Dance Away with Me(5)

Bianca’s smile turned dreamy as she cupped her hands over her abdomen. “I have a doctor in Knoxville now, and we’re moving into a hotel near the hospital a couple of weeks before my due date. I can’t wait for it to be over.”

She didn’t look as though she couldn’t wait. She looked as though she were reveling in every moment of her pregnancy. An ache tugged at Tess’s heart. You should have left me with a baby, Trav. It was the least you could do.

“I’ve wanted a baby for so long, but Ian—” She planted both hands on the table and hoisted herself from the chair. “I’d better get back before he comes looking for me. He’s overprotective.” She crossed the floor to retrieve her dress and sandals. “Modeling turned me into a nudist. I hope I didn’t freak you out.” She struggled with the sandals. “I shouldn’t have taken these off. Now I’ll never get them back on.”

Her edema wasn’t alarming, but it looked uncomfortable. “Try drinking more water,” Tess said. “It seems counterintuitive, but it’ll help your body retain less fluid. And put your feet up as often as you can.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience. How many kids have you had?”

“No kids. I used to be a labor and delivery nurse.” Only part of the truth. She was a certified nurse midwife whose joy from delivering babies had been sucked out of her, along with everything else.

“That’s so great!” Bianca exclaimed. “I’ve heard how hard it is to get good medical care out here in the boonies.”

“I’m . . . taking some time off.” If she was careful with the money from the sale of their condo, she could get by for a few more months before she’d have to pull herself together enough to look for a practice and get back to work.

“Come up to our place tomorrow,” Bianca said. “Ian will be out hiking or locked in his studio—he’s having one of his artistic crises—and I can show you the house. I’m craving company that doesn’t growl at me.”

Tess needed the novelty of being with someone who didn’t know about Trav’s death, who didn’t see her as the broken woman she was.

When Bianca left, Tess carried their mugs over to the farmhouse sink, with its old-fashioned, built-in drain board, chipped porcelain finish, and rusty stains that refused to surrender to scrubbing. As she dried her hands, she noticed her ragged cuticles and broken fingernails. Unlike Bianca, Tess would never be anyone’s muse, not unless the artist had a passion for unkempt, sloe-eyed brunettes with wildly curly hair and twenty extra pounds.

Trav said her dark, bluish-purple eyes, olive complexion, and almost-black hair made her look earthy and exotic, like she belonged in one of the Italian movies from the sixties that he’d loved. She’d reminded him more than once that her almost-black hair had come from some Greek ancestor who had never once sashayed through the streets of Naples in a tight cotton dress like Sophia Loren with Marcello Mastroianni chasing after her, but that hadn’t discouraged him from teasing her with made-up Italian words.

Tess used to be funny herself. She could make even the most nervous pregnant mother laugh. Now she couldn’t remember what laughter felt like.

She wandered over to the front windows, trying to decide how to fill the rest of her day. A gravel switchback snaked up the side of Runaway Mountain from the town, curling past her cabin, then the schoolhouse, and ending at what was left of an old Pentecostal church. At her side, a rickety table held a paperback copy of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying. As Tess stared at it, a blistering rage overcame her. She snatched up the book and threw it across the room. Fuck you, Liz, and your five stages of grief! How about a hundred and five stages? A thousand and five?

But then Elisabeth Kübler-Ross had never met Travis Hartsong with his floppy, auburn hair and laughing eyes, his beautiful hands and unending optimism. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross had never eaten pizza in bed with him or had him chase her around the house in a Chewbacca mask. And now Tess was living in a dilapidated cabin on an aptly named mountain in the middle of nowhere. But instead of pressing the reset button on her life, she felt only anger, despair, and shame at her weakness. It had been nearly two years. Other people recovered from tragedy. Why couldn’t she?

*

Ian Hamilton North IV was having a bad day. A particularly bad day in what had been a series of bad days. Bad weeks. Who the hell was he kidding? Nothing had been right for months.

He’d bought a place in Tempest, Tennessee, because of its isolation. The main street sat on a treacherous, two-lane highway with a gas station, a bar named The Rooster, a drive-in barbecue joint, a Dollar General, and a redbrick building that housed city hall, the police station, and the post office. There were three churches, a suspect establishment that called itself a coffee shop, and more churches tucked away in the hills.

At the end of the highway, a newer, one-story building declared itself the Brad Winchester Recreation Center. Ian had already learned that State Senator Brad Winchester was the town’s wealthiest and most powerful citizen. In the old days, Ian would have tagged that building first chance he got—IHN4 in yellow Krylon spray paint with one of his gargoyles weaving in and out of the letters. He’d probably have gotten arrested for it, too. The public had narrow tastes when it came to public art, especially in small towns. They all wanted their murals, but they hated the tags, not understanding you couldn’t have one without the other. But the line between vandalism and genius was open to interpretation, and he’d long ago abandoned the role of misunderstood artist.