Tess knew he was close by even before she saw him. It was a stir in the air. A scent. A vibration. And then the surly growl she remembered. “Bianca told me I was incredibly rude this morning.”
“She had to tell you this?”
Tess had been studying the sign in the window of the Broken Chimney when he approached. Close up, he was even more formidable—the opposite of the whippet-thin, garret-living stereotype of an artist sporting a scraggly goatee, nicotine-stained fingers, and deep-socketed eyes. His shoulders were broad, his jaw rock solid. A long scar ran down the side of his neck, and the small holes in his earlobes suggested they’d once held earrings. Probably a skull and crossbones. He was an outlaw, the grown-up version of the teenage punk who’d holstered a spray paint can instead of a handgun—the young thug who’d spent years in and out of jail for trespassing and felony vandalism. Despite worn jeans and a flannel shirt, this was a man at the top of his game and accustomed to everyone kowtowing to him. Yes, she was intimidated, both by the man himself and by his fame. No, she wouldn’t let him see that.
“I tend to be self-absorbed . . .” he said, stating the obvious, “. . . except as it affects Bianca.” His words had slowed so that each one carried extra weight.
“Really?” This was so none of her business, but from the moment he’d stormed into her yard, he’d raised her hackles. Or maybe she was simply enjoying the freedom of someone glaring at her instead of regarding her with pity. “Dragging a pregnant woman away from her home to a town that doesn’t even have a doctor?”
His ego was too big to be put on the defensive, and he brushed that aside. “She’s not due for another two months, and she’ll have the best care. What she needs most right now is rest and quiet.” His eyes, the unfriendly gray of a winter sky just before a snowstorm, met hers. “I know she invited you to the house, but I’m withdrawing the invitation.”
Instead of backing away as any normal person would, she pressed. “Why is that?”
“I told you. She needs rest.”
“These days healthy pregnant women are advised to stay active. Isn’t that what her doctor recommended?”
His slight hesitation might have been imperceptible to someone who hadn’t been trained to observe, but not to her. “Bianca’s doctor wants the best for her, and I’m making sure she gets it.” With a curt nod, he walked away, his strong musculature and purposeful stride giving him the look of a man who’d been designed by God to weld girders or pump petroleum instead of creating some of the twenty-first century’s most memorable art.
Bianca had said he was “overprotective,” but this seemed more like smothering. Something felt wrong between these two.
A muddy pickup sped past, blowing exhaust. She’d come to town for doughnuts, not to become enmeshed in other peoples’ lives, and she returned her attention to the sign in the window.
help wanted
She was a midwife. Any day now, her anger, her despair, would fade into resignation. It had to. And as soon as that happened, she’d be ready to look for work in her field. She’d find a job that would let her recapture the satisfaction of helping vulnerable mothers give birth.
help wanted
She didn’t need to go back to work yet, so why was she staring at the sign, as if her whole messy world had been reduced to this backwater coffee shop?
Because she was scared. The solitude on Runaway Mountain that she’d thought would heal her wasn’t working out. It had become too tempting to stay in bed. To eat doughnuts and dance in the rain. Last week, she’d gone four days before she’d remembered to take a shower.
The bitter swell of self-disgust ballooning inside her forced her through the door. She could either ask about the job, or—a better idea—she could buy a doughnut and leave.
A counter to her right held cookies and doughnuts, but this was no funky urban coffee shop. A compact freezer showcased eight tubs of ice cream. Open shelves offered up cigarettes, candy bars, batteries, and other oddities not normally found in either a doughnut, ice cream, or coffee shop. A pair of spinning wire racks for paperback books were tucked in a corner, and a rock song she vaguely recognized but couldn’t name played in the background.
An espresso machine hissed. Her reflection stared back at her from the mirrored wall behind the counter. Puffy face, purple shadows under her eyes, a thick tangle of hair that hadn’t seen a brush since . . . maybe yesterday, maybe the day before, and Trav’s worn maroon Wisconsin sweatshirt.
The man operating the espresso machine passed the finished drink across the counter to an elderly customer with a cane. The old man hobbled to a table, and the espresso operator turned his attention to her. A thin, graying ponytail snaked down his back. He regarded her with small eyes folded into a leathery road map of a face. “Doughnuts or pie?”
“How do you know I want either one?”
He tucked his thumbs through the tie of the red apron he’d knotted in the front. “Reading people’s minds is my business. You’re new around here. My name’s Phish. With a p.h.”
“I’m Tess. You must be a big fan.”
“Of the band? Hey-ll, no. I’m a Deadhead. Greatest band that ever lived. I got ‘Ripple’ playing now. . . . It’s the only song most people know.” His grimace telegraphed his opinion of such unaccountable human ignorance. “Phisher is my last name.”
“And your first?”
“Elwood. Forget I told you.” He tilted his head toward the three-tiered acrylic display case on the counter. Next to it, a small, erasable whiteboard read pie of the day. “Dutch apple,” he said. “One of my bestsellers.”
“I’m more into doughnuts.” There wasn’t much variety. Glazed or powdered, which she could never think of as real doughnuts, more as cake masquerading as a doughnut. She tipped her head toward the door. “Broken Chimney is a strange name.”
“You shoulda seen the place when I bought it. Cost me twenty grand to fix it up.”
“I noticed you didn’t fix the chimney.”
“The fireplace is bricked up, so there wasn’t much point. Good way for people to find us.”
She scraped the side seam of her jeans with her fingernail. “I . . . saw your sign in the window. You’re looking for help?”
“You want the job? It’s yours.”
She blinked. “Just like that? I could be an escaped felon, for all you know.”
He shouted to the old man across the store. “Hey, Orland! Tess here look like an escaped felon to you?”
The old man turned his attention from his newspaper. “She looks ’talian to me, so you never can tell. She’s got some meat on her bones, though. I like that. Wouldn’t mind looking at her when I come in.”
“There you go.” Phish’s grin revealed a set of crooked teeth. “If Orland likes you, that’s good enough for me.”
“I’m not Italian.” She ignored the whole “meat on her bones” thing.
“As long as you’re willing to work for minimum wage and take the shifts nobody else wants—plus put up with my niece and my sister-in-law—I don’t much care what you are.”
“I only came in here for a couple of doughnuts.”
“Then why did you ask about the job?”
“Because . . .” She dug her fingers into her hair and caught a tangle. “I don’t know. Forget it.”
“You know how to make espresso?”
“No.”
“You have any experience working a cash register?”
“No.”
“You got anything better to do right now?”
“Better than—?”
“Grabbing an apron.”
She thought about it. “Not really.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
For the next few hours, Phish showed her the ropes as he waited on customers. She went along with it, not sure how she’d let this happen but too aimless to do anything about it. Before long, she felt as if she’d been introduced to half the town, including a local microbrewer, some retirees from up north, the head of the local women’s alliance, and two members of the school board. Everyone was curious about her—exactly what she’d been wary of—but it was the normal curiosity of people meeting someone new, and the evasive answers she’d given Bianca seemed to satisfy them.
At four o’clock, she waited on her first customer. Two scoops of butter pecan ice cream and a copy of the National Enquirer. At five o’clock, as the Grateful Dead finished the final chorus of “Bertha,” Phish pulled his apron over his head and headed for the door. “Savannah’ll be in at seven to take over.”
“Wait! I don’t—”
“If you have questions, hold ’em till tomorrow. Or ask one of the customers to help you out. We don’t get a lot of strangers around here.”
As quickly as that, she was on her own. A barista, ice cream scooper, pie server, candy bar purveyor, and cigarette vendor . . .
She sold two slices of pie—one à la mode—a pack of AA batteries, a cup of hot chocolate, and some breath mints. She made her first cappuccino, only to have to remake it because she screwed up the proportions. The store was finally between customers when he came in, a trucker’s cap growing from his head, a rusty mustache growing down his chin. He took his time checking out the swell of her breasts under her apron bib. “Pack of Marlboros.”
She should have anticipated this, but she didn’t anticipate much of anything these days, and she played for time by rearranging the bananas in the bowl on the counter. “Do you have any idea what those things do to your body?”
He scratched his chest. “You serious?”
“Smoking increases your risk of coronary heart disease, lung cancer, stroke. It also gives you bad breath.”
“Just hand me the damn cigarettes.”
“I . . . I . . . can’t do that.”
“You what?”
“I’m kind of a . . . a conscientious objector.”
“A what?”
“My conscience objects to selling something that I know is toxic to the human body.”
“You for real?”
Excellent question. “I guess.”
“I’m callin’ Phish!”
“I understand.” It wasn’t as if she had a personal investment in her new career, and getting fired was fine with her.
He stood right there at the counter as he made his call, giving her the stink eye the whole time. “Phish, it’s Artie. This new lady won’t sell me my Marlboros. . . . Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay.” He thrust his cell at her. “Phish wants to talk to you.”
His phone reeked of tobacco. She held it slightly away from her face. “Hello.”
“What the hey-ll, Tess!” Phish exclaimed. “Artie says you won’t sell him his cigarettes.”
“It’s . . . against my belief system.”
“It’s part of your job, damn it.”
“I understand. But I can’t do it.”
“It’s your job,” he repeated.
“Yes, I know. I should have thought about that, but I didn’t.”
His grumble rumbled through the odoriferous phone. “Well, okay. Let me talk to Artie again.”
Dazed, she handed the phone back.
Artie snatched it from her. “Yeah . . . Yeah . . . You shittin’ me, Phish? This place is goin’ to hell.” He shoved the phone in his pocket and glared at her. “You’re as bad as my girlfriend.”
“She must care about you.” She studied his T-shirt. The front read will buy drinks for followed by a picture of a cat. It took her a few moments to get it. “What does she think about your shirt?”
“You don’t like it?”
“Not so much.”
“Shows what you know. My girlfriend’s the one gave it to me.”
“I guess nobody’s perfect.”
“She is. And I ain’t coming back in here when you’re workin’.”
“I understand.”
“You are crazy, lady.” And he stomped out the door.
She’d won some kind of victory, and she thought about how much Trav would love this story. But there was no Trav waiting for her. No Trav to throw back his head and give that big, loud, shake-all-over laugh she’d loved so much. She had a new town, a new house, a new mountain, and a new job, but none of it mattered. She’d lost the love of her life, and it would never get better.
Phish’s niece Savannah arrived and took an immediate dislike to her. The girl was a belligerent nineteen-year-old with choppy magenta hair, cat-eye glasses, ear expanders, and an armload of tats. She was also pregnant, although Tess didn’t have a chance to ask how far along she was because Savannah immediately insisted Tess clean the toilet.
“Phish cleaned it a couple of hours ago,” Tess said, not adding that Savannah had shown up late, and Tess’s shift had been over half an hour ago.
“Clean it again. When he’s not here, I’m in charge.”
Unlike the cigarettes, this was wasn’t a fight worth having, at least not on her first day. She found the cleaning supplies, gave the bathroom a quick once-over, and left by the back door before her unpleasant co-worker could stop her.
When she got back to the cabin, she shed her sweatshirt, stuck in some earbuds, and went outside to dance. She danced through a stubbed toe, through the first drops of rain, through the evening chill. Danced and danced. But no matter how fast she moved, how hard she pounded her feet, she couldn’t dance through to the other side.
* * *
The cupola atop the schoolhouse’s peaked roof still held an iron bell, but the three steps that led to the shiny black double doors were new. She remembered Ian North’s warning from the day before but knocked anyway. The door flew open almost immediately, and a beaming Bianca stood on the other side, a single blond braid falling over her shoulder, like Elsa in Frozen.
“I knew you’d come!” She grabbed Tess by the wrist and pulled her into the hallway where long ago students must once have stripped off their coats and doffed their muddy boots. Bianca was barefoot in a gauzy, off-the-shoulder summer dress that caressed her abdomen. “Wait till you see this place.” She tossed Tess’s jacket on one of the old brass coat hooks and directed her into the main living area. “Ian bought it from these friends of mine, Ben and Mark. They’re both decorators, and they did the renovation. They planned to use it as a studio and vacation house, but they got bored after the first year.”
Watery morning sunshine streamed through the big, deep-silled schoolhouse windows. The ceilings were high, maybe eighteen feet, the walls chalk-white beadboard at the bottom with dusty, cornflower-blue paint at the top. White glass schoolhouse globes hung from the ceiling, and the original floors—scars, gouges, and all—had been thickly varnished to a high, dark sheen.
The furnishings in the large, open room were low and comfortable. Couches upholstered in white canvas, a long, industrial-style wooden dining table with metal legs, and a big coffee table in the same style, but with wheels. Under one wall of windows, bookshelves displayed rocks, animal bones, a few twisted tree roots, and a generous collection of hardback books. A schoolhouse globe perched on top of an old upright piano. A Seth Thomas pendulum clock hung near an old potbelly stove, and a bell rope dangled from a rectangular opening in the ceiling.
Bianca pointed to a staircase with open wooden treads and railings made from fat pieces of gray-painted iron pipe. “Ian’s studio is upstairs, but we can’t go in. Not that he seems to be doing anything in there. Totally paralyzed. The master bedroom’s up there, too. There’s a smaller one on this floor. Ben and Mark loved to cook, so the kitchen is great, but neither of us is much of a cook. Are you?”
Tess used to cook but hadn’t for a long time. Roasted pork loin, asparagus, ricotta dumplings with pancetta and crispy sage. . . . That was the last great meal she’d fixed. The dumplings had been perfect, but Trav hadn’t eaten much. “I’m sorry, babe. No appetite. It’s this damned cold. I can’t seem to shake it.”
It hadn’t been a cold. He’d had pneumococcal pneumonia, a disease that should have responded to treatment, but hadn’t. Ten days later, he was dead.
“Are you okay?” Bianca was looking at her with concern.
Tess remembered to smile. “Yes. Fine. I was . . . I like to cook, but I haven’t done much of it lately.”
“And I like to eat. Maybe you can give me some ideas.”
Bianca showed her the galley kitchen: white subway tiles behind the sink; one long schoolhouse window at the narrow end; white beadboard; cupboards painted a lighter shade of the same blue as the rest of the downstairs. An outside door led to the rear of the house. An eggplant sat on the soapstone counter next to a couple of withering tomatoes and half a loaf of French bread.
Bianca perched on the low windowsill, hands resting on her belly, and gleefully listed some of her favorite foods, the restaurants she loved and hated, the missing items from their weekly grocery delivery, and her pregnancy cravings. Her conversation, Tess was discovering, tended to swirl around herself, which suited Tess perfectly.
“Make something!” Bianca demanded, with girlish enthusiasm. “Something healthy and delicious that neither of us has ever eaten. Something to feed my baby.”
Tess had no appetite, but she pulled a bunch of wilting Swiss chard from the refrigerator, a bulb of garlic, and a bottle of balsamic vinegar for an improvised bruschetta.
Bianca exclaimed over everything Tess did, as if she’d never seen an eggplant being diced or a garlic clove peeled. “It’s like watching the supreme earth mother at work.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Look at you. Your hair, your body. Next to you, I’m all pale and feeble.”
“Those pregnancy hormones have done a job on you. You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.”
Bianca sighed, as if her appearance was a burden to bear. “That’s what everybody says.” She turned away to gaze out the window at the dry, winter grasses in the glade that stretched beyond the schoolhouse. “I want this baby so bad. Something of my very own.”
Tess swept the eggplant peelings into the trash. “Your husband might have a few thoughts about that.”
Bianca went on as if she hadn’t heard. “I lost my parents when I was six. My grandmother raised me.”
Tess had lost her own mother almost ten years ago. Her father had deserted them when she was five, and she had only a few memories of him.
“For a long time, I didn’t care about having kids,” Bianca said. “But then I kind of got obsessed with getting pregnant.”
Tess wondered how her husband had felt about that. For all of Bianca’s chatter, she hadn’t said much about her marriage.
Delicious smells began to fill the kitchen as Tess sautéed the garlic and chopped Swiss chard in olive oil, throwing in some butter to cut down on the vegetable’s bitterness. She toasted the French bread and diced the aging tomatoes, along with some finely chopped olives. After mixing it all together, she adjusted the seasonings, splashed on a little more olive oil, and spooned it on top of the toasted bread. With the finished pieces set on a pair of ironstone plates, she and Bianca settled at the long dining table.
The bruschetta was perfect, the bread crisp, the topping meaty and full of flavor.
There was something restorative about being in this beautiful, sun-splashed room with a woman who was so vital and alive. Tess surprised herself by realizing she was hungry. For the first time in forever, she could taste her food.
The front door opened, and North came in, a backpack slung over one shoulder of his heavy jacket. He stopped inside the door and gazed at Tess, not saying anything, not needing to. I told you to stay away, and yet here you are.
Her last bite of bruschetta lost its taste. “I was invited,” she said.
“And we’ve been having the best time!” Bianca’s lively chirp hit a flat note.
“Glad to hear it.”
He didn’t sound glad.
“You have to taste this,” Bianca said.
“Not hungry.” He shrugged off his backpack and set it on a long wooden bench.
“Don’t be such a grouch. We haven’t had anything this good since we got here.”
He shucked his jacket and advanced toward them. The closer he came, the stronger Tess’s urge grew to protect Bianca.
“I’ll get you some.” Bianca hopped up—or as near to hopping as she could manage—and went to the kitchen.
North stopped at the head of the table, the place where Bianca had been sitting, and gazed down at Tess. The February light coming through the windows fell on the long scar that ran down the side of his neck. “This isn’t good for her.”
Tess deliberately chose to misunderstand his words. “Vegetables and olives are highly nutritious.”
His wife reappeared with a plate. He took it, but didn’t sit. “You need to rest, Bianca.”
“I need to walk,” she said, showing a defiance she hadn’t previously exhibited. “Come on, Tess. You promised you’d go out with me.”
Tess had promised no such thing, but she was happy to comply. What she hadn’t counted on was Ian North’s insistence on accompanying them.
Bianca directed all her conversation toward Tess, an awkward process, since North had positioned himself at his wife’s side on the narrow trail, forcing Tess to lag behind. Whenever the ground was uneven, he took Bianca’s arm only to release it as soon as they reached steadier footing. As soon as she could, Tess made an excuse to leave.
Bianca stopped walking. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“That won’t work,” North said. “We have plans.”
“We can change them.”
“No, we can’t.”
Bianca shrugged, then rested her head against his arm while she smiled at Tess. “We’ll work it out. I know the two of us are going to be besties.”
Tess was less sure of that. The last thing she needed was to be pulled into the odd dynamics between these two.
* * *
A week passed. Tess danced at midnight when she couldn’t sleep, at three in the morning when a nightmare awakened her. She danced at sunrise, at sunset, and whenever she had trouble finding her next breath.
Bianca popped in unannounced—sometimes several times a day. Mostly Tess didn’t mind the visits, despite the one-sided nature of Bianca’s conversation. Far more annoying were Ian North’s intrusions. He invariably showed up with one excuse or another to pull his wife away.
“I can’t find my wallet. . . . We need to call in an order for groceries. . . . Let’s drive into Knoxville. . . .”
He acted as though Tess posed some kind of threat.
A week passed. Then another. Tess checked in with Trav’s parents, who were recovering from his loss better than she was. She texted her friends—cheery lighthearted lies.
Doing gr8. Mountains beautiful.
The structure of having a job forced her out of bed and reminded her to take a shower and comb her hair. She didn’t love her job, but she didn’t really hate it, either. Working at the Broken Chimney helped fill the hours, and Phish’s laid-back nature, combined with his marijuana habit, made him a genial boss.
One day when there was a lag between customers, Tess used the Broken Chimney’s intermittent WiFi to check out Bianca’s husband.
Ian Hamilton North IV, known by his street tag, IHN4, is the most well known of American street artists. The last member of the powerful North family, he is the only son of the deceased financier Ian Hamilton North III and socialite Celeste Brinkman North. Although graffiti artists customarily hide their identity, North has flaunted his by using his real initials in his tags—a practice generally ascribed to his troubled relationship with his parents. He gained notoriety as he abandoned street graffiti for more thoughtful work beginning—
She closed the computer as Mr. Felter banged on the counter, demanding an extra pump of hazelnut syrup in his coffee.
* * *
Phish’s pregnant niece Savannah was only slightly less rude to the customers than she was to Tess, and it became evident that Phish only kept her on out of loyalty to her father, his brother Dave. “Savannah didn’t use to be this bad,” Phish confided to Tess, “but then her ex-boyfriend knocked her up and left town. I knew he was a loser first time I met him. He never even heard of The Dead!”
In Phish’s eyes, no sin was greater than lack of reverence for the Grateful Dead.
Phish’s other employee was Savannah’s mother, Michelle, a deep-bosomed blonde who, at forty-two, also happened to be pregnant. “I thought it was perimenopause,” she announced to anyone who’d listen. “Ha!”
Michelle was just as difficult to work with as her daughter. Her grudge against Tess had its roots in Phish hiring Tess instead of Michelle’s younger sister. “All that money you spent to go to college, and you end up working for Phish.” Michelle had smirked the first time she’d seen Tess in Trav’s Wisconsin sweatshirt.
Savannah and Michelle had their own problems, and after three weeks on the job, Tess had learned not to get in the middle of them. “It’s like she did it to get back at me,” Savannah hissed at Tess. “Having her pregnant at the same time as me makes me feel like a freak.” She took a swipe at cleaning off the steamer wand from the latte she’d made. “She’s like always doing things like this.”
“Getting pregnant?” Tess tipped the used coffee grounds from the dump box into the trash.
“No. Like trying to show me up.”
Tess was happy when two of the bartenders from The Rooster appeared at the counter. They chatted with her longer than was absolutely necessary, but they were more pleasant to talk to than either of her co-workers.
Eventually Tess made her way to the back room where she could continue the argument she’d been having with Phish for the past week. She was right. She knew she was right. “Just a small, out-of-the-way display,” she said. “So customers know they’re there.”
He pulled a burlap bag of coffee beans from the shelf. “Hey-ll, Tess, how many times have I gotta tell you I’m not puttin’ out rubbers. People who need ’em know I keep ’em in the back room.”
It felt good to try to do something positive, instead of being a drain on humanity, and she pressed him. “The men in hard hats might know, but what about the women who come in here wanting condoms? What about the teenagers who really need them?”
“And there you go. I put out rubbers for teenagers, and there’ll be a rumpus kicked up in this town like you never seen.”
“Give people a little more credit than that.”
“You’re an outsider, Tess. Rubbers stay in the back room, and that’s all there is to it.”
Instead of arguing, she waited until Phish wasn’t around and sneaked a small display of condoms onto a stand near the unisex bathroom. She set them between a stack of handmade soap, emery boards imprinted with Bible verses, and a two-page pamphlet aimed at teens that she’d driven fifteen miles to have printed out. At the end of her shift, she hid the condoms and pamphlets in the storeroom. Taking action, however small, felt like a small step forward, and what Phish didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
* * *
Ian hadn’t been to town since Tess Hartsong had started working at the Broken Chimney. He wouldn’t be here now except they’d run out of coffee. As he walked in, he saw Tess behind the counter. She’d tied a red apron around her waist and pulled her hair into a ponytail, but rebel strands curled around her face and down the back of her neck.
A man in jeans and a suede bomber jacket stood at the counter. Ian had overheard enough to know the guy operated a microbrewery nearby, and he’d seen enough to realize Mr. IPA was more interested in Tess Hartsong’s curves than in the pie he’d ordered.
“Let me take you out for barbecue after you get off work.”
“Thanks, but I’m a vegetarian.”
The hell she was. She’d made a BLT for Bianca and eaten one herself.
“How about drinks, then, at The Rooster?”
“It’s nice of you to ask, but I have a boyfriend.”
She was lying about that, too. He’d observed enough by now to know that Tess was a loner.
“If you change your mind, let me know.” The guy took his pie and a mug of coffee over to the community table but continued to watch her out of the corners of his eyes. No surprise that he seemed especially drawn to her hips.
The place was busy with a motley collection of the town’s citizens, too many of whom he’d heard about from Bianca.
“Tess is getting to know everybody. She says a lot of people in town owe their jobs to Brad Winchester. He’s the big shot around here. . . .
“Tess says the townies secretly look down on the retirees who’ve moved in from out of state, but they don’t show it because of the money they bring in. . . .
“Tess says she’s met some of the artists: a guy who works with iron, and she says there’s a woman who makes mandolins. We should have a party.”
Over his dead body. And he was getting more than a little sick of hearing “Tess says.” Apparently Tess hadn’t mentioned any of the homesteaders and survivalists hanging out in the mountains. He’d met a few of them when he’d been hiking, including some with kids. They were an interesting lot—earnest environmentalists who wanted to reduce their carbon footprint, conspiracy theorists hiding from the apocalypse, a couple of religious zealots.
Ian approached the counter. The dusting of powdered sugar on Tess’s apron must have come from the cake doughnuts. He’d never understood why those dense, powdery lug nuts were even considered doughnuts. Except for their shape, they had nothing in common with a light-as-a-feather glazed doughnut.
He knew what he wanted, but he glanced at the menu board anyway. “A cup of house blend, plus a pound of your darkest roast, and a couple of doughnuts. Glazed.”
Without asking whether the doughnuts were for here or to go, she slipped them into a white paper bag, rang up his purchases, and handed him the coffee in a paper cup instead of a mug. “Are you going to let Bianca drink any?”
“I guess that’s up to her.”
Her hands stilled on the register drawer as she looked up at him. “Is it?”
He didn’t like subtlety. “What are you getting at?”
“A cup of coffee won’t do her any harm.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Where did you get that scar on your neck?”
Most people were too polite to ask, but she didn’t seem to care about everyday courtesies. Neither did he. “Trying to squeeze under a chain-link fence when I was eighteen and the cops were chasing me. Do you want to know about the others?”
One on his arm from a nasty encounter with a New Orleans guard dog. Another on his leg from falling off the roof of an apartment building in Berlin. When you spent so much of your life climbing ladders and sneaking around dark city streets, shit was bound to happen.
The one he prized the most was the jagged mark across the back of his hand. He’d earned that after he’d tagged his father’s Porsche. It served as a reminder of a beating he’d never forget, along with the evidence that he’d fought back.
“No. That’s okay.” She dismissed his question and also dismissed him.
He grabbed the coffee, along with his change. Instead of leaving, as she seemed to expect, he took a seat at the opposite end of the community table from the horny brewer and opened the doughnut sack.
A woman came in. He didn’t know for a fact that she’d once been a homecoming queen, but her diamond-shaped face and faded-blond prettiness bore the hallmarks. Now, however, her blond bob had lost its fluff and her facial bones had sharpened. Twenty years earlier she might have been succulent, but the juice had been sucked out of her.
“Tess, can I talk to you?”
“Hello, Mrs. Winchester.”
Winchester. Even he’d heard about the local boy who’d made good with some kind of start-up involving Internet domain name trading. Apparently, he’d sold the business for a fortune and used the money to finance his political career.
Tess nodded at the teenager who’d accompanied the woman. “Hi, Ava.”
And here was the current homecoming queen. Blond like her mother, but fleshed out. Round cheeks, rosy lips, in the full bloom of prettiness. She smiled at Tess, then left her mother to join two other teens at a table by the window.
“Can we talk privately?” Mrs. Winchester nodded toward the back of the store.
Tess was the only one working, but she made her way toward the minuscule hallway by the bathroom. He could see them but not hear what they were saying.
The Winchester woman did all the talking, her gestures as sharp as the rest of her. When Tess finally spoke, she appeared calm in the face of the onslaught. Winchester shook her head, clearly dismissing whatever Tess said. Meanwhile, her daughter, Ava, was making a concerted effort not to look at her mother.
His curiosity annoyed him. Whatever human drama was unfolding had nothing to do with him. He picked up his remaining doughnut along with the coffee and dropped a dollar tip on the table. He didn’t like leaving Bianca alone.