Dance Away with Me(56)

Tess slapped down the glass cleaner. “I swear to God if you weren’t pregnant, I’d meet you in the back alley right now and take you out!”

Savannah sneered at her. “I used to be a gymnast.”

“And I used to be a bitch. Wait a minute. I still am.”

“That’s true,” Mr. Felder said from his customary table by the bookrack. “You tried to kick me out last week.”

“Everybody shut up!” Michelle exclaimed. “If any of you had gone through precipitous labor like I have, you’d be more sensitive.”

“If I hear one more word about you and your precipitous labor I am going to scream,” Savannah countered.

Ignoring her daughter, Michelle pointed first to the mess she’d made on the floor and then to Tess. “Clean this up. It’s too hard for me to bend over.”

Tess grabbed the mop and beat the spilled coffee grounds to death.

*

While she was on her way to pick up Wren, the repairman called with the news that her furnace had arrived, and he could install it next week. She told him where to find her spare key and thought about also telling him to call Kelly Winchester if he had trouble getting in.

When she got to Heather’s, she found her babysitter and Wren on the front porch. It had only been a few hours, but Tess could have sworn the baby had more strength in her neck and a few extra wisps of downy dark hair. Before long, Wren would be getting ready for prom.

And Tess wouldn’t be there to see it.

*

“My life is too complicated right now for dating,” she told Artie the next day, when he showed up at the counter to ask her out again. Coincidentally, less than an hour earlier, Tim Corbett, the local microbrewer, had asked her out, although he was smoother about it than Artie.

“You’re hung up on that artist guy, aren’t you?” Artie said. “That’s what everybody’s talking about. That maybe you didn’t try hard enough to save his wife.”

“Go to hell.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I was the one saying it. So do you want to go out or what?”

“No, I don’t want to go out.”

“You are hung up on him. I knew it.”

“Do me a favor, Artie, and stop being a turd.”

*

She and Wren came home that afternoon to the smell of fresh paint. Not artist’s paint but house paint. She followed the smell to Bianca’s room.

Drop cloths covered the floors, and a ladder sat in the corner. Ian was finishing the last wall. All the room’s torturous twists and angles were disappearing, replaced by a fresh coat of the original pale gray paint. But Ian hadn’t simply restored the decor. On top of the gray, he was applying a clear glaze embedded with tiny crystals. Only the section of wall between the windows remained unfinished.

She took it in with a sense of awe. “I feel like I stepped into a geode. Bianca would have loved this.”

Ian stepped back to check his work. “Yeah, she would.”

Tess turned Wren in her arms. Paint fumes or not, the baby needed to see this. “Wren, this is what your mother was like.”

“On a good day,” Ian added.

“But I think this is how her heart was all the time. Am I right?”

He set down his brush. “Yeah. Even if her sparkle was frequently misdirected.”

“Why did you decide to do this now?”

“It was time, that’s all.”

Since she had been going through her own farewell for Trav, she understood.

The light shifted as the sun went under a cloud, but the room still glittered. “We missed a momentous occasion,” she said. “Wren’s birthday would have been two days ago, the day when she should have been born. We’ve decided to fix a real dinner tonight, and you’re invited.”

“I’m honored.”

“You should be. Right, Wren?”

Wren yawned, bored with them both.

*

They’d just received a fresh grocery shipment, and while Wren slept, Tess made stuffed baked potatoes and fried chicken. The kitchen smelled heavenly.

“Why haven’t you been cooking for me like this all along?” Ian said as the smells drew him to the kitchen.

Tess gave a final toss to the salad. “Because you don’t eat.”

“I eat.”

“Frozen dinners at ten o’clock that taste like cat food.”

“Now I know what I’ve been missing.”

As they ate, they made conversation like normal people. Easy conversation, even after Wren woke up. They had similar opinions about politics, different taste in music, and a joint hatred of horror movies. Ian told her he was heading into town tomorrow and she should make sure the glazed doughnuts weren’t sold out by the time he got there.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come into the Broken Chimney when I’m there,” she said.

“What are you worried about?”

“Not exactly worried. I just don’t see any reason to stir the gossip mill more than it’s already stirred.”

“The only way to deal with bullies is head on.”

“You’re an outlaw. That’s the way you deal. But that’s not my way.”

“You’d rather hide?”