He glanced up as Tessa caught sight of Natalie’s face. The whole side of her left eye and cheekbone were bruised, emanating from a red star at the corner. “Oh, baby, that looks like it hurt.”
“It did. My sister hit me.”
“Wow. Were you in a fight?”
“She called me an oinker.”
Tessa frowned. “Really? You’re not fat.”
“Kinda.” She patted her tummy.
“Not even kinda. You’re just growing. You know how puppies and kittens have a round tummy when they’re small, and then they grow out of it?”
Natalie nodded. The iris of her left eye had a burst blood vessel, making the color of the syrup blue even darker.
“Like that. You’re a puppy.”
Natalie laughed.
Vince looked at Tessa, mouthing “thank you,” and put his hand on her thigh. Squeezed lightly. His big palm sent sparks through her muscles, deep into her femur. Their eyes met, a quiet greeting that lasted a good long minute. The smell of his hair hung around him like a halo, spicy and alluring, inviting her to bend her nose into his neck and inhale. She found herself looking at the spot just below his ear, wishing she could just do that, lean in and kiss him, right there.
“How did the treatment work on the blouse?” she asked.
“Great, thank you. Came right out.” Vince turned toward Natalie. “It was Tessa who told me what to do to get the blood out.”
“It’s still torn, though.” Her face was glum. “I don’t know if we can fix it.”
“Sure we can. C’mon,” Vince said, nudging her. “Chin up.”
“I think we should sit in a booth,” Natalie said, and looked at Tessa. “If you want to, that is.”
“Absolutely.”
They moved to the window, and Vita brought out the food for the other two and took Tessa’s order. Tessa pointed to the green chalkboard. “I’ll have the breakfast pizza. That sounds fantastic.”
“Where are your glasses?” Tessa asked Natalie, and then winced. “Oh, I bet they got broken in the fight, yeah?”
Natalie nodded.
“It was a pretty terrible day for Natalie,” Vince said, cutting into his pancakes. Perfect. Exactly what he needed. The cords in his forearms moved, powerful and beribboned with vein. She glimpsed the edge of his tattoo beneath his shirtsleeve, thought about his chest.
“Do you know about Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?” Tessa asked.
Natalie grinned. “Some days are like that,” she quoted.
Together, they said, “Even in Australia!”
“I love that book,” Natalie said. “How do you know about it?”
“I had it when I was kid.” She leaned her arms on the table. “And you know what else? I lived in Australia.”
“Really? Was it cool?”
“Yes,” Tessa said. “It really was.” She poured sugar into her tea. “But there were bad days, even in Australia.”
Natalie looked relieved, and something about her face, her awkward, blustery, forthright personhood, snared Tessa right then and there. A burst of fierce affection rose through her, easing all the tense darkness, letting her put her burdens down for one minute.
As they sat there, Annie came out of the kitchen. “Hi, Natalie,” she said. “Can I talk to you for a second? I have a question about an ingredient, and Vita said you might know.”
Tessa was watching Nat, and the funniest expression crossed her face—wariness and calm and hope, all mingled together. “Sure. Daddy, can you let me out?”
The two of them went to the back, skinny Annie and round Natalie, looking thick as thieves. “Wonder what that’s all about,” Vince said.
“Something,” Tessa agreed.
Annie was working the grill this morning. It gave her a great vantage point over the restaurant, which she liked because she’d been having bad dreams again. It seemed like danger was creeping closer and closer—although the bread rose fine this morning, and Vita had told her if danger came in the door, the bread wouldn’t rise.
But Annie also knew that Tommy was gone. He would not hurt her again.
So what was this threat, thick in the air, dark and malevolent?
Vita had helped her find a new place—a little apartment in the middle of a row of apartments, only two rooms plus the itsy-bitsy bathroom, but plenty of room for her. So much more than she’d been used to in jail, and the manager accepted cats. Vita even helped her pay the deposit, saying Annie could pay her back later, or five dollars a week if that worked—and she helped her negotiate taking the red kitchen table with her. It was a straight switch—the table from the new apartment traded for the one in the old apartment. One of the cooks at the café helped her move, putting things in his truck.
The kitchen of the new apartment opened into a walled garden, so Athena would be safe. The person who lived there before had planted marigolds and daisies in the raised beds, and Annie moved her table outside for now, until it got too, too cold.
This was the happiest she’d ever been in her life. This morning she’d put a little blush on her cheeks, and maybe she’d even take her hair to its normal color one of these days. Maybe.
Across the pass-out bar, Annie saw the little girl from the other day and her father. The girl had a nasty, nasty black eye, and it made Annie’s stomach upset. It was hard not to glare at the dad, but she’d seen him in here so much with those girls it was hard to imagine he would ever hit one of them. You could never tell, though, and she felt obliged to say something to Vita.
“What happened to the little girl?”
“Who? Oh, Natalie,” Vita said, plating a casserole with sprigs of fresh thyme leaves and a cross-hatching of long chives. “She and her sister had a nasty fight. I gather Jade has a broken tooth from Nat’s head.”
“Yeow! I bet that hurt.” Carefully, Annie broke an egg on the very hot grill. She was getting pretty good at it but still broke the yolks sometimes. “She’s in a little trouble, that one, isn’t she?”
“Hold that thought,” Vita said. She gathered two more plates and carried them out, took an order, hung it on the ring, and came back into the kitchen. “What do you mean?”
Annie weighed her promise to the little girl with the feeling that something really was wrong there. “Don’t say anything, but I caught her stealing a salt shaker the other day.”
Vita’s expression didn’t change. “That’s good to know, Annie, thank you.”
“I told her I wouldn’t tell, and I made her a little magic charm.” She shrugged and tugged it out of her pocket. It was only a braid of rosemary, with tucks of marigold in it, but Annie knew it wasn’t so much what a charm was made of but what you believed. “I thought it might help her. Do you think it would be okay?”
“Very okay, Annie.” She inclined her head. “Why don’t you go give it to her.”
After breakfast, Natalie asked Tessa if she’d ever been to the salt store, Le Fleur de Mer. “I haven’t,” Tessa admitted. “But I’d love to see it if your dad isn’t in a big hurry.”
“Can we?”
“Sure, why not?” He held the door open, lifting a hand to wave at Vita. He’d been planning to get her opinion on the problems with Natalie, but maybe he needed to wait on that, anyway. Vita didn’t have children of her own, but she was good with all the parolees who came through her kitchen, giving them dignity and something useful they could do with themselves. Maybe she’d have some insight about a little girl.
But today he was just as happy to wander down the covered walkway to the salt store, watching Tessa’s rear end swing back and forth in a pair of jeans. Natalie walked beside her, not bouncing but quietly dignified, brushing her hair away from her face as she looked up to say something to Tessa. “Do you like to cook?”
“Sometimes,” Tessa said. “Not very good at it, though, since I have been traveling for a long time.”
“Oh.”
“Do you?”
“Nobody really lets
me do it very much, but I think I’ll be good at it when I get bigger.” She stopped, gesturing almost reverently. “Here’s the store.”
Vince understood the appeal of the place, even if he didn’t get the whole gourmet-salt angle. Shelves held jars of various grades and colors and textures of salt, with labels that gave details about where the salt came from, how to use it, and in which dishes. There were other spices, too—dried Turkish chiles and rose-colored peppercorns, organic vanilla beans and saffron. A sturdy shelf held tiny bottles and spoons and dispensers.
The proprietor came out, a pinched-looking woman with a long nose and the carriage of a dancer. “Hello,” she said coolly.
“Hi,” Nat said. “We’re here to look at all the salt. My friend hasn’t been here before.”
Tessa smiled at Vince.
Natalie pointed out her favorites. “I don’t know how to say that word.”
Tessa bent. “Grigio di Cervia,” she said. “From Italy. It says you can put it on meat to make a nice crust.”
Natalie pointed out the river salts and Welsh harvest and then took Tessa’s hand. “And this is the red salt you took the picture of.”
“It is. It’s a great picture, too, Natalie. You should see it.” She stood. “I wish I had my camera now. This is wonderful.” To the proprietor, she said, “Can I come back and shoot the salts? I’ll buy some, too, of course.”
“Certainly. I’d be delighted.”
“Okay. We’ll come back, Nat. How’s that? You can think about which one you want and we’ll get it then.”
“I want to show you one more.” Natalie pointed to a softly lit shelf at her eye level, where large crystals of pink salt spilled out of a velvet bag. It sat on another slab of pink, ribboned with light and dark veins. “This one is my favorite,” she said reverently.
“But,” Vince said with a chuckle, “nobody is buying her that slab, at least for a while.”
“It’s beautiful,” Tessa agreed. “I’d like to try it sometime.”
“Me, too,” Natalie said.
Vince never lied to himself if he could help it. What he knew about himself today was that he had fallen for Tessa Harlow in a big way. Maybe from the first second he’d laid eyes on her in the cantina that night, and a little deeper every moment he’d spent in her company since then.
But this morning, when she saw straight into Natalie’s bruised heart and said the exact thing to make her feel good, he had gone right over the edge. She looked weary herself, full of secrets, and yet she found the kindness to offer a quiet soothing hand to a little girl she barely knew.
After they left the store, Tessa called Felix, who waited on the portico. “Thanks for showing me the salt store, Nat,” she said.
“Can you send my dad the picture?”
“Actually, if you want to walk over to my house, I can show it to you now.” She looked to Vince for affirmation, and he saw what he’d been missing: She was just as freaked out by her reaction to him as he was by his reaction to her. They were both a little too old to believe in love at first sight, but how long had she been here? Not quite two weeks.
“If you have time, that is? I rented a place just a block away.”
Vince said, “Sure. I don’t see why not.”
“Can we get Pedro and Sasha and go to the river?” Natalie asked.
Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a vacation day, he thought. Maybe he should be giving Natalie punishments instead of rewards for the terrible day yesterday, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so … normal. Like a desert plant, she was blooming under the attention Tessa was raining down on her.
And, really, what would he say, anyway? Stop stealing. Stop fighting with your sister. She already knew that. The stealing and fighting were not the problem. Her grief was. And he needed help to figure out what to do about that, which was what he would be seeing the counselor for this afternoon. How long did a child grieve? How could he help her get through it?
“Okay, but only for a little while,” he said. “We’re parked right behind the plaza.”
Pedro leapt out of Vince’s truck to greet Tessa as if he’d been waiting for her. Felix nervously leaned on her leg as if he might be supplanted. She laughed, her hair falling down around her face as she bent and kissed Pedro’s head, gave him a good rub, and put her other hand on Felix. “This is my dog. You met him the other day, remember?”
Pedro bent in a playful bow and barked. Felix lifted a paw happily. Even Sasha, in her slightly confused way, came over to get some attention. Tessa gave her a good rub, too, and the dog smiled.
“Her hearing has been a lot better lately,” Vince said.
“Poor baby, you’re just old, aren’t you?”
The rain earlier had left the ground damp, the plants glittering with droplets of water. The clouds overhead seemed to be threatening more. “Maybe you guys should go to the river first and circle back to my house? It looks like more rain.”
“Come with us,” Vince said.
Natalie reached up and took her hand. “Please?”
Tessa hesitated and met Vince’s eyes. He held her gaze steadily. He was here, meeting the situation as it unfolded. He didn’t have any answers, either.
“Okay,” she said. “My dog will like it, too.” But she had a pensive expression.
Vince let it be.
At the river, Natalie and the dogs played with a stick, while Tessa, Vince, and the elderly Sasha sat on the bank. Low clouds hung in the distance, bringing with them a scent of autumn and the promise of snow, not far away. Winter came early to the mountains, and she could feel the bite of it close to the ground, nipping at her ankles.
In this light, at this angle, the river gave her no memories. It was just another waterway she’d admired in the course of her life, and there had been dozens. Maybe hundreds. It suddenly seemed as if that life of wandering belonged to someone else.
But maybe she was only reacting to all the shocks of the day. She gave a little sigh.
“What’s up?” Vince asked. “You look exhausted.” She rubbed her face. “Oh, just one thing after another.” He nodded, accepting the boundary she posted. “Thanks for being so good to Natalie. She needed it.”
“Poor kid. That’s one brutal black eye. How’s Jade?”
“Furious that she broke her tooth on Natalie’s head.” He chuckled. “Jade likes things to flow according to their proper place. I don’t know where she gets it. I’m not like that, and neither was her mother.”
“More and more it seems to me that we’re born who we are.”
He inclined his head. “Think so?”
“Well, a lot of it, anyway.” She looped her arms around her knees. A lock of wavy hair came loose and blew in the wind. She ignored it. “I mean, what if Jade was raised with my dad? Living on the road, going to Renaissance festivals. How would she meet that challenge?”
He laughed. “She’d put a tablecloth on a picnic table and ask the trapeze lady to iron her shirt, and the women in the group would all be vying to braid her hair.”
“I can see that.” Tessa chuckled. “Whereas Natalie would be ordering the mess tent and figuring out how to make a turkey leg elegant.”
“She’s really something. A born foodie.” He cleared his throat. “She … uh … stole something at the grocery store last night. That’s where the whole thing started.”
“Oh, sorry. What did she steal?”
He paused. Raised his eyebrows. “Lemon curd.”
Tessa laughed. And once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop. She had a deep belly laugh, and Vince finally joined in, both of them laughing as much in reaction as to anything truly funny. She shook her head. “Boy, you really have your work cut out for you.”
Nearby, Sasha whined softly, shifting her arthritic body. Tessa got up and sat down beside her, running hands over the wiry fur, rubbing along her spine and belly. “Poor baby,” she said to the dog, “you have lots and lots of lumps and bumps, don’t you, darlin�
�?” Sasha fell over sideways, happily stretching out so Tessa could rub her all over. “Oh, that feels good. Let’s get under the arm.”
Vince held up a hand and let it droop. He made a sound like a dog, and Tessa gave him a sultry glance. “Believe me,” she said, and looked over her shoulder to be sure Natalie was far enough away that she couldn’t hear, “I’d love to give you the once-over.”
“And I would gladly return the favor.”
She sat back on her heels, hands resting on her thighs. “But right there is the reason we can’t really let this go anywhere.” She gestured toward Nat, dancing with Pedro and Felix.
“How long are you staying?”
“Rented the house for a month.”
“Plenty of time for play.” He looked at her mouth. “I would like to try that trick again, the one that—”
A little shudder rushed over her shoulders and she held up a palm. “Don’t make me think about it.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it for us.” He held her gaze as he thought about her lean nakedness sinuously writhing while he lazily lapped his tongue against her flesh.
“That’s evil,” she said.
“Oh, I can be so much more evil,” he said. “Trust me.”
It started to sprinkle, and they headed back to Tessa’s house so Tessa could show Natalie the photograph. They were all damp by the time they got there, humans and dogs alike. Tessa brought out a few towels. “Sorry there aren’t many. We’ll have to make do.”
Pedro shook himself as if to say he didn’t need no stinkin’ towel. Felix followed suit, and when Pedro plopped down on the floor, Felix dropped down beside him, panting in happiness. Sasha paced around the room, sniffing all the corners.
“She’s making sure there are no crumbs that have gone uneaten,” Vince said.
“Speaking of that, is anybody hungry?” Tessa asked.
“I am!” Natalie cried, holding up a hand. “I’ve been playing hard!”
“You have,” Tessa agreed. “There’s not a lot of choice, but let me see what I can do.” The tiny blue fridge held milk and goat cheese and a couple of yogurts, some olives and green onions and peaches. She took out the goat cheese, olives, and peaches. “I know what we’ll do.”
The Secret of Everything Page 27
