Dance Away with Me(54)

“I never—”

“Well answer me this, smart one? If you females are so aware—so mature and so enlightened—why are so many of you”—he jabbed the spatula in her general direction—“so unhappy with your incredible bodies?”

“Incredible?” It came out as a croak.

“Never mind. Go eat.”

“You . . . really like my body?” She sounded like she was fourteen. But when she considered how much time she spent cataloging her flaws—unruly hair, too-full breasts, total absence of thigh gap—she knew he had a point.

“Yeah, I like it,” he drawled.

“Oh.” She nudged the toast away from the rim of the plate. “You like it as an artist, right?”

“Yeah, as an artist.” That cockeyed glint in his eye suggested he was messing with her. “What did you think I meant?”

Surrendering her dignity, she dug herself in deeper. “Because I look like one of those chubby women Renoir and his pals loved to paint?”

“Gain another twenty pounds and then you might—might—be in their league.” He didn’t quite smirk. A man like Ian North wouldn’t smirk. But he did something with his mouth that told her he was thinking about it.

“My eggs are getting cold.” Instead of the eggs on her plate, she thought about her internal eggs, the unused ones her ovaries kept diligently producing. But for how much longer?

Wren screwed up her face and let out one of her delightful little Wren-squeaks. Tess stood at the counter and dipped the corner of her toast into the yolk. “Aren’t you eating?” she asked.

“I already did.”

She couldn’t put this off any longer. “Something happened that you should know about.” She fidgeted with the toast. “Have you met Freddy Davis?”

He paused on his way to the sink. “Tempest’s local law enforcement? I had the pleasure not long after I moved here. He heard about my line of work and told me not to get any ideas about bombing the town with gang tags.”

She smiled. “Your teenage past still catching up with you.”

“They were never gang tags, Tess.” He pretended offense. “They were liberation tags.”

“My mistake.” Her laughter faded. “Freddy called me into the police station a couple of days ago. To interview me about Bianca’s death.”

He dumped the skillet in the sink and swore under his breath.

She gazed at him. “He said he’d been in touch with the coroner’s office. They’ve finished the autopsy and listed her cause of death as inconclusive.” She’d lost her appetite and set her plate on the counter. “There’s been gossip in town about the two of us. About me moving in right after Bianca’s death. I’ve made it clear that I’m only here to take care of Wren, but . . .”

Ian snatched up the dish towel. “I’m going to talk to him. Set him straight. You and I both spoke with the doctors. They said that the autopsy might not tell us much more then we already knew. What anyone else believes is immaterial.”

“It’s not immaterial to me.” Wren cooed and kicked her legs. “I want to settle down here.” For the first time, she said it aloud. Despite the fact that she only had one real friend here—one and a half if she counted Phish—these mountains had begun to feel as necessary to her as air and water. She wanted to stay. “How can I become part of the community with this shadow hanging over my head?”

“Don’t you dare let those idiots get to you.”

“Hi.”

Eli stood in the kitchen doorway in a worn Titans T-shirt with brambles clinging to the leg of his jeans. “I brought you some eggs.” He set them on the counter next to Wren. He didn’t seem to be favoring one leg over the other, so he was healing well. “Your baby’s really little.”

“We’re only taking care of her for now,” Ian said. “And the next time you visit, you should knock first.”

“I forgot.” He peered at Wren. “Maybe you could take him to see Mom sometime. It might make her happy.”

Tess doubted very much that seeing Wren would make Rebecca feel better about her miscarriage. “He’s a she. Her name is Wren.”

“It smells really good in here. Is that bacon? We don’t have pigs but sometimes Dad trades stuff for it.”

“Would you like some?” Ian asked.

Eli shuffled his feet and gazed toward the stove with the look of a kid who wanted bacon but had been instructed not to ask for anything.

“We have too much,” Tess said. “It would be a shame to throw it out.”

“I guess it would be all right then.”

While Tess ate her now-cold eggs, Ian fried up the rest of the bacon, and Eli demolished it in the way only an eight-year-old boy could, even one small for his age.

He and Ian chatted about a fox Ian had spotted in the woods and an upcoming display of synchronous fireflies they were both excited about. “It’s a phenomenon that only happens a few places in North America,” Ian explained, “and East Tennessee is one of them. Thousands of fireflies all light up together.”

She was once again amazed at how attuned a city slicker like Ian North was to the natural world.

“It’s supposed to happen in the middle of June this year,” Eli told her. “I think your baby would like it.”