The Stroke of Winter(27)

She thought, not for the first time, that somewhere along the line, Eli had turned from her dependent into her protector. Their roles hadn’t reversed—yet—but, as with her own parents, Tess saw how that nearly always happened.

By the time Eli had gotten to high school, he had become very protective of his single mother. As though he felt that he was the “man of the family,” to use a rather archaic and outdated phrase. But that was sort of what it had seemed like to Tess. He had started mowing the lawn and shoveling the driveway. He did his own laundry and helped with cleaning up the house. He wanted to know where she was going on the rare occasions she had gone out at night, and he waited up until she got home. It was usually a book club with friends or a dinner out that wrapped up by about eight o’clock. She chuckled to herself. The wild and crazy life she had led.

His concern made her eyes sting with tears. “Oh, honey, I guess I haven’t kept you up to date on the happenings in La Belle Vie,” Tess said, as brightly as she could.

“Ya think?”

“Okay. So, the heat was out, but it was a really easy fix. When Wyatt—the heat guy—was here, I asked about the possibility of him opening the door. The door. He called a couple of his friends. One is an animal guy—”

“Animal guy? Do I even want to know what that is?”

Tess laughed. “He’s an animal wrangler,” she said, almost unable to get the words out because of her laughter. She imagined Eli’s horrified face and couldn’t stop it from bubbling up. “And his name is Hunter,” she squeaked out.

She heard her son laugh loud and long. “No,” he said finally. “You are making that up.”

Tess wiped her eyes with a tissue. “Honest to God,” she said. “Wyatt wanted him here when they got the door open because I had been hearing . . .” Her words trailed off.

“If you say moans, I’m ending this call right now,” Eli said.

“Not moans,” Tess said, wincing slightly at the thought of telling him the truth. “Scratching sounds. Like there was a squirrel or raccoon or something behind the door.”

“Oh crap,” Eli said, a grave tone in his voice. “What a mess. Was there?”

“No,” Tess said. “They got the door open, but nothing was in there. No animal. No disembodied heads.”

Eli was quiet for a moment. “So?”

“So, what?”

“So, what was behind the door?”

Tess took a deep breath in. “Sebastian Bell’s studio.”

She heard Eli gasp. “What . . . ?”

“Yeah,” Tess said. “That’s what I thought when I saw it.”

She wasn’t sure how much to tell her son. Should she mention the disarray? The stains? She quickly decided to leave out those details. He would only worry.

“You’re telling me random people got a look inside Sebastian Bell’s studio? The animal guy?”

“Well,” Tess said, fidgeting in her bed, “I guess that’s true. They had to open the door. So, they saw what was inside.”

“Okay,” Eli said, elongating the word. Tess could tell he was turning the matter over in his mind. “So what?”

Tess smiled, getting the reference. She had taught Eli this exercise when he was a child. It was the act of saying, or thinking, “So what?” when there was a problem or a crisis, a way to work toward a solution. It had started when four-year-old Eli had dropped his favorite stuffed elephant into the mud. Tess had found him crying. Completely destroyed by the sad turn of events.

“Oh!” she had said to him. “Mr. Tusk fell in the mud.”

He nodded and sniffed in response.

“So what?”

Eli had looked at her with a furrowed brow. “So what?”

“Yes,” Tess had said. “Mr. Tusk fell in the mud. So what? Think of what will happen next because he’s in the mud.”

Eli pursed his lips. All at once, the tears and frustration were gone. “He’ll get dirty.”

“He is dirty. So what?”

Eli looked up at her. “You’ll probably give him a bath.”

Tess smiled. “I will give him a bath. Just like you get every night. So what?”

Eli smiled. “And then he’ll be clean again.”

“Why don’t you scoop up Mr. Tusk, and we’ll give him a bath together,” Tess said, leading her son and his muddy elephant to the house.

Back in the moment, Tess realized she hadn’t been taking her own advice about cognitive reasoning. She could’ve used a lot of “so whats?” that day.

Tess thought for a moment before she responded to Eli’s question. “So, there’s something else.”

Eli was silent, waiting for her to go on.

“I’m not sure about this, Eli, but I think I might have found canvases. Well, I know there are canvases, but they were stacked together and turned toward the wall so I didn’t see what, if anything, was on the front of them.”

“You’re not saying—”

“I might be saying.”

“Oh, wow,” Eli said, taking a breath in. “Did the animal wrangler et al. see them?”

“No,” Tess said. “Not that I know of. The canvases were in a little bathroom off the main room, and I think I was the first one in there. When I realized what they might be, I ushered everyone out of there.”