn as a guest, by the second morning the days already began to have a familiar pattern. In the morning, Evelyn liked to come down and eat, in silence, a meal of granola cereal and soy milk. Tam, who watched Evelyn like a movie, was preternaturally well-behaved. The difficulty was dragging her away from the Evelyn movie long enough for her to go to school. Jane succeeded when she got her to start pretending she was Evelyn going to school when Evelyn was a little girl. Pretending helped Tam a lot with the whole going-to-school ordeal in general. Once Jane had figured that out both of their lives had become much easier. Just saying, “Today, what if you were Laura Ingalls?” could get Tam’s imagination working and her whole day on the right track. They were reading the series. Then when she got home they could read some
Little House in the Big Woods
and have a feeling of completion to the day. But now it was the all-Evelyn show, twenty-four seven.

After breakfast and Jane's trip to the bus with Tam, Evelyn wanted to go for a walk. The first morning Jane had shown her a walk she herself liked, and today Evelyn suggested they take it again together. Jane wondered if Evelyn would be in a better mood. It was pretty clear she was not a morning person. She looked different today. 

“I never saw you with curly hair like that before.”

“Oh, yeah.” Evelyn touched her head. “I washed it. I didn’t feel like blowing it out.”

They were taking the same route along a very old fence line, dating from a couple generations earlier, cross-fencing that now reached out to nowhere special. It was a there-and-back kind of walk. Or you could do a triangle. Jane hadn’t shown her the lake yet.

“You mean your hair is naturally curly? All your movies, everything…”

“Straightened.”

“Why? I like it curly.”

“I don’t. It doesn’t work for me.”

They walked on in silence for a while, Jane running her hand along the smooth wooden rails, feeling the knots and indentations, skipping over the posts and sliding along the next rail. 

“What’s wrong with curly hair?”

“Oh, nothing’s wrong with it, per se. It projects a different image. Straight hair is more me. It’s grown up, elegant. Comedians have curly hair. I want to be taken seriously.” Evelyn ran her hand through her red spiraling curls.

"You do comedy."

“I may do comedy, but I want to be taken seriously as an actress. I don’t want be pigeon-holed.” Evelyn ran her fingers up to the hair at the nape of her neck, twisting it out. “And I’m in all the hair magazines, so I must be doing something right. People want to look like me. Not that I care about that. I’d rather they paid attention to my acting and not my hair, so much. But when you’re a redhead, what can you do? They’re always going to notice your hair.”

"Your hair is beautiful." Jane paused. "I used to do makeup."

Evelyn made an approving noise. "That's how you met, isn't it?"

Jane nodded.

"It was a bit of a puzzler at the time. He just disappeared. Like you kidnapped him."

"It felt more like the other way around."

"Oh, I'm sure he took you off somewhere wonderful. Jealous!" She trumpeted the last word in a high-pitched sing-song.

Jane gave an unplanned snort of laughter. She had begun to see what Ian liked in Evelyn. "You were friends in drama school."

"Yes. Partners in crime. Seems a long time ago, now."

"I think he remembers it fondly."

"Does he?" They walked in silence for a bit. Silence other than the birds, who were chirping as if spring had never come before, and might not again. "It's easier to be nostalgic much later."

"It wasn't all roses."

"No. It wasn't."

"It's funny you both being in the same class and both doing so well."

"We wouldn't have had that success if we hadn't been there to drive each other, I don't think. "

"You were lucky, then."

Evelyn nodded. "Pretty lucky."

That night, Jane and Evelyn sat up after Tam had gone to bed. Jane built a small fire, seeking coziness as the warm day cooled. They pushed the coffee table out of the way and moved the big chairs close, resting their feet on the hearth. 

“What was Ian like when you knew him at school?”

The firelight flickered on Evelyn's face, and Jane was watching the Evelyn movie, too. 

She smiled. “First year, everybody is kind of figuring stuff out. Finding themselves. And then you’re in classes and you look around and you’re like, who’s here? Of course once they saw him a lot of people had a crush. The Irish accent didn't hurt.” She mimicked lovestruck students, making Jane laugh. 

“He was shy, actually. I wasn't. He’d seen a lot of theater and was up on the plays in town, also on, what-do-you-call-it…on all the plays there ever were? I can’t remember the name for it. He’d read a lot. He was more familiar with some of the pieces we were doing than I was, than most of us were. I zeroed in on him like a laser beam, to learn more. I wanted him for a partner in scenes. It was obvious he had it. Luckily, he didn’t mind having me as a partner, so we did lots of scenes together, first year.”

Jane hadn’t seen this more low key, actorly side of Evelyn and found it refreshing. Evelyn had so many expressions and pretended to be so many passing characters as she told a story that it was a show in itself to watch her: the students mooning after Ian, Evelyn herself panting after Ian to help her, Ian serious and a little vulnerable. Jane found her imitation of him touching, somehow. A lost look in her eyes that Jane could recall seeing only fleetingly in him, when he spoke of his childhood. 

“Did you keep working together?”

Evelyn pulled a ponytail holder from her pocket and tucked her curls back into a chaotic version of her usual sleek hairstyle. 

“People really discovered him second year. I couldn’t keep him to myself. I liked having him as a scene partner, but of course you have to work with different people to grow as an actor. We had a good chemistry, but we weren’t able to be in scenes all the time, that wouldn’t be good.” She twisted a curl around and around on her finger. “Of course, then his Mum died and he left school. For a while.”

“Right.” Jane remembered the chronology of his mother’s passing from pneumonia, unexpected and the biggest grief Ian had experienced. His father had died many years before. 

“When he came back, he was different. The whole game changed.” Evelyn paused. 

Everything she did was dramatic. Jane felt like she was waiting for the next chapter of a cliffhanger. “Different how?”

“I don’t know.” Evelyn canted her head, twisting the curl tight against her cheek, the tip of her finger going pink, as she stared into the fire. “He was angry. A bolder actor. He had more passion and he was more physical.” She released her hair and leaned into the light of the fire, her chin tilted and propped on her hands. 

“He had been more, you know, in his head. It was almost like something broke and it was all flooding out in his acting.” She lowered her voice and Jane had to lean closer to hear. "Does he still get headaches?"

"Yes." This felt like a more intimate piece of knowledge that somehow belonged to Jane alone, as his wife. Now she was wary. Ian had never hinted they had been anything more than friends. She wasn't sure whether to enquire further, here. She picked up the poker and adjusted a log. A shimmer of sparks fluttered and snapped as the log collapsed into itself.

Evelyn nodded. She seemed almost unaware of Jane. "They all thought he was so brilliant by then. Seduced by his looks, of course. But they were right, too."

Jane knew what she meant. She wanted to point out that Evelyn herself was a rare beauty, that concessions must have always been made for her, too. But she was speaking of something else, which Jane had felt the power of too much herself to deny. Ian had a kind of glamour, a glimmering, untried-for and inevitable, which drew focus to him. You wanted to watch him, to be closer to him, and to approach that indefinable aura, to feel and be touched by it. It was the kind of blessing that gave too much, Jane thought. Then again, here she was. She had been no proof against it.

“He’d get these blinding headaches after a performance. All that physicality and expression was costing him somehow. It could cost his scene partner, too.”

“Oh?” Jane’s eyebrows drew together. 

“I was in a scene with him where he was supposed to attack me, throw me against a wall. When it came time to do the scene…” Evelyn stopped. She swallowed. “Ian and I had built up trust between us over almost two years.”

“My God. What happened?”