“It will be all right, Natalie,” she whispered. “Go to sleep. It will be all right. I will always love you, you know. Always, always and forever.”
Natalie fell asleep, the enormous Himalayan salt rock clutched in her hand.
• • •
Tessa still held Hannah on her lap when the priest came into the plaza carrying a soundly sleeping Natalie. The frantic search was called off, and everyone went back to the market, murmuring among themselves. Vince took Nat into his arms and gave the salt back to the store owner.
“I want her properly charged,” the woman said.
“I understand,” Vince said. Tessa could see that Natalie had been crying hard, and it made her feel sick to her stomach. She wanted to apologize, wanted to make it right, but how? Broken trust was not easily repaired.
“I give you my word as a man and a father that I’ll bring her back to you and we can deal with it. But not today. Please.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Fine.”
“Let me help you,” Tessa said.
“No.”
She looked up, startled. “How are you going to get everybody into the truck?”
“You have some other things to take care of, Tessa,” he said, and lifted his chin toward the café. “We’ll be okay. Jade, Hannah, come on.”
Hannah climbed down, gave Tessa a wave, and trotted after her father and sisters, leaving a cold spot along the front of Tessa’s body and her arms empty.
It was only then that she saw her father, sitting on the other side of the tree, watching her, waiting for her to be free. Loki and Wolfenstein sat tidily beside him, and he had Peaches in his arms, whom he knew she would not be able to resist. When she looked at him, he stood up with the dog in his arms and crossed the hilly terrain of the tree roots, moving with simple grace, like Christ carrying the lamb. Loki and Wolf, black and gold, trotted beside him, until they spied her, then they dashed over, whirling and dancing in happy greeting. Felix edged a little closer to her, and she used one hand to reassure him, the other to pet the wiggling dogs.
Her father stopped in front of her. “Peaches is missing you,” he said.
Tessa nodded and opened her arms, accepting the old, old poodle. “Hey, Peaches,” she said, and nuzzled her neck. Peaches made a soft, sharp sound of surprise, realizing that it was Tessa who held her, and Tessa nearly cried. “How’s my sweet little girl,” she crooned, petting the thin fur, rubbing her hips and spine, then her chest and belly when Peaches turned over. She sang the first song that came into her mind, which was “Amazing Grace,” and Peaches closed her eyes and practically purred. Tessa chuckled.
Sam squatted next to Felix. “This must be Brenna, huh?” He gave the border collie the same attention Tessa gave Peaches. “What a good pup.”
Holding Peaches close, Tessa said, “So, I had a sister?”
“Looks like you still do,” he said, meeting her eyes.
She took a breath, feeling utterly, completely exhausted. “I don’t know what to do with that. With any of this.”
“I know. I should have stopped you from coming here in the first place.”
“Dad!” Anger flared in her chest again. “The secrets would still be secret. I would still not have a clue who I am. My whole life is a lie.”
His mouth turned down under his mustache, as if he was weighing that. “No, it isn’t,” he said calmly. “I’m real. Our life has been real.”
She bowed her head. Peaches curled up against her breasts.
Her father straightened. “Why don’t you come on back to the café later, after it closes. We can all sit down and talk.”
A wave of excruciating shyness filled her at the idea of sitting down with Annie, knowing they were once—that they were—sisters. “She’s my twin.”
“Yeah.”
A woman approached from the farmers’ market, walking quickly. Sam turned and smiled. “Hey, Paula,” he said.
“I knew it was you,” she said, and let go of a little happy laugh. “Damned if you aren’t just as gorgeous as you ever were!”
Sam hugged her back, and Tessa saw him close his eyes, his hands in fists. Strong emotion made him twitch his mustache. “Have you met my daughter?” he said.
“I have,” Paula said, smiling that beneficent smile. “She’s been out to the farm—the old commune. We’re Green Gate Farms now, Sam. You should come see it. You won’t believe it. A lot of the animal policies you taught us are still in place.” She laughed. “We sell a lot of goat cheese.”
“No kiddin’?”
She touched her heart. “Oh, Sam, it’s so good to have you back.” She squeezed his arm. “Come see me at the end of the farmers’ market over there and I’ll give you a phone number. We’ll catch up. You should see Cherry. I’m really proud of her.”
“I’ll be over in just a minute.”
Tessa, feeling weak, stood. “I have to go for a while. I’ll see you later.” She gave her father his dog, then put a hand to her head and realized that she’d never eaten. “Whoa. Dizzy. I need to eat.”
“You all right, honey?” Paula said. “Figuring things out now?”
Tessa looked at her father. “I think so. Thanks.”
She went home, had a cheese sandwich, and fell asleep with Felix curled up against her back for a couple of hours. When she woke, it was time to go back to 100 Breakfasts.
Where she sank heavily onto a stool in the now-empty café. Vita brought her a cup of tea. “He’s not here yet.”
It was then that Annie came out of the kitchen, dressed in street clothes. She sat down next to Tessa. “So,” she said, and her voice was perfectly even. “Guinnevere?” She held out her hand, and tears were shimmering in her eyes. “I’m Rhiannon. I thought you died.”
All of the emotion that had been building suddenly burst in Tessa’s heart. She put her arms around her sister and wept. “I didn’t even know you existed until I came here. I’m so sorry.”
Annie hugged her back fiercely, her skinny arms strong. She smelled of lavender. “It’s not your fault.”
Vita brought out a wet cloth for each of them, and, laughing, they washed their faces with the cold towels. “Feels good,” Tessa said. “It’s been such an emotional day. I’m exhausted.”
“Yeah. I can’t believe it.” Annie looked at Tessa’s face, touched her own. “Weird that we could be identical and look so different, huh?” Her eyes glittered. “I would be as pretty as you if—”
“Don’t,” Tessa said, bowing her head. “I hate to think of the things you had to go through. I want to know them, but right now it’s hurting my heart.”
“I understand.”
“What happened to you? How did you get lost?”
“I don’t remember a lot,” she said, chewing on her inner lip. “I remembered you. I remembered her throwing us in the river. I remembered Sam. I washed up downriver, and I had a broken jaw, so I couldn’t talk for quite a while. And they never found a record of me, or anyone who was looking for me, so I went into the system in Albuquerque.” She shrugged.
An intense sense of loss and guilt seized Tessa. In one small shrug, she saw all that Annie had lost: No one was looking for her. No one cared. Her own mother had tried to drown her. “I am so sorry that was your life.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” she said. “I have a great brother. He’s in the Army, and sometimes he sends me a plane ticket to wherever he’s stationed. I lived once for a whole year in Germany with him.” She swallowed. “I was trying to get away from Tommy, my husband. Almost made it that time.”
“I didn’t remember anything,” Tessa said. “Just this big jumble. But a few months ago, I was on a hiking trip and got caught in an avalanche and we went in a river, and then I remembered the first time. I sort of remembered that somebody was with me.”
Annie touched the cast on Tessa’s arm. “I broke my arm in the spring. I’ve had the cast off for only a couple of months.”
“Weird, right? Have you ever broken anything
else?”
“No. Well, my face.” She rolled her eyes.
Vita came back with her cell phone. “Can you see this guy?”
The door opened, ringing the bell. All three of them—Vita, Annie, and Tessa—turned to wait.
Sam came in and looked at each one of them in turn. Tessa knew him well enough to recognize his nervousness. Half of her wanted to reach out and squeeze his arm. The other half thought it did him some good to suffer.
The mean half won.
“Vita,” he rasped. “Can I get a cup of coffee?”
He doctored it and then said, “All right, I guess you want the story, don’t you?”
Sam kept his eyes on Tessa. She had rings under her eyes and a look of dread in them. It was eerie how Annie, sitting beside Tessa, looked like a “before” picture in a magazine ad for a makeover. They hardly looked the same at all.
“Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a man who was completely lost. He saw things nobody should have to see. Did things he should never have been asked to do.”
“Cut the third person, Dad,” Tessa said. “Take ownership.”
He paused, stung, and then nodded. “My tour broke something in me. Soggy feet and dead soldiers and women doing things just to survive that don’t bear thinking about. When I got back here, I dived right in to drugs and drinking and women.” He sighed. “Not saying it was right, just that it was what I did. What a lot of us did.”
She did touch his hand then, and he nodded.
“One summer in about ‘71, ‘72, me and some of my buddies landed at the commune, over across the river. I could breathe there. The land was beautiful, and for a while, it seemed like it might really be something different, you know? I had some understanding of animals and farm work, so there was plenty for me to do, and teach, and I liked it. I liked all the kids, though I didn’t like the way y’all were living.”
Vita made a noise of agreement. “It was pretty awful in the main house. Cottages were okay, you have to admit.”
“I guess. Anyhow, you kids did a lot for me,” he said, “and I did all kinda magic tricks and made you laugh and we all had a good time.”
“That’s what I remember,” Annie said. “Origami and really good card tricks.”
“I don’t remember,” Tessa said, and her face looked so sad, he wanted to hug her.
“Maybe you will eventually,” Vita said.
“I was seeing a woman for a while,” Sam said, “and she had a couple of kids and it was good. But there was one little girl who captured me.” Sam licked his bottom lip and looked at Annie. “Sorry to say it this way, honey, but I’ve gotta tell the real truth.”
“My feelings aren’t hurt. I was crazy about my own dad.”
Sam nodded. “So you were. Xander. I’d forgotten that. Followed him around like a little puppy, and he was good to you.”
Tessa made a noise of impatience, very unlike her, and he gave her a sharp look. She had the grace to look down.
“Anyway, there was a little girl who stole my heart right out of my chest. I couldn’t tell you why, exactly. She wasn’t the prettiest girl or the smartest. She was just interesting. Funny, with this deep beautiful voice that wasn’t like anybody else’s. And her mama was one rotten, strung-out bitch. Used to make me so mad. She’d leave you two with anybody, do anything. Never fed you right. You were always living in rags. Always hungry.” Sam looked at Vita. “Remember?”
Vita nodded. “That house was a wreck. Amazing it didn’t fall down around their ears.”
“After a while, things went south. I can’t remember what started it, exactly. Xander was a piece of work, such a ladies’ man—”
“Slut,” Vita said.
Sam met her eyes, clear and deep and strong, and something kindled between them, flaring. He remembered her back in the day, dark hair falling down her back, eyes flashing with passion and fury. For the first time in a very, very long time, he felt a quickening in his old body.
“Slut works,” he agreed. “He had a harem of women, and one of them was your crazy mama. Most everybody accepted things as they were, and when they got tired of it, they moved on. But your mama came out to the commune with Xander. If there was a pecking order, Winnie would have been the queen. At least five or six women had his children, and he slept with a heck of a lot more than that. If a woman came to the commune, he usually found a way to sleep with her.”
“Not me, for the record.”
Annie frowned. “Why did I remember Sam and not you?”
“I look a lot different,” Vita said. “Sam cut his hair, but he’s still Sam.”
He grinned, then took a breath, thinking about that year Vita came to the commune. It was early summer. Morning glories were blooming in a big tangle all over the place, Sam had just talked Jonathan into trying goats for goat cheese, and down the road came Vita. Skinny, shell-shocked, scared. Sam had recognized a kindred spirit. She was so skittish that it took him a while, but he wooed her into his bed, and she started to heal under his ministrations. They found a place for her in the kitchens, and she gained some weight, even though she was running all up and down the river valley like some kind of crazy person. She was outrunning her old man.
Bastard.
It infuriated Sam that any man had so mistreated his lover, and her scars and marks were his sorrow. For the first time in his life, he let a woman in.
“It was a pretty crazy summer that year. Vita came,” he said, and their eyes met. “It was real hot and dry, and forest fires were sparking all over the place. The crops weren’t doing so well, the commune was broke, Xander’s women were fighting, and a bunch of freaks showed up, doing way too many drugs.” He shook his head, twitching his thumb against the bottom of his coffee cup. “It was all falling apart. Lot of bickering, fist-fights, that kind of thing,” Sam said. “A fight over a woman, the children all restless and fighting with one another.”
“Andy drowned at the hot springs, too,” Vita said. “I think that freaked a lot of people out.”
“Right. Drunk as a skunk, but nonetheless.” He looked at Tessa. Again the shadows under her eyes went through him. “The idyll was over,” he said. “I wanted to get out of there, but I didn’t want to leave Guinnevere.”
He cleared his throat. “Even the weather was crazy. First the forest fires, then too much rain, and we got worried about flooding. Crazy thunderstorms every stinkin’ day.”
Tessa simply listened, her eyes on his face, mouth impassive.
“And then Winnie found Xander in bed with a fifteen-year-old runaway, and she completely lost it.”
“Winnie was our mother, right?” Annie said. She stuck her hands in her back pockets. “I remember this part.”
Vita reached over and touched her arm.
“We were playing in the tower,” Annie said, looking at Tessa. “My dad was singing to us, and Mama came in and had a gun, and she shot him in the chest. Blood came pouring out so fast it looked like it was fake.”
“In the tower?” Tessa said, looking at her sister with bewilderment. “Wouldn’t you think I’d remember something like that?”
“That’s when she took us to the river,” Annie said. “And threw us in.”
“I heard the shot,” Sam said, nodding grimly, “and went after her. I saw her jump, and I knew she’d thrown you both in ahead of her.” Even thirty-something years later, the memory slayed him—seeing Tessa bobbing in the water, so far below. He’d run as hard as he could to get her and nearly lost her twice. When he finally hauled her out, she’d been sick as a dog, throwing up river water for an hour. “I got Guinnevere out, but there was no sign of Winnie or Rhiannon.” His voice was raw. “No sign.”
Vita picked up the story. “There was a lightning strike near the camp, and it sparked a pretty huge fire—we had all been evacuated. It was several days before we realized that Xander was dead. By then, Winnie and you two were gone, presumed drowned, and Sam was nowhere to be found, so we thought he’d drowned, too.�
�� She cleared her throat. “I don’t know what happened after that night.”
Sam bowed his head, wishing he could make it up to Vita, at least. She’d surely been wounded in all of that. “I really did do what I thought was the right thing,” he said, looking at each of their faces in turn.
No one replied, so he took a breath and went on. “You were pretty sick for a few days,” Sam said to Tessa. “I took you to a motel up in Alamosa, and when you woke up, you couldn’t remember anything right, like somebody scrambled your brains. When you started talking, all you remembered was the story I told you to give anybody who asked: that you were my daughter, and your name was Tessa, and we were going to a Renaissance festival.”
Her face opened, flowering with memory. “Oh, I do remember this part! We had breakfast at a place with little jukeboxes on the table.”
“Right,” he said. “It was a blessing that you couldn’t remember your own mother trying to kill you, that you couldn’t remember your sister. So I left it alone.”
“Maybe,” Tessa said. She closed her eyes, shaking her head. “I need to think about it all. I’m sorry, all of you. I want—I just—” She stood up. “I can’t take it in.” She headed for the door, then stopped and turned around. “Why Tessa?” she asked. “I don’t get how you came up with Tessa.”
Annie said, “I know. It was my doll’s name.”
Tessa came back, took Annie’s hand, and said, “Let’s go to the river.”
Which left Sam and Vita alone. He looked at her, but she picked up the empty cups and slammed them into the tub beneath the counter. “Don’t even start,” she said. “I loved you.”
“I loved you, too,” he said, and meant it.
“You couldn’t have taken me with you?”
Sam took a breath. “It never crossed my mind.”
She looked at him for a long time, then shook her head. “Well, at least that’s honest.”
Breakfast #32
Goat cheese and apple tart: Our savory and delicate tart served with spicy vegetarian sausage patties and cinnamon tea.
The Secret of Everything Page 31
