Dance Away with Me(34)

“Street art,” Ian was quoted as saying, “stole art from the elitist museum crowd and put it cleanly in the path of everyday people.”

Tess was still thinking about what she’d read as she gave Wren a quick bath in the upstairs bathroom sink. Ian poked his head in. Unlike her, his complexion wasn’t pasty, and no dark shadows from interrupted sleep lurked under his eyes. She wanted to snap his head off. “What do you want?” she snarled.

“You have company.”

“Company?”

“Oh, yes.” The words dripped with sarcasm.

She wrapped up Wren, elbowed past him, and made her way downstairs.

Eight teenage girls stood inside the front door. Ava, Imani, and Jordan, along with five of their curious girlfriends.

*

Ninety minutes later, when the girls finally left, Ian stormed downstairs, looking as if a grenade had detonated too close to his head. “They asked about anal sex!”

Tess shifted uncomfortably. “Kids these days.”

“And you answered them!”

“You could have spared yourself by not listening.”

“Do you have any idea how far teenage girls’ voices carry?”

He stalked across the room toward a pair of old wooden lockers. “Look, Tess, I know you’re trying to do a good thing, but this has ‘bad idea’ written all over it.”

She didn’t exactly disagree. Wren nuzzled at her breast. “What do you suggest?”

He opened both locker doors and pulled out a whiskey bottle from behind one. “I suggest you tell them to stay home and talk to their parents.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried? But most of those girls have parents who seem to be living in an alternate reality. As for their health classes . . . They have an abstinence-only curriculum. It’s illegal for their public schools or teachers to offer anything else.”

He twisted off the cap and splashed whiskey into a heavy-bottomed tumbler. “This isn’t your problem.”

She sank into the sofa cushions with a sigh. “I know. You’re right.”

“Of course, I’m right. But . . . Wait. Did you say I was right? Give me a second to recover.” He took a slug of whiskey, then gazed at her. “Go ahead. Say whatever it is you don’t want to say.”

He could read her thoughts too easily. She fiddled with the bottom button on her borrowed flannel shirt. “I’ve seen the way sexual ignorance can destroy kids’ lives. For me, giving them information is . . .” She trailed off, feeling too exposed.

“It’s an act of conscience.” He said it bluntly, but not exactly unkindly. How could someone so self-centered have figured this out about her?

He set down his glass and took a bottle of wine from the locker. “This is like the way you refuse to sell cigarettes at the Broken Chimney, isn’t it?” With a twist of the corkscrew, the cork released.

“How do you know about that?”

“Even a hermit like myself couldn’t escape that juicy piece of town gossip.”

He filled a wineglass and brought it to her. It was nearly five o’clock, so why not? “I want the girls to respect themselves,” she said. “I don’t want them having sex because they think it’s the only way they can find a boyfriend. I also don’t want girls pressuring boys to have sex before the boys are ready.” She took a long sip. “God, this wine is good.”

“Enjoy.” He took another swig of whiskey. “And you need to butt out.”

“I know.” She set down her glass. The sling was hurting her shoulder, and as he wandered over to the window, she extracted both the sling and Wren from under his flannel shirt. She wrapped the baby, naked except for a diaper, in the receiving blanket she’d draped over the arm of the couch. “What do you do when you go out in the woods?”

“Hike. What did you think?”

He was hedging. She lay the swaddled baby on the cushion next to her. As she stretched her stiff shoulders, the tips of her breasts brushed against the soft flannel. Even though Ian had his back to her, she felt unarmed without a bra, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you think about Bianca?”

“Of course.”

“I think about her, too. How she trusted me.” She had relived those moments when Bianca had begun to hemorrhage a thousand times, looking for something she’d missed, finding nothing, but still unable to accept her own helplessness. She resisted the urge to polish off her wine in one long slug. “Why did she lead me to believe you were married?”

“Bianca could be flexible with the truth.”

“I thought you were smothering her.”

He turned from the window with a rough, unmerry laugh. “If you mean you saw me trying to control as much of her life as I could, you’re right.” His grip on the tumbler tightened, and his voice was bitter. “And look how well that turned out.”

She ran her thumb around the rim of her glass. “You were trying to keep her safe.”

“Only to have her end up dead.”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” She shot up from the couch. “You weren’t the person in charge of her delivery. Only one of us has that on her shoulders.”

He pointed the tumbler at her. “Stop right there. The doctors I talked to were clear about why she died.”