A generous pair of skylights brightened the spacious studio. The floors were new, a cool blond hardwood instead of the darker finish everywhere else. No brightly colored paintings hung on the wall—no incendiary posters of missiles sprouting from party hats, no twelve-foot stencils waiting to be taped against brick or canvas and brought to life with spray paint. He sat at a computer with his back to the door.
“I didn’t hear you knock.”
“Weird.” She came farther into the room, Wren the barest weight in her arms. “You’re quite the man of mystery. I’m curious. Do you have any personality—other than the dark and mysterious part?”
He turned to her. “I have lots of personality.”
“Aloof? Foreboding?”
He rose from the desk, not appearing to be put off by her insult. His height, stevedore’s jaw, and long-muscled arms seemed wasted on someone who didn’t need to lift anything heavier than a paint roller. “Refusing to telegraph every emotion that flits through my brain doesn’t make me aloof.”
She caught the implied insult. “I don’t flit. And if Wren’s not your baby, whose is she?”
“I don’t like being interrupted when I’m working.”
“You were probably playing solitaire online. And if you were a female artist, you’d get interrupted all the time. Kids, husbands, girlfriends, UPS. That’s the way it is with us. And Wren comes first. Even before your work. Whose is she?”
He shoved a hand in the pocket of his scruffy jeans. “What if I told you she’s mine? Would that make you go away?”
She gave him the same “you’re a moron” look the teens had given her. “Do I look like I’m stupid?”
“What you look like is a pain in the ass!”
“Is it possible for us to have a straightforward conversation?”
“I don’t like conversation—straightforward or not. I can’t work with you popping up all over the place.”
“Tough. You’ve hauled me into your mess, and I need to know what I’m in for.”
“Do your job,” he said brusquely. “I’ll handle the rest.”
She wasn’t backing off. “I promise not to make eye contact while you talk. I know that makes you nervous.”
“I am not afraid to make eye contact with you.” He proved it. His eyes, dark as sin, locked with hers until she felt as if he could see into everything she wanted to keep hidden—her anger, her guilt over Bianca’s death, and her shame at not being able to move on from the loss of the only man she’d ever loved. She looked away first, shifting her focus to Wren. “One of us has to care about her.”
“Do you think I don’t care?” He jabbed a hand toward the window. “Sit over there. In that chair.”
She glanced toward the straight-back chair he’d indicated. “Why?”
“Because you don’t have anything better to do right now.”
She was curious enough to sit where he indicated. He rolled the sleeves of his denim shirt to his elbows, revealing long-muscled forearms all ready to chop wood. But instead of grabbing an ax, he picked up a sketchbook. She stared at him. “You’re going to draw me?”
“Don’t expect anything flattering.”
She wiggled self-consciously. “I’m surprised you can actually draw. I thought it was all paint rollers, stencils, and spray cans.”
“I didn’t say I was good at it. Move your legs to the left.”
She felt big and awkward, but she did as he asked. “If you give me purple horns or a word balloon, I’m suing.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Can I have it afterward so I can sell it on eBay?”
He cocked his head at her, a shaggy curl falling over his forehead, but didn’t reply.
“How much money do you think it’d bring?”
He moved a second straight-back chair under a skylight and sat. “Turn your torso so you’re facing me.”
“I’ve never imagined you using a sketch pad. Maybe a blowtorch, but . . .”
He set an ankle on his opposite knee, propped the sketchbook on his thigh, and studied her. She gazed uncomfortably at the wall behind his head. “I’m serious about eBay. I could use a new car. A yacht would be okay, too.”
His pencil began moving over the paper.
She crossed and uncrossed her legs. “Or a house in Tuscany. Maybe in an olive orchard. Or a vineyard.”
More long strokes of the pencil. A pause.
He ripped the paper from his sketchbook, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it on the floor. She watched it roll toward the purple couch. “Bianca said you weren’t working. That you were blocked.”
“Did she?” He flipped the sketchbook to a fresh page and began to draw again.
“You could at least have let me comb my hair first. The great Ian North wants to draw me, and my hair’s a rat’s nest. You’re going to put a mustache on me, aren’t you?”
“Uncross your legs.”
She wasn’t aware she’d crossed them.
She couldn’t stand the tension any longer, and she gazed down at Wren. She took in her tiny movements—the twitches and sighs. Once again, she heard the rip of paper and watched another crumpled wad hit the floor. She refocused on the baby’s little frog-face. Matched her breath . . .
She jerked as his fingers touched her cheekbone. She hadn’t heard him move. He gently tipped her chin. His touch was light, merely a brush, but something inside her prickled, like an unhatched chick pecking the tiniest hole in its shell. No one had touched her face in so long. Not since . . .
Her throat constricted. The shawl slipped down on her breast. She drew it back.
He dropped his hand and turned away from her. “Wren’s father is a man named Simon Denning. He’s a photojournalist. Specializes in covering the world’s hot spots.”
The pressure in her throat eased. “I’m glad.”
“About what?”
“That you’re not her father.”
He began drawing again, his attention on the sketch pad. “Bianca and I were never lovers.”
She mulled that over. “That’s hard to believe. She loved you.”
“Yes. And hated me, too.”
“Because you didn’t love her back.”
“No more talking. I’m concentrating.”
“You were so protective of her. Overprotective. Trying to keep her away from me. What were you afraid I’d do to her?” The moment the words were out, her throat constricted. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Quiet. I’m trying to focus here.” He’d cut her off. Given her a reprieve.
She turned her head. “I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to hold Wren.”
She didn’t expect him to answer, but he did, speaking so quietly she barely heard him. “Being around fragile things isn’t good for me.”
The way he said it . . . So stoically. It almost made her feel sorry for him. Almost. “If you didn’t love her, why was she with you?”
His hand stabbed at the sketch pad. “Because I was all she could count on. Enough questions.”
She rearranged Wren’s dark hair into a baby Mohawk. “So here we are, the two of us, taking care of a child who doesn’t belong to either one.”
He flipped to a fresh page. “My lawyer’s trying to find Denning. I should know more in a couple of days.”
Wren mewed. Tess brushed the tip of the baby’s earlobe sticking out from beneath her cap. “I’m getting a cramp.”
He grunted. “Great art requires sacrifice.”
“That’s not great art. It’s a sketch of an ordinary person with a mustache, and you need to change Wren’s diaper.”
That actually made him laugh. For the first time. She sighed and stood. “Come on, Wren. Off to the ladies’ room we go.”
“I’m not done.”
“I am.”
“Do you have any idea how many women want me to draw them?”
“Zillions?”
“Maybe not that many. But a solid half a dozen, at least.”
She laughed, then realized she didn’t like seeing this easier side of him. It made him more human than she wanted him to be.
As she began to shut the door behind her, she heard the sound of paper being torn in two . . . three . . . four pieces.
* * *
On the drive back home from Knoxville the next day, after Wren’s first well-baby checkup, she skittered around remembering that moment he’d touched her face. The feeling she’d had . . . A hyperawareness of her own body—a startling reminder that she was still a sexual being. Remarkable, considering how tired she was from lack of sleep. She’d felt—not exactly strong, but . . . strong-ish. Not so much like a wounded animal. It was as if she’d dipped her toe into a fresh version of her old self—tougher and a tad cynical.
She’d liked matching wits with him. It made her want to go up against him again and badger him for answers to the questions he seemed determined to dodge. What hold did Bianca have over him? Or did he have a hold over Bianca? And why had he tried to isolate Bianca?
For the next few days, she barely saw her housemate. His car disappeared and reappeared. She heard his steady footsteps overhead in the studio where he might or might not be working. She heard him behind the closed doors of Bianca’s almost bare bedroom when she got up at night to feed Wren. She’d see evidence that he’d eaten—a dirty plate, an apple core in the trash, but she never saw him do it. He disappeared into the woods for hours, and once she suspected he stayed out all night.
The Eldridges hadn’t brought Eli back, and that made her uneasy. What if the wound had become infected? She looked out the rear window and saw Ian clearing brush from behind the schoolhouse. He attacked the larger branches with a hatchet and stacked them for firewood.
She bundled Wren and ventured out the back door. The day was overcast with the smell of snow in the air, but he’d discarded his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his denim shirt. A pale white scar formed a half-moon above his wrist.
“Where did a city boy like you learn to chop wood?” she asked.
He wiped his shirtsleeve over his sweaty forehead. “I might have spent too much time at various schools for recalcitrant youths. They’re great places to pick up basic skills.”
“Wilderness survival?”
“Along with hot-wiring cars and making a shiv out of a toothbrush. Most people don’t know this, but there’s a right and wrong way to mug an innocent citizen.”
“The scope of your knowledge leaves me breathless.”
“It’s nice to be appreciated.”
“Except you never mugged anyone.”
“But I could have if I’d wanted to.” He shifted his view toward a stand of trees that edged a gully behind the house. “I’m thinking about building a tree house in that oak over there. Kind of an open-air studio.”
She didn’t know much about artists, but she did know something about human psychology. Building a tree house studio might be productive or it might simply be another form of procrastination—a way he could make himself feel as though he was working without actually doing it.
“I’m concerned about Eli,” she said. “The Eldridges were supposed to bring him back. Have you seen him?”
“No. But I can hike up there and check on him.”
“I’d feel better if I saw him myself, but my Honda might not be up to the climb. Can I borrow your Land Cruiser?”
“I’ll go. Paul tends to greet visitors with an assault rifle.”
“Why would he do that?”
“The Eldridges are what’s known as preppers or survivalists. They want to be self-sufficient, so they’re prepared for disaster: pandemics, nuclear attack, economic collapse, World War III, a meteor strike, whatever. In fairness, some of what they do is common sense—having extra food, batteries, water. Most of all, taking care of the land. But too many of them are paranoia propagandists. Tell me what to look for, and I’ll stop in.”
“No. I need to see him. It won’t kill you to watch Wren for an hour.”
“You don’t know that for a fact.”
She sighed. “Fine. We’ll go together.”
He wasn’t happy about that, but he seemed to recognize a losing argument when he was caught up in one.
* * *
The interior of Ian’s ancient Land Cruiser with its faded leather seats, missing radio knob, and dinged-up dashboard wasn’t quite as beat up as the exterior, but that was the best she could say for it. She settled in the backseat next to Wren, with one hand clutching the armrest. “Did you ever think about using some of your millions to put new springs in this thing?”
“Wouldn’t feel the same.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
Wren, however, didn’t mind the bouncing and jostling. She’d fallen asleep.
The Eldridge farm looked as hardscrabble as Ian had described it. With the exception of the solar panels on the roof and the antediluvian Dodge Ram truck, it could have been a homestead from the early twentieth century. As Ian pulled up outside the fence, a pair of furiously barking fecal-brown dogs charged toward them.
Rebecca appeared unarmed at the front door. Not so for Paul Eldridge. He emerged from the weathered barn holding the assault rifle Ian had warned her about. Eli scampered after him, showing no ill effects from his accident.
“Stay here,” Ian ordered as he got out of the car and walked toward Paul and Eli.
Rebecca approached the fence, moving slowly, as if each step were an effort. Ignoring Ian’s order, Tess got out of the car. She reached the gate at the same time as Rebecca.
“I’m sorry you had to come all the way up here.” Rebecca’s dull complexion, unwashed hair, and fingernails bitten to the quick testified to a hard life. “Eli’s leg is healing fine. I should have let you know. Would you like to come in? It’d be nice to have a woman in the house for a change.”
Tess extracted Wren from the car seat and followed Rebecca inside.
Unlike the unpainted exterior, the interior had soft green walls and a few feminine touches: a handmade throw pillow in brightly colored chintz and a string of pastel paper lanterns over the serviceable family dining table. A smaller table stacked with textbooks and pens marked the site of Eli’s homeschooling. His artwork hung next to it, mounted in simple frames decorated with painted twigs and pebbles.
Rebecca cast a yearning look toward Wren. “How old is she?”
“Almost two weeks. She’s a preemie, but she’s doing well.”
With no warning and an almost inaudible choking sound, Rebecca turned away.
“Are you all right?” A stupid question. She obviously wasn’t.
“I have to stop crying. It upsets Paul and Eli.” She slowly turned back, tears tracking her cheeks. The way her eyes naturally turned down at the outer corners made her look even more vulnerable. “I had a miscarriage two months ago.”
Tess curled her hand over Rebecca’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was almost four months along.” She gazed at Wren. “I’ll get over it.”
The very words Tess had told herself so many times. “Grief seems to have its own timetable.”
“I’ve wanted another baby for years.” Rebecca tried to pull herself back together, but she couldn’t draw her eyes away from Wren. “You’re so lucky to have her.”
“She’s not mine. I’m only her temporary caretaker.”
“What do you mean?” Rebecca gestured toward the kitchen table, and after they were seated, Tess offered a much-abbreviated summary of what had happened. She did her best to be factual and steer clear of the emotional undercurrents, but by the time she was finished, Rebecca had once again begun to weep. “I’m so embarrassed to keep falling apart like this.
“I’ve fallen apart more than a few times myself.”
“What’s going to happen to that sweet baby?”
“She’ll be taken care of,” Tess said more firmly than she felt.
Rebecca tore her eyes from Wren and rose from the table. “Would you like some tea? I grow my own herbs.”
Tess wasn’t a big fan of herbal teas, but she accepted.
Eli came in while the tea was brewing. Tess checked his wound and saw it was healing well. He rushed back out to join the men. “Dad’s showing Ian the wind turbine.”
“It’s Paul’s newest project,” Rebecca said as the door slammed behind her son. She set a pair of matching mugs on the table and settled across from Tess. Behind her, bottles of various sizes and colors caught the light on the kitchen windowsill. “We’re not crazy, you know. We just want to be prepared.”
The tea smelled of lavender, rose hips, and lemongrass, all fragrances Tess loved but didn’t necessarily want to drink. She took a sip anyway. It was surprisingly delicious. Maybe she should stop prejudging. “Prepared for what?”
Rebecca gazed at Wren. “Once Eli was born, all I could think about was how precarious our existence is on this planet. Not only the litter and waste, the plastic clogging up our oceans, but crazy men with nuclear bombs, germs we can’t even identify, cyberattacks wiping out the country’s power grid. We decided that we had to take care of ourselves.”
Tess thought Rebecca’s palpable anxiety might be better handled by medication than this difficult lifestyle, but that was the judgmental part of her kicking in, and she said nothing.
* * *
“What do you think of them?” Tess asked Ian on the way back.
“Eli’s a great kid, and that speaks well of his parents. But Paul’s too much into government conspiracies for my taste. I don’t know how anybody with a brain can think our government is well organized enough to hide aliens or fake moon landings, let alone confiscate everyone’s guns. I’ll say this for the guy, though. He has an amazing skill set.”
They got back to the schoolhouse sooner than she would have liked. Being confined was making her stir-crazy. Despite the lousy pay and her obnoxious co-workers, she missed the Broken Chimney. She also hated leaving Phish short-staffed, even though he kept telling her to take the time she needed.
Ian had returned to clearing out the brush in the back. She wished she could curl up in bed and take a nap, but Wren wasn’t having it. As Tess bounced her in the sling, she investigated the bookcases. Not even the most fast-paced novel could hold her attention, but she discovered a splashy volume devoted to international street artists, another on the work of the British street artist Banksy, and a third titled IHN4: A Rebel’s Story. Beneath the title were the words, “How the son of one of America’s wealthiest families abandoned his heritage and elevated street art from gutters to galleries.”
Wren cried when Tess tried to sit, so she propped the book on the kitchen counter and read.
North spent his teen years as a conventional graffiti artist, vandalizing trains and subways. But as he matured, so did his vision. His youthful video game–inspired graphics gave way to more detailed, socially conscious work, some of it even whimsical, such as turning the iron grid on the side of a grocery into a zoo cage by pasting a herd of escaping wildebeests around it, or transforming the irregular bricks on a city wall into the missing front teeth of a child’s mouth.
More recently, he’s shown signs of disillusionment as art speculators purchase the actual walls where his work has shown up—buying them from the property owners, paying to have the buildings repaired, and then selling the works for vast profits, all without his permission.
She read about Ian’s family—his hostile, driven father, who’d died in a small plane crash, and his mother, a beautiful socialite with a pattern of self-destruction. Nothing was mentioned about her death, so she must have been alive at the time of publication.
“Street art,” Ian was quoted as saying, “stole art from the elitist museum crowd and put it cleanly in the path of everyday people.”
Tess was still thinking about what she’d read as she gave Wren a quick bath in the upstairs bathroom sink. Ian poked his head in. Unlike her, his complexion wasn’t pasty, and no dark shadows from interrupted sleep lurked under his eyes. She wanted to snap his head off. “What do you want?” she snarled.
“You have company.”
“Company?”
“Oh, yes.” The words dripped with sarcasm.
She wrapped up Wren, elbowed past him, and made her way downstairs.
Eight teenage girls stood inside the front door. Ava, Imani, and Jordan, along with five of their curious girlfriends.
* * *
Ninety minutes later, when the girls finally left, Ian stormed downstairs, looking as if a grenade had detonated too close to his head. “They asked about anal sex!”
Tess shifted uncomfortably. “Kids these days.”
“And you answered them!”
“You could have spared yourself by not listening.”
“Do you have any idea how far teenage girls’ voices carry?”
He stalked across the room toward a pair of old wooden lockers. “Look, Tess, I know you’re trying to do a good thing, but this has ‘bad idea’ written all over it.”
She didn’t exactly disagree. Wren nuzzled at her breast. “What do you suggest?”
He opened both locker doors and pulled out a whiskey bottle from behind one. “I suggest you tell them to stay home and talk to their parents.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? But most of those girls have parents who seem to be living in an alternate reality. As for their health classes . . . They have an abstinence-only curriculum. It’s illegal for their public schools or teachers to offer anything else.”
He twisted off the cap and splashed whiskey into a heavy-bottomed tumbler. “This isn’t your problem.”
She sank into the sofa cushions with a sigh. “I know. You’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right. But . . . Wait. Did you say I was right? Give me a second to recover.” He took a slug of whiskey, then gazed at her. “Go ahead. Say whatever it is you don’t want to say.”
He could read her thoughts too easily. She fiddled with the bottom button on her borrowed flannel shirt. “I’ve seen the way sexual ignorance can destroy kids’ lives. For me, giving them information is . . .” She trailed off, feeling too exposed.
“It’s an act of conscience.” He said it bluntly, but not exactly unkindly. How could someone so self-centered have figured this out about her?
He set down his glass and took a bottle of wine from the locker. “This is like the way you refuse to sell cigarettes at the Broken Chimney, isn’t it?” With a twist of the corkscrew, the cork released.
“How do you know about that?”
“Even a hermit like myself couldn’t escape that juicy piece of town gossip.”
He filled a wineglass and brought it to her. It was nearly five o’clock, so why not? “I want the girls to respect themselves,” she said. “I don’t want them having sex because they think it’s the only way they can find a boyfriend. I also don’t want girls pressuring boys to have sex before the boys are ready.” She took a long sip. “God, this wine is good.”
“Enjoy.” He took another swig of whiskey. “And you need to butt out.”
“I know.” She set down her glass. The sling was hurting her shoulder, and as he wandered over to the window, she extracted both the sling and Wren from under his flannel shirt. She wrapped the baby, naked except for a diaper, in the receiving blanket she’d draped over the arm of the couch. “What do you do when you go out in the woods?”
“Hike. What did you think?”
He was hedging. She lay the swaddled baby on the cushion next to her. As she stretched her stiff shoulders, the tips of her breasts brushed against the soft flannel. Even though Ian had his back to her, she felt unarmed without a bra, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you think about Bianca?”
“Of course.”
“I think about her, too. How she trusted me.” She had relived those moments when Bianca had begun to hemorrhage a thousand times, looking for something she’d missed, finding nothing, but still unable to accept her own helplessness. She resisted the urge to polish off her wine in one long slug. “Why did she lead me to believe you were married?”
“Bianca could be flexible with the truth.”
“I thought you were smothering her.”
He turned from the window with a rough, unmerry laugh. “If you mean you saw me trying to control as much of her life as I could, you’re right.” His grip on the tumbler tightened, and his voice was bitter. “And look how well that turned out.”
She ran her thumb around the rim of her glass. “You were trying to keep her safe.”
“Only to have her end up dead.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” She shot up from the couch. “You weren’t the person in charge of her delivery. Only one of us has that on her shoulders.”
He pointed the tumbler at her. “Stop right there. The doctors I talked to were clear about why she died.”
“It’s only their best guess. Nobody can say for sure until the autopsy results are in. And even then . . .”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” he said gruffly. “This is on me. I should never have let her come here.”
“That was on her, I think. She could have left anytime.”
“She was pregnant. Pregnant women don’t always think clearly.”
“You know this from your vast experience with pregnant women?”
He shrugged.
She eased onto the arm of the couch and glanced down at Wren to make sure she hadn’t decided to stop breathing. “I still don’t get why were you trying to keep me away from her.”
“Did you ever read The Great Gatsby?”
“Of course.”
“Bianca was like Daisy Buchanan. One of the careless people. Impulsive.” He tucked a thumb in the pocket of his jeans. “She’d latch on to someone—form an intense relationship—exactly the kind I could see her forming with you. Then she’d blow it up over some imagined slight. Afterward, she’d spiral into a depression.”
“You were trying to keep that from happening.” She thought of Wren. “Bianca told me you weren’t happy about her pregnancy.”
“She tended to act impulsively and then lose interest.”
So much of what she’d believed about Ian North was proving untrue. “Did she blow things up with you?”
“Countless times, but it didn’t last long.”
“Why is that?”
He wandered toward the piano. “It’s a long, boring story. Save yourself.”
“Are you kidding? Wren and I live for this kind of thing. Tell me.”