Ian came back from one of his mystery walks dripping muddy water on the varnished wooden entryway in the same way she imagined generations of schoolkids had once done. He changed into dry clothes and took off in his car without telling her where he was going.
It was harder today for Tess to leave Wren with Heather. Tess wanted to curl up with the baby. Experiment with her little patch of hair and ponder whether her eyes would always be such a dark blue. She wanted to admire the way her cheeks were filling out and watch the play of that minikin mouth. To smell her head and treasure every moment she had left.
She made herself do the right thing—kiss Wren on her tiny cowlick and leave for the Broken Chimney.
* * *
Whenever she was at work now, she went on high alert, watching everyone who came in, trying to figure out who believed she’d caused Bianca’s death and who was vandalizing her car. The women seemed especially hostile. So much for women sticking together.
Michelle had dark circles under her eyes and more frequent backaches as her pregnancy advanced. “You don’t know what it’s like to have precipitous labor like I had with Savannah,” she told every customer who’d listen. “You can’t imagine how scary it is.”
Tess could imagine because she’d seen it. Precipitous labor occurred when the baby was born less than five hours after the first contraction, with some mothers delivering in less than three. Instead of feeling lucky at having such a short labor, they had no time to adjust to the violence of the contractions. Although their babies were healthy, some women ended up experiencing postpartum depression or even PTSD, while others were able to put it behind them. Michelle didn’t seem to be one of them.
She confronted Tess, who was wiping down the doughnut case. “If I go into precipitous labor when you’re around, promise me right now you won’t lay a hand on me.”
“Michelle, the last thing in the world I want to do is deliver your baby.” The last thing Tess wanted to do was deliver any baby. Even the thought of it made her light-headed. Something that had once given her so much joy and satisfaction was now twisted in the images of her nightmares.
Michelle emptied the knock box in the trash, spilling wet coffee grounds on the floor. “You find somebody to get me to the hospital as fast as they can. Don’t wait for Dave.” In several conversations with Michelle’s husband, Tess had discovered that Dave Phisher’s main goal in life seemed to be staying out of his wife’s and daughter’s tumultuous paths.
“I’ll do that,” Tess said.
Savannah piped up from across the shop, where she was enjoying a hazelnut latte. It was her day off, but she liked to watch them work. “I wouldn’t put it past Tess to try to deliver your baby herself just to show off.”
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?”
She bristled. “I’m hardly hiding working at the Broken Chimney.”
“You’re hiding when you don’t want us to be seen in public together.”
“I’m trying not to make any more waves. Work with me.”
He didn’t promise not to show up, but he stopped arguing with her.
Their dinner was long over, but other than getting a bottle for Wren, neither of them stirred. They began to talk about art. He described Paleolithic cave drawings as the original street art and Michelangelo as the first celebrity artist. He spoke of Daumier’s lithographs, Seurat’s dots, and the avant-garde modernists. She expected him to scoff at her passion for Mary Cassatt. Instead, he told her about Berthe Morisot, another female impressionist he thought she would appreciate.
The last spoonful of mango gelato had long ago melted in their bowls when he surprised her by mentioning his mother. “When I was little, she’d take me to the Metropolitan, the Whitney, the Guggenheim—whatever she was in the mood for.”
“A nice memory.”
“There weren’t a lot of them.” He leaned back in his chair, perfectly at ease. “She was a beautiful, alcoholic socialite who could barely take care of herself, let alone protect me from my father.”
Tess’s sense of justice flared. “From what I’ve read, your father should have been tossed in prison for child abuse. Why was he so horrible to you?”
“He was a prick. But also, I wasn’t his kid.”
Tess straightened in her chair. He’d delivered this bombshell as casually as someone giving a weather update. “He wasn’t your father?”
“No. But he didn’t find out about my mother’s affair until I was around five. Too late to take back my name.”
Tess moved Wren to her opposite shoulder. “Your biography doesn’t mention this.”
“I don’t hide it, but I don’t broadcast it, either. Misguided loyalty to my mother, I guess. She’s in a long-term care facility now for dementia. She loved me, but she still looked the other way when the old man was slapping me around—letting me take the punishment for her affair. Her personality has changed with her disease. You couldn’t meet anybody sweeter.”
Tess’s temper blazed. “I don’t care how sweet she is now. She should have protected her child.”
“All women aren’t as fierce as you, Tess.” He actually smiled. “She has no idea who I am when I visit, but she fusses over me the whole time—tries to give me cookies, worries that I’ll catch a chill, takes me around and introduces me to everyone, even though she can’t remember my name.”
“Why didn’t your father divorce her instead of abusing you?” One good thing Tess could say about her own father. He might have abandoned her, but he hadn’t abused her.
“Divorce would have meant admitting he’d made a mistake. And Ian Hamilton North the Third could never make a mistake.” His expression hardened. “Pride was everything to him. He treated the North family name as if it were a holy relic. You can imagine how it enraged him to see that name sprayed on trash bins and Porta-Potties.”
“What about your biological father?”
“An actor. He made a couple of films in the eighties before his career crashed. We had an uncomfortable meeting about ten years ago, and neither of us has any desire to repeat the experience.”
“What you went through as a child was horrible. But you’re so dispassionate about it. How do you do that?”
“I’m not an emotional person, Tess. You know that. I’m pragmatic. I approach life analytically. That doesn’t mean I’m unfeeling. It means I don’t let those feelings rule me. A healthy degree of detachment makes life easier.”
She’d seen the anger in his work, and she didn’t buy his explanation, especially when she thought about his mother. The woman who’d purportedly loved him had never interceded to protect him from his father’s horrors. Was it possible if, instead of feeling too little, he felt too much?
“Don’t look so stricken,” he said. “When I was seventeen, I got even. I beat the shit out of my father. He couldn’t call the cops because it would have brought even more shame on the North family name than my arrests.”
“Some people should never have been born.” Wren let out a little wheeze. Tess cuddled her against her neck. “Not you, sweetheart. You should definitely have been born.”
And the Dennings were coming in five days to take her away.
* * *
Tess couldn’t do anything right at work. She mixed up orders, dropped a tray of mugs, and when Freddy Davis came in, burned herself on the espresso machine. She only wanted to be with Wren. But being with her was sometimes worse than being separated. Taking in the little sounds she made—the squeaks and yawns, her baby snores. Her perfect deliciousness.
She and Ian didn’t repeat their dinnertime coziness, but each day when she got back from the Broken Chimney, he took Wren from her and ordered her to rest.
* * *
She stayed home on the last day before she had to hand Wren over to the Dennings and kept her cradled to her body. At bedtime, she propped herself against the headboard and held Wren through the night. “It’s going to be all right, my little one,” she whispered. “They’ll take good care of you. They will.”
But who would take care of Tess?
Despite her best intentions, she’d fallen in love with this tiny creature. A ferocious, unconditional love more powerful than anything she could have imagined. She’d warned herself not to get attached, but it had happened. How could it not? She’d spent her days, her nights, her weeks with this tiny morsel pressed against her heart.
The baby slept better than she had in weeks, her breathing punctuated with noisy little goat grunts. As the dark hours ticked by, Tess absorbed the smell of her, kissed the flush of her cheeks, brushed her fingers over the soft fontanel. This baby was hers. She would give up her life for this child. She could not let her go.
But she had to.
By the time the first streaks of dawn crept into the room, she was nauseated. Wren, on the other hand, was wide-awake, ready to rock. Tess carried her downstairs and fed her, breathing in her milky smell. She took the bottle so much easier now than she had at the beginning. Her eyes focused on Tess’s own. She curled her starfish fingers around Tess’s.
Ian appeared from the back bedroom, his hair damp from his shower and the scar on his neck flushed from the warm water. He’d pulled on a pair of gray athletic shorts and a T-shirt. He was silent as he walked past her to make coffee.
Wren finished her bottle like a champ. Tess curved her hand around the baby’s head as Ian brought her a mug. “She doesn’t know I’m not her mother.”
“She’ll be well cared for.”
If Tess hadn’t been holding Wren, she would have launched herself at him. He was cold. Heartless. A man who didn’t seem to understand any emotion except anger.
He was the one who got Wren’s things together while Tess cuddled her in the geode bedroom. He was the one who packed up the bottles, the formula. He retrieved the stack of onesies from his dresser drawer and set the box of preemie diapers in the sleeping nest. He put the baby sling next to the diapers, but Tess couldn’t imagine Diane or Jeff wearing it. Would they let Wren cry it out at night, alone and frantic in her bed?
Even the thought of it chilled her.
She heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside. “They’re here,” Ian said unnecessarily.
She nodded.
He went to greet them.
She broke out in a cold sweat. She was going to die. She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t hand her child over to strangers. Her stomach heaved. She raced for her jacket, for Wren’s fleecy sleeper. Fumbling with the snaps, she pushed the baby inside.
The voices were coming closer. He was getting ready to bring them into the house. She ran from the room, through the kitchen, out the back door. She raced across the meadow, Wren clutched to her breast.
Ian’s tree house had no walls yet. No place to hide. She dashed into the woods, her heart pounding so hard her ribs ached. She gasped for breath. Plunged off the path deeper into the trees. “It’s all right, my angel girl . . . It’s all right.”
Her lungs burned. She couldn’t go to the cabin. It was the first place he’d look. The old church . . . a ruin. She cut through the underbrush and ran toward the fire tower, not knowing what she’d find there, only knowing she had to keep running.
She climbed the rotting wooden steps with one arm around her child and one hand gripping the unstable railing. “Don’t worry. I have you. Nobody’s taking you from me. Nobody.”
She got to the top. The door was stuck. She put her shoulder to it. It gave way. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it, drawing in great gulps of oxygen.
Wren gazed up at her, trusting. Not seeing a crazed woman.
Tears spilled over her lashes. She slid down the wall and sat on the dirty floor. Bending her knees, she tucked the baby against her. “We’ll go to Wisconsin.” Her words were garbled from her tears, but she kept on. “Or Arizona. I have friends there. Or Canada. Just the two of us. We’ll stay someplace where no one will ever find us. . . .”
On and on she went. One insane, impossible scenario after another while Wren listened, content to be held.
She didn’t know how much time passed before he found her. The door of the fire tower creaked open. He stepped inside and looked down at her crouched in the corner. “Tess . . .”
The way he said her name. So much sadness. He knew. He understood.
But he didn’t. “Give her to me, Tess.”
“No! You can’t have her.”
He knelt on one knee in front of her. “Don’t do this.”
“She’s mine!”
He slipped his fingers in her hair, touched her temple with his thumb. “No. She’s not.”
She shook him off. “You don’t care! You don’t understand!”
The jerky movement, the shrillness of her voice, made Wren cry.
“I do understand,” he said. “Let me have her.”
Wren cried louder, her little chest spasming. “You can’t. You can’t take her.”
“I have to.”
She struggled against him, trying not to let go. . . .
“Tess . . . Tess, please . . .”
He peeled the crying baby from her arms.
“Don’t.” She staggered to her feet. “Don’t do this!”
“It’ll be all right.” They were the same words she’d spoken to her child. But he was wrong. Nothing would ever be all right again.
“Give her back to me!”
The grooves around his mouth deepened. “Stay here,” he said quietly. “It’ll be easier for you.”
He opened the fire tower door, and with the sobbing baby tucked in his arms, disappeared.
“No!” She ran toward the door, stumbled, and fell to her knees. “No!” And then, from the depths of her soul, she howled.
* * *
As long as he lived, Ian would never forget that feral sound. He cupped the side of the baby’s head to keep her from hearing Tess Hartsong’s heart breaking.
He kept the baby in his arms as he lied to the Dennings. “Wren was fussy, and Tess took her for a walk.”
The Dennings weren’t suspicious by nature, and they accepted his explanation at face value. “Where is she?” Jeff said. “We need to thank her.”
“She’s staying away. She’s gotten attached to Wren, and it’ll be easier for her.”
Diane pressed her hand to her heart. “Of course. We understand. And we can never thank either of you enough for what you’ve done.”
It didn’t take a trained observer to see they were both nervous. Diane kept licking her lips. Jeff fidgeted with his shirt collar. “We’ve had a lot to do to get ready for the baby,” he said. “I don’t remember Simon being this much work.”
“We were younger then.” Diane pulled at her bottom lip with her teeth. “I prayed to be a grandmother, but I confess I never imagined it exactly like this.”
“It’s funny how life can change with a single phone call,” Jeff said. “One day you’re peacefully retired with nothing to do except plan your next cruise. The next day, you get a phone call from a famous artist telling you you’re grandparents.”
Diane fidgeted with her silver pendant. “We’re willing to make any sacrifice so Wren will know she’s being raised by two people who love her.”
They were good people, but Wren didn’t know them, not the way she knew Tess or even himself. He was the one who’d written down Wren’s schedule that morning—how often she ate, how much formula to give her, where her medical records were—everything Tess should have written down but hadn’t. He was surprised how much he’d absorbed without realizing it. But when he’d tried to double-check his notes with Tess, she wasn’t talking.
The Dennings had been nervous about taking a preemie on a plane, so they’d driven down from New Jersey. Ian continued to hold the baby while he and Jeff had a brief discussion about legalities and exchanged contact information for their attorneys. Tess was right about the smell of Wren’s head.
When their discussion ended, Diane and Jeff began carrying Wren’s things out to their Lexus. Jeff returned from his last trip to the car and gazed at the baby. “There’s mischief in those eyes.”
Ian knew Wren well enough to suspect it was more likely gas.
The time had come. Ian carried Wren out to the car. Under the palm of his hand, he felt her release a long, satisfied fart. He’d been right about the gas.
The idiot baby chose that moment to lock eyes with him, and he could swear she had a satisfied look on her face. He couldn’t believe he’d ever thought she looked like a squirrel.
“You have my number,” he said. “Call if you have questions. Anything at all. Night or day.”
“We will.”
Jeff opened the back door of their sedan. Ian leaned down to put Wren in the car seat. A flash of red out of the corner of his eyes distracted him.
Tess erupted from the woods.
Her face was flushed, but she didn’t look wild-eyed or crazed, the way she had in the fire tower. She looked sane and very determined.
“Hold up!” She marched forward, hair streaming in dark, curly swirls, nose red, eyes flint-hard. “We need to talk.”
“Tess?” Diane turned. Her forehead knit with concern. “Oh, dear, I know this is hard for you.”
“You have no idea.” Tess stopped in front of them, slightly out of breath but with her jaw set. “Here’s the deal. Wren is mine. Your son was only a sperm donor. I’ve taken care of her from the day she was born, and I want her.”
It was as if she’d leveled them with a stun gun. Nobody moved. She rushed on. “Look at her. She’s thriving. Can’t you see? I know her in a way nobody else does. I know what her cries mean—whether she’s hungry, or sleepy, or mad at the world. I know how she likes to be held and—”
“Tess,” Ian cut in. “This isn’t fair to Diane and Jeff.”
“I don’t care about Diane and Jeff!”
Jeff’s head came up, and Diane looked wounded.
Tess softened. “I don’t mean that. It’s obvious you’re good people, and Wren couldn’t have better grandparents. But you’re grandparents!” The words poured out, a rush of need, love, and desperation. “She’s mine! You can see her anytime you want, but she’s mine. You can be the grandparents you’ve always wanted to be. I’ll send her to you for holidays. For summer vacations. I’ll sign anything you want to protect your rights. But she belongs with me.”
“Oh, Tess.” Tess’s outburst had brought out Diane’s maternal concern. “We can see how hard this is for you. But Wren is ours.”
Tess’s lips thinned into a snarl. “Why? Because your son knocked up her mother?”
“Tess . . .” Ian said softly. “That’s enough.”
Jeff wasn’t as compassionate as his wife, and his jaw tensed. “She’s our flesh and blood.”
“But I’m the only mother she knows!” Tess cried. “I’m a good person! A good citizen. I’m strong and healthy. I’m sane. Most of the time, anyway. I’m ethical, and— Ian, tell them. Tell them I’m a good, competent person.”
“You’re a great person, Tess, but—”
“You’re only making this harder on yourself,” Diane said.
“She needs a real mother!” Tess exclaimed. “Someone young. Someone who loves her unconditionally. Not that you don’t, but—” Some of the steam went out of her. “She needs me.”
“We can see how much she means to you,” Jeff said, more calmly. “But being raised by a single mother isn’t what we want for Wren. She deserves a family.”
Diane reached out to touch Tess’s arm, then seemed to think better of it. “Women raise children on their own all the time, and they seem to turn out fine, but that’s not what we want for our granddaughter. We may only be grandparents, but there are two of us. Girls need a father. Or in this case, a grandfather, to tell them they’re beautiful and they’re loved. To show them how good men treat women.” She twisted her hands. “Tess, I didn’t have that. I was raised by a mother who was so tired and frazzled that she never had time for me. And there were boyfriends.” Diane’s grip on her hands tightened, and her face seemed to collapse. “I— I can’t bear for Wren to go through what I did with them.”
Jeff slipped his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
Diane had been molested. This was the crux of it. Ian could see that, just as he could see Tess wouldn’t accept it.
Her shoulders shot back. “Bianca would have been a single mother.”
“If Wren’s mother had lived, Simon would have done the right thing,” his father said firmly. “You don’t seem to have a stable lifestyle, and I’m guessing you’re not secure financially. As we understand it, you’re working in a coffee shop. Grandparents might be second best, but there are two of us, and there’s only one of you.”
Tess stared at him. Blinked. She’d reached the end. She had no more arguments. She turned to Ian, but there was nothing he could say to fix this, and he hated that. He also hated the way she was frowning at him, as if this were somehow his fault, which maybe it was, since he was the one who’d dragged her into this mess.
She looked directly at him and shook her head. “You didn’t tell them.”
He felt an unpleasant chill at the back of his neck.
She took a quick step toward him. “We’d planned to take our time. Tell our families first. But I can see that’s not going to work.”
“Tess . . .”
She ignored the warning note in his voice. Instead, she hooked her hand through his arm, speaking quickly. “We intended to wait until next year, but if it’s that important to you, we can get married earlier. Look at us. We’re upstanding people. Ian’s at the top of his profession. His only criminal record is tied to his early career, and look how well that’s served him. He’s clean and sober. Richer than anyone deserves to be. More than that . . .” Her throat moved as she swallowed. “He loves Wren, and he’d never do anything to hurt her. You should see them together. It’s like they’re one person. He feeds her, takes her on walks. Her favorite place to sleep is on his chest. Sometimes I have to make him give her back to me.”
He shook himself out of his paralysis. “Tess!”
She dead-eyed him. “I know we agreed not to tell anyone, but we don’t have that choice now.” She spun back to the Dennings. “Two parents. Two stable, loving, involved parents. Neither of whom is a deadbeat or a child molester. Isn’t that what you want for her?”
To his horror, they hesitated, looking suddenly confused. Tess had plunged him into the most god-awful mess he could never have imagined, and while he was trying to sort through his options, she went in for the kill.
“What does another day matter?”
Another day for what?
She took a deep, unsteady breath. “Take her with you. For tonight. There’s a bed and breakfast right up the highway. They always have room, and you’ll be comfortable there.” She plunged on. Not letting anyone get a word in. “You have her things. You’ll be able to hold her as much as you want and think about what I’ve told you. You can look into your hearts and decide what’s best for her. For her. Not for you.”
She made this weird shooing motion with her hands, as if she were swatting away chickens. “Go on, you two. I’ll call the Purple Periwinkle and tell them to have their best room ready for you.” She grabbed Wren from him. “Be good to Grandma and Grandpa, sweetheart. Mommy loves you.” She kissed Wren’s head, ducked into the backseat of the Lexus, and buckled her in.
Her head popped back out. “I’ll fix breakfast for all of us tomorrow morning. Ian makes the best coffee, and my eggs Benedict are to die for. Let’s say ten o’clock. That way you can all sleep in. There! That’s decided.”
Jeff and Diane both had a deer-in-headlights look, and Ian could only imagine his own expression. But Tess was so forceful, so competent, so commanding—the fools did exactly as she said.
Jeff inched toward the driver’s side. “Well, if you’re sure . . .”
“Of course. Easy peasy,” the woman known as Tess Hartsong chirped. She opened the passenger-side door for Diane with one hand and pushed her in with the other. “Go on, now. Enjoy her.”
The next thing Ian knew, Tess was waving like a fool at the Dennings’ Lexus as it disappeared down the road.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. “You! Inside! Now.”