Dance Away with Me(23)

Tess gazed around at the light-filled room. It was as if Bianca had never been here. No flip-flops abandoned by the front door. No fashion magazines, half-empty water bottles, or discarded granola bar wrappers scattered around. Her gaze landed on the closed bedroom door.

Sooner or later she’d have to go in there. If she didn’t get it over with now, she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else. As Wren snoozed in the sling, Tess approached the room. She took a long, shaky breath, then turned the knob.

The bed was gone. The curtains ripped from the windows. The carpet had disappeared, leaving the wooden floors bare. And the rest . . . It was as if he’d painted his feelings all over those once light-gray walls.

Swirling shapes covered the surfaces in a pallet of sooty white and muddy gray, smoky taupe and bleached bone. He’d painted twists and coils, loops and arches. Some of the shapes curled onto the ceiling. Others draped the baseboards and spilled onto the floor. A muted landscape of grief with all the snares and tangles she knew so well.

“Everything is here.” She whispered the words to herself, to Wren— “Every emotion . . .” Her throat caught. “Every . . . feeling.”

He spoke from behind her, his voice hoarse. “Get out.”

Pulling herself together, she turned away.

*

Unlike the chaos in the room downstairs, the master bedroom was subdued and orderly, with masculine charcoal walls and contrasting chalk-white trim. Its simple furnishings included a boldly striped gray-and-white rug, a big bed with a sturdy headboard, a dresser, and a set of bedside tables. A curved chrome reading lamp looped over an easy chair and matching ottoman.

She’d explained kangaroo care to North, the importance of skin-to-skin contact for preemies. She’d told him how it regulated a baby’s body temperature, stabilized respiration, reduced infant mortality, etc. etc. etc., but she wasn’t sure he’d been listening. What she hadn’t mentioned was how exhausting it could be.

Fortunately, Wren didn’t cry when Tess set her in the portable infant bed North had carried upstairs—a little yellow snuggle nest. She’d keep her there just long enough to work the kinks out of her back and set up a changing area on top of the dresser.

She opened the drawers, hoping North had cleared one out for Wren’s things. Instead, she found lumberjack socks and solid-color boxers in black and navy, everything simple and masculine with none of the boldness of his art. Plain Tshirts, jeans, a couple of serviceable sweaters. Only the subtle scent of wood moss and cedar suggested anything more exotic.

He’d ordered everything for Wren from a high-end Manhattan boutique. Luxury onesies, pricey swaddles, pastel baby hats, and socks more expensive than any Tess had ever owned.

She left Wren’s things on top of the dresser, checked to make sure the baby was still breathing, and wandered toward the room’s two front windows. Grief was familiar. So was anger. They had both reshaped her. Now, staring out at this unfamiliar view, she wondered who she might be without the heavy weight of either.

So much had happened today that she’d barely thought of Trav. Despite the strain of caring for Wren, despite her guilt and grief over Bianca’s death, she was beginning to experience an odd sense of pliability. Its newness made her feel off balance.

A pair of wooden garden chairs and an iron bench sat near a small garden below. It was mid-March, and the trees were still bare, but a Tennessee spring should begin to arrive any day now. Would the garden come back to life, or would something new need to be planted there? Planted inside her?

Straws of golden light from an Appalachian sunset stretched above the trees into a peach and purple sky. She drank in its beauty. “Would you look at that, Wren?” she whispered. “Would you just look at that?”

“I doubt she’s paying attention,” North said.

He occupied the doorway, his appearance sudden and unsettling. What did he see when he looked out at the world? Looked at her?

“I thought she was supposed to be in your marsupial pouch,” he said, his voice rough.

So he’d been listening to her after all. “She got bored.” Her response reminded her that she used to be funny. All her friends had thought so. And she could make Trav laugh so hard he’d snort.

North didn’t laugh. He glanced at the changing pad and baby supplies on top of his dresser. “I’ll get my things out of here.”

Since the downstairs bedroom had no furniture, she wondered where he’d put everything. His studio took up most of the back of the second floor. Maybe he’d move in there. She watched him cross to the dresser. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-six. Why do you want to know?”

He was a year older than she was. “I saw one of your black-and-white graphics a few years ago, a self-portrait. I still remember it. You didn’t flatter yourself.”

“No need to.” He opened the middle drawer. The one with the monochromatic briefs.

“Why did you depict yourself that way?” she asked. “More skeleton than flesh.”

“Why do I do anything?” He grabbed the stack of clothes he’d piled on the changing pad and left her alone.

*

Ian dumped his things on the long, purple couch in his studio. The room smelled of fresh lumber from the open shelves he’d built. Bianca’s friends had designed this space, with its big skylights and exposed brick, as a second studio, a place to come when they needed inspiration for their decorating business. But the isolation had proven more romantic in their imaginations than in reality, while the isolation here was all he craved.