Dance Away with Me(50)

“My lips are sealed. So it was all friendship and no romance. Until . . . ?”

“Senior year. We didn’t have prom dates, so we decided to go as friends. By the time the night was over, we were more than friends.”

“You with your lectures on teenage sex . . .”

“We waited a little longer, but not much. And unlike the kids here, we’d had decent sex education.” She stepped over a tree root. “We got married two weeks after I graduated from college. He changed majors a couple of times, so it took him longer.”

“The two of you were together since your senior year in high school?”

“A couple of times, we dated other people. But it never took with either of us.” She stopped walking and looked up at him. “You’re right, Ian. If you never love, then love will never hurt you. But I can’t imagine never having loved Trav.”

“You’ve suffered for it.”

She had. But somehow the suffering she’d carried around for so long had eased.

*

“We’re hoping it won’t take longer than two weeks,” Diane told them when they returned.

The Dennings planned to fly back home to New Jersey that night, but as soon as they had the preliminary legal work in place, they intended to come back and get Wren. “We’ll have talked to Simon by then,” Diane said as she gazed at Wren.

Jeff slipped his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We’re canceling the river cruise we’d planned. Prague to Budapest. We’ve been looking forward to it. Celebrating our fortieth wedding anniversary.”

“Nothing is more important than family,” Diane said firmly.

Finally, after taking dozens of cell phone photos and Diane wiping away tears, they drove off.

Ian shut himself in his studio. Tess banged around the schoolhouse, then packed up Wren and trekked back to the cabin to fetch the clothes she’d tossed aside. Wren picked up on her foul mood and began to fuss. Tess made herself take a long series of calming breaths and began straightening the place. As she finished, she went over to the front windows. With a frown, she tugged the curtains closed.

*

At the Broken Chimney, Artie told Tess he hadn’t had a cigarette for two days and hit on her again.

“You always liked ’em with big knockers,” Mr. Felder commented from his post at the corner table.

Artie choked on his coffee, and Tess pointed the metal frothing pitcher toward the rear table. “I don’t care how old you are, Mr. Felder. That kind of comment is inappropriate and offensive.”

“I’m ninety years old, Miss Hot Pants, and that means I get to say any damned fool thing I please.”

“Not while I’m working,” she retorted. “One more crack like that, and you’re out of here.”

“You can’t kick me out.” He smirked at her. “I’ll set the law on you.”

Tess slammed down the frothing pitcher. “Somebody had better grab his cane, because I am seriously going to whack him over the head with it.”

“I’ll do it.” Artie went for the cane. “What’s wrong with you, Orland? You can’t go around saying shit like that in front of a lady.”

Mrs. Watkins, the head of the Tempest Women’s Alliance, looked up from her copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “It’s no wonder Northerners think we’re a bunch of hayseeds down here.”

The male half of a couple who’d retired in Tempest set aside his mug of Americano. “We just tell our old Boston neighbors that you’re colorful.”

Tess liked the retired couple. Unlike the locals, they didn’t know about Bianca’s death and weren’t spreading the rumor that she’d let Bianca die so she could have Ian.

With the exception of Mr. Felder, her current customers were a blessedly congenial bunch, but it hadn’t been like that most of the past two days. Imani’s father, the Reverend Mr. Peoples, had shown up, and although he’d been more polite than the Winchesters, his message was equally clear. Stop corrupting our daughters.

A heavily pregnant woman Tess didn’t recognize—but who obviously recognized her—left without ordering, as if she were afraid Tess would slip some kind of baby-killing poison into her iced green tea. And Tess’s relationship with her co-workers had deteriorated even further. Michelle had a habit of covering her belly with her hands when she had to get close to Tess. Savannah looked at her as if she were the devil. Michelle’s husband, Dave, was the only one in the family who seemed to enjoy Tess’s company.

The after-school crowd began to arrive, but there was no sign of Ava. Tess suspected her parents had declared the Broken Chimney off-limits whenever Tess was behind the counter.

At the end of her shift, she walked to her car. Written in the dust along one fender was a single word. Slut.





Chapter Eleven




Freddy Davis, the town’s only police officer, showed up at the Broken Chimney the next morning. He was big and slow, with bushy eyebrows, a thin upper lip, and a preference for caramel macchiatos. “What time do you get off today, Tess?”

Was Freddy asking her out, too? Even with half the town shunning her, she’d been getting hit on, and she couldn’t understand it. What did the men of Tempest find so intriguing about a slightly overweight thirty-five-year-old widow with impossible hair?