The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (62 page)

“I’
VE NEVER TOLD ANYONE
this before,” Tess says, her face flushed from wine and the thrill of confession. “My friends and I in college—we formed a sort of outlaw art group. The Compassionate Dismantlers.”

Claire’s green eyes widen with interest. Tess has never seen eyes the color of Claire’s. Emerald eyes that draw you in, make you think you’re the only one in the world who matters right now, at this moment, because those eyes, those beautiful eyes, are focused only on you. You have said something interesting. Something to hold her attention. You don’t want this moment to ever end. You want it to be one of those rubber-band moments that stretch on and on, and only later, when everything is snapped back into place, does the world seem small and lacking.

They’ve spent the afternoon in town and are now having an early dinner at a little café with outdoor tables on a deck that overlooks the river. Claire ordered them a bottle of wine, and the waitress brought a sliced baguette, olive oil with garlic, and a peppery tapenade.

Claire had been asking Tess about college.

“You went to Sexton, right? And isn’t that quite close to here?”

Tess nodded. “About forty-five minutes away. It’s small. Funky. Alternative. The classes were taught in circles. We called the professors by their first names. No grades. No exams. The dorms were tiny houses—there was even a clothing-optional dorm, and a vegan dorm—you had to take off any leather products and ditch your coffee with cream before entering.” Tess rolled her eyes in a can-you-believe-it kind of way.

Claire refilled Tess’s wineglass. They ordered dinner, both choosing the pan-seared sea scallops with roasted red pepper sauce. Claire got out her cigarettes, prompted Tess to continue.

Tess’s sketchbook is out on the round wrought-iron table and she’s showing her new drawings to Claire, giving the people in them names: Henry, Winnie, Spencer, Suz. Real names. Nothing invented or withheld. She’s a teacher giving a lesson, naming the parts of a thing, diagramming it, telling all its secrets.

Claire offers her a cigarette and lights it for her. Tess inhales the perfumed smoke hungrily.

“I’m sorry,” the waitress calls from the doorway into the restaurant. “But you’ll have to put those out. State law.”

Claire groans, rolls her eyes as she stubs her cigarette out on the rail of the deck. Tess does the same, then lets herself continue.

“We believed that in order to truly understand something, you had to take it apart. That art, real art, was more about destruction than creation.”

Claire smiles. It’s an aha-moment smile. A please-go-on-you’ve-got-me-on-the-edge-of-my-seat smile.

“We did all kinds of crazy stuff—destroyed our records at Sexton, set fire to a construction site, shot up a power substation, we even kidnapped this guy once.”

Tess knows she shouldn’t be saying the words. But she can’t stop herself. She’s caught up in the dizzy momentum of their
day together. She pulls her wrought-iron chair around, moves closer to Claire so that their thighs are touching as they study the sketchbook.

“It was silly, really,” Tess says. “How seriously we took ourselves back then. How earnest we were.”

Tess remembers back to third grade when she first learned to write in cursive, the first assignment she did for Miss Ferris after weeks spent practicing letters and words. Tess filled an entire page with words, all attached to one another, no spaces, no periods or commas; a run-on, breathless word that told an entire story.

This moment is like that sentence, she thinks now.

“I find this drawing the most interesting,” Claire says, her hand tracing the edge of the first sketch Tess did of Suz’s face inside the carnivorous flower. “Tell me about this girl in the flower.”

I didn’t mean to put her there. She just appeared. She keeps appearing. In my yard. My studio.

Tell me.

“She died,” Tess says, reaching for the wine. How many glasses has she had? Three? Four? She’s sure Claire is still on her first glass. Other than the occasional paper cup half full of wine at gallery events, Tess rarely drinks. Now here she is, good and drunk and suddenly terrified that she’s going to make a fool of herself.

She glances at Claire, who is clearly waiting for her to say something more. “Drowned,” Tess says. “The summer after college. We were all living together.”

Tess tells herself she will not have any more wine. She will shut her mouth and not say any more. But it feels so good, such a release. To finally be telling the truth, or some part of it at least. She mustn’t tell the whole truth, she knows that, but it’s okay to skirt around the edges, isn’t it? To flirt with it. Tease it by telling these little half-truths.

“How horrible for you,” Claire says, reaching out to put a hand on Tess’s knee, making it feel warm and cool all at once.

Tess nods. “It was. I think”—she hesitates—“I think that’s when my paintings stopped mattering so much. When I lost the…” Tess bites her tongue.

Shut up. Just shut your mouth before you say any more.

“Passion,” Claire says, pushing her leg ever so slightly into Tess’s, keeping her hand on Tess’s knee.

Tess’s heart is a moth fluttering toward light.

“Yes.” Tess doesn’t pull away. She loves the closeness. The feel of this woman next to her, the dangerous temptation to open her mouth and tell Claire everything. How easy it would be.

“But now you’re ready to get it back?” Claire asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I think what you need to do is paint something completely different,” Claire says, looking right into Tess’s eyes with such intensity that Tess has to fight the urge to turn away. “Something you’re both compelled by and afraid of.”

Tess lets this sink in as Claire empties the last of the bottle into Tess’s glass. Tess takes a sip, holding the wine in her mouth, tasting oak, cherries, and something vaguely metallic. It’s blood she tastes. From the cut her teeth made on her own tongue.

She’s been silent so long. Afraid for so long. She’s studied boxing. Made her body lean and strong. Getting ready for a fight with some imagined enemy. But all along, her biggest enemy has been her own self. And she has this deep and true sense that this woman beside her in the restaurant can somehow help her raise the flag of surrender, maybe even set her free.

She spots the waitress coming through the open door onto the deck with two plates of food.

“I know what I want my subject to be,” she says as the waitress approaches. Tess looks right into Claire’s eyes, green as the canopy in a tropical forest, as the waitress sets the plates down in front of them.

“Can I get you ladies anything else right now?”

“No, thank you,” Claire says. “Everything looks perfect.”

The waitress walks away in quick, gliding steps. The delicate white Christmas lights that line the porch come on.

Claire turns back to Tess. “You were saying?”

“You,” Tess tells Claire, the pungent, charred scent of the food hitting her suddenly, making her realize how truly ravenous she is. “I want to paint
you
.”

“I
DON’T BELIEVE THIS
,” Tess says. “Twice in one week she gets hurt on your watch.”

Is it Henry’s imagination, or does Tess seem a little drunk? Her words sound slightly slurred and she sways ever so slightly, like a snake ready to strike.

They’re all standing in the kitchen, having arrived home within five minutes of each other.

“Mom,” Emma protests, cradling her bandaged hand, “it wasn’t Dad’s fault. I—”

Henry jumps in. “She cut her hand working on the moose. I was right there with her. We put peroxide on it and wrapped it up. It’s not a very deep cut.”

The lie comes easily. He shoots Emma a warning glance:
Don’t tell the truth. This needs to be one of our secrets.

Emma lets out a little hissing sound, leans back against the counter, studying her wrapped hand.

Henry keeps thinking about the incident with the window: how when he and Winnie got to Emma outside, they could see the cut wasn’t bad, just a thin slice across her knuckles. But
something else was wrong. Emma was staring down at her hand, perplexed. When, at last, she looked up at Henry, Winnie, and Mel, she asked, “What happened?” as if she had no recollection of punching the window. As if it had been someone else.

“Maybe Danner made her do it,” Mel had said, disgusted, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t want you taking Emma to the cabin anymore,” Tess says.

“Mom!”

“I think you’re overreacting,” Henry tells her. It’s a line he’s so used to hearing from her, it feels strange to be parroting it back. But here he is, perfectly sober, and she’s the one slurring her words, not being rational.

Tess shakes her head. “It’s not a safe place. I should never have agreed to it to begin with. Emma, go up to your room. I need a moment alone with your father.”

Emma stamps her foot, rolls her eyes, and groans. “You’re always sending me to my room. I’m the one who cut my dumb hand. And you can’t keep me away from the cabin! It’s not fair!”

Tess doesn’t engage Emma in the argument, just silently nods her head in the direction of the stairs. When Emma doesn’t budge, Tess lets out an exasperated breath and says, “Please, Em?”

“Fine,” Emma spits out. They hear her creep into the front hall, whisper something to the moose painting before heading upstairs.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on up at the cabin?” she asks him once they’re alone.

“What? Nothing. I took Emma and Mel. They worked on the moose. Played with the cats. I think it’s good for Emma to be out there in the woods. If she spends more time there, she might really take an interest in art.” He feels himself stammering, as if he’s telling lies. “You should come with us. See the work Winnie has done.”

Tess shivers. “I think all of us should stay away from that place,” she says. “Emma most of all. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Winnie, and I’m not sure I want to know, but leave Emma out of it.”

“But Emma loves Winnie,” Henry says.

Winnie represents their past, the truth. He likes that when he’s with her, he remembers who he used to be. The brave Henry. The strong Henry. The artist and dreamer. And when he’s with Winnie, they talk openly about that summer, about Suz.

“Are you even listening to me?” Tess asks, then steps forward, staggering a little.

No. He wasn’t. He missed her last words.

“The picture of Suz at the grotto—did you take it?”

“No,” he says, not at all sure how the subject switched.

“Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that Winnie showed up in town and these strange things began happening: the message in the trees, the knife being left, now the photo being taken from the grotto?”

Henry shakes his head. “She saved Emma’s life, Tess.”

“Yeah, I remember. No thanks to you. But what was she doing here? She just happened to be strolling by our pool—on private property—when Emma flipped over?”

Her face is twisted into a cartoonish scowl. Her nose looks sunburned.

“I think if you went out to the cabin with us, if you sat down and talked with Winnie—”

Tess shakes her head. “It’s not open for debate. No taking Emma to the cabin. If she’s so damned attached to Winnie, then Winnie can come here. But only when I’m around.”

“Winnie’s not a criminal,” Henry says.

Tess bites her lip, sucks in a breath. “Yes, she is. We’re all criminals, Henry. Or have you forgotten?”

S
HE BOBS AND WEAVES
. Practices her footwork. Side step, side step, back to center. Right. Left. Forward. Back.

She hears Joe, the trainer’s, voice in her head:
You have to learn the footwork first. It’s the foundation you’re going to base everything else on. If you don’t have a solid stance, you’re through.

Her fists assail the bag. She steps back, hands raised in defensive posture, then moves forward to attack again, targeting the yellow Everlast logo.

Everlast. Everlasting.

Does anything last forever? Go on and on?

Tess steps back, trying to clear her head.

Focus, damn it.

Her mind goes back to the feel of Claire’s hand on her thigh. How it made her feel heated and chilled all at once.

“I would love for you to paint me,” Claire had said. “I’m honored. I think we should get started right away! I’ll sit for you at the house. The lighting in the front room, where we drank our coffee yesterday, is perfect, don’t you think?”

Tess nodded, her mouth full of scallop. Yes, perfect. It was all perfect.

She imagined the two of them in the front room, by the windows, hummingbirds flitting outside while they sipped wine, and Tess worked at the easel, her eye moving from Claire to the canvas.

“I could pose nude if you’d like,” Claire suggested. Tess felt her face redden.

She’d sketched hundreds of naked bodies over the years—first in college, then in the weekly life-drawing sessions the art guild organized.

But this was different, wasn’t it?

Don’t think about why. Focus: the bag; the punches; the footwork.

If you don’t have a solid stance, you’re through.

Forward again, left fist raised, chin down, she goes in with a right hook. Once. Twice. Three times.

And those eyes. Those green eyes.

“Stop it,” she tells herself out loud, stepping back from the swinging bag.

What the hell is wrong with her?

She hears Claire’s voice in her head:
Passion
.

Left. Right. Left. Jab. Hook.

The sweat is dripping down her face, neck, and shoulder blades. Her hands are wet inside the giant gloves. Her arms are shaking and her knuckles and wrists are beginning to ache.

She can’t believe she told Claire so much tonight. Revealing so many secrets to a woman who is practically a stranger. But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? When she’s with Claire, Claire doesn’t feel like a stranger. She feels like someone Tess has known all along. A soul mate.

Everlast. Everlasting.

“Idiot,” Tess says, pounding the bag again, feeling what’s left of the wine leave her body through her skin. She’s purging herself.

How could she have lost control like that? Especially now,
when things are getting dangerous: Spencer’s suicide, Winnie’s arrival in town, the private investigator sniffing around. At a time when she should be the most guarded, here she is spilling her guts.

Jab. Jab. Uppercut. The bag swings, the chains above it rattling.

Tomorrow she’ll be clearer. She’ll phone Claire first thing to say that the portrait is a bad idea. That she’s content to stick to safe little flower paintings. They sell well enough and that’s what matters to her now, at this stage of her life. It’s not about stretching herself as an artist or finding passion. It’s about being a grown-up. Making a living. Keeping herself and her daughter safe and provided for.

This is what she’ll tell Claire. Thanks, but no thanks. A neat, tidy ending. Then she’ll just go back to life as normal. Compressed life. No rubber-band moments that you wish would stretch on forever.

She lunges at the bag again, stopped only by a searing pain in her thigh, right where Claire’s hand rested.

She’s pulled a muscle. She should have warmed up. Stretched.

“Fuck!”

Then, she does something she hasn’t let herself do in ages: she drops down on her knees and cries, sobbing and gasping as quietly as she can, her face buried in the warm leather of her boxing gloves.