Joe turned on his seat as well, back to the bar, and tilted the neck of his beer bottle in the direction of the guy lining up a bank shot. “Don’t even try it. That’s Tony Dale.”
Finn blinked and looked closer, realizing that Joe was right. Finn’s old geometry teacher took the bank shot and missed, and Finn mourned an opportunity lost. The second rule of hustling was to never take anyone who could identify you to the police by name. He reached for his Pepsi and took a sip.
Still, hanging out at Riker’s beat the hell out of hanging out in Lowery’s shack. Not by a wide margin, granted, but it was either this place or the ancient Pac-Man console at the Gas ’n Sip.
“Nice dog,” Joe said flatly.
Finn kept his eyes on the pool game. “Not my dog.”
More silence. Finn could feel the cold air coming off Joe in waves. The two of them had never exactly gotten along, but now Joe was acting seriously pissed off. Which begged the question...
“What are you doing here, bro?” Finn said. “Trying to keep me out of trouble?”
“No,” Joe said, his voice flat. “I gave up on that a while back.” He took a sip of his beer. “But I do have something to say, and if you end up hanging around, I just want it said.”
Joe paused. Finn sipped his drink. Neither one looked at the other.
“Left my crystal ball at home, man,” Finn said finally.
“Leave her alone.” The warning was so low, Finn almost wasn’t sure he’d heard right, but when he turned to look at Joe, he knew he had.
“Something going on with you two?” he asked, disturbed by how much the thought disturbed him. What Tessa did was none of his business, although he knew in his gut that Tessa never would have kissed him if she was with anyone, and especially not if she was with Joe. It was a cold comfort, but it was something.
“Not at the moment, no,” Joe said.
Finn caught that one square in the chest. “So, by not at the moment, you mean...?”
“We dated. Briefly. A few years back.”
Finn sipped his drink, trying to guess what kind of body-snatching alien attack would result in Tessa’s dating Joe. Because it would have to have been a body-snatching alien attack.
“No kidding,” he said finally. “Who knew we’d ever have something in common?”
Joe shot a look at Finn. “I don’t want to see her get hurt.”
“Something else we have in common,” Finn said.
“Good.” Joe took a sip of his beer. “Then you’ll be leaving her alone.”
“You may not have noticed during the few weeks you were dating—”
“Months.”
“Whatever.” Months? Christ. “Tessa can take care of herself.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “She can. But she’s stupid when it comes to you. Always has been.”
“Do you use that kind of sweet talk on her? Because that might be your problem.”
“I don’t have a problem,” Joe said.
Finn watched his brother for a moment, then turned his eyes back to the pool game. “Glad to hear it.”
They each took a drink, then Joe was the next to speak. “You didn’t happen to see anything unusual at Vickie’s this morning?”
Finn scoffed. “Before or after I set the place on fire?” Joe shot him a look. Finn decided to let it go. “Nothing but smoke and screaming birds,” he said. He took a sip of his Pepsi and added casually, “Speaking of which, who’d you stick the macaw with?”
“Seems a little weird,” Joe said. “In the last ten years, we’ve had exactly two suspicious fires. One on the night you left, and now one on the day you come back.”
Finn’s trouble radar went off. “The night I left?”
Joe paused, his beer halfway to his mouth, an expression of slight surprise on his face.
“Yeah,” Joe said slowly. “Karen Scuderi’s craft shop.” Finn took a moment to absorb the information. Karen Scuderi. Tessa’s mom. Holy shit, he pitied the person who set that fire. If there was one person you didn’t want to piss off, it was Karen Scuderi. Sweetest woman in the world until you did something to make her mad—like, for instance, getting caught backstage at the school play with her daughter—then, watch out. He still had a scar on his right shoulder where the two-by-four had landed.
“Wow,” Finn said. “Karen must have been pissed. What happened?”
Joe eyed him for a moment, then looked back at the pool game.
“She died in a car accident that night. There was some evidence she’d been running from the fire. Soot on her clothes and whatnot. The theory is that she was disoriented from smoke inhalation. She wrapped her car around a tree.”
“Oh.” Tessa’s mom. God. Finn blinked and stared blankly at the dartboard across the bar. “Wow.”
So that’s why Tessa was still there, still working at Max’s. She’d been raising Izzy by herself. Doing everything, by herself.
“So,” Joe said after a minute, “you didn’t know?”
“Huh?” Finn said, his mind still on Tessa. He looked at his brother, shook his head. “No.”
“Seems weird. You knew about Father Gregory’s hearing aid, but not about Tessa’s mom.”
Father Gregory’s hearing aid? Finn shrugged and kept quiet. The best way to ruin a perfectly good lie was to talk about it. Letting people draw their own conclusions was pretty much the only way to fly.
“Kind of a strange coincidence, though, don’t you think?”
“What?” Finn said, trying to connect the dots between Tessa’s mom and the father’s hearing.
Joe watched him for a moment. “The fires.”
Finn tightened his grip on his glass. “You got something to say, Joe, come out and say it.”
Joe said nothing, just stared at Finn. Finn felt angry heat crawling up the back of his neck.
“What the hell, man? You think I set those fires?”
Joe shrugged. “I’d like to think not.”
“Then here’s a tip: think not.” Finn took a moment to tamp his anger down. “You know you’re not required to assume the worst about me all the time, right?”
Joe let out a sharp laugh. “Assuming the worst is how I found you here tonight.”
“Really?” Finn said. “And here I thought it was our tight brotherly bond.”
Joe raised one eyebrow at Finn. “You gonna tell me you didn’t come in here to hustle pool?”
“So what? Is that a crime?” Finn let out an indignant huff, then regrouped as he realized that, yes, technically, it was a crime. This only heightened his desire to haul off and hit his brother. Instead, he leaned closer and met Joe’s eyes dead-on.
“Look, I didn’t start either of those fires. I’m into petty thievery, general lying, and bad spy movies. I don’t set fires and I don’t kill people, especially not the mother of the girl I—”
Finn let that sentence drop and leaned back. He and Tessa were a long time ago, and this wasn’t about her anyway. It was about him, two suspicious fires, and one self-righteous brother.
“In that case,” Joe said, “it might be in your best interests if you didn’t leave town.”
Finn watched his brother, incredulous. “So, what? You’re telling me I’m an arson suspect now?”
Joe shrugged. “The fire at Karen’s was ruled an accident, and as far as I know, they don’t have any reason to suspect anything nefarious at Vickie’s shop. Yet.”
Finn relaxed. “Did you just actually use the word ‘nefarious’ in casual conversation?”
Joe ignored him. “If you leave as suddenly as you showed up, you’re gonna look guilty.”
“Did you remember it from the SATs or do you have one of those Word-of-the-Day calendars?”
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you might as well stay a couple of days.”
Finn could tell by the irritated look on Joe’s face that his brother was clearly giving the advice to do the Right Thing, not because he particularly wanted Finn’s company.
Joe eyed his brother. “If
you had nothing to do with the fires, then it shouldn’t be a problem for you.”
They stared each other down for a moment. Finn smiled. “It’s the Word-of-the-Day calendar, isn’t it?”
Joe took a sip of his beer, then said, “So, you came all the way back here after ten years just to return a thirty- year-old car?”
“Rumor has it.”
“Okay.” Joe seemed to relax a bit. “Glad we had this little talk.”
Finn watched Joe for a minute. His brother’s dark eyes never wavered from the pool table in the corner of the room. There wasn’t a hint of a smile, or a hint that there was any enjoyment in his life at all.
With the possible exception of seeing his no-good brother end up in the clink for arson. But even as the thought occurred to him, Finn knew Joe was too good- hearted to truly enjoy something like that.
Which made Finn dislike him all the more.
“So,” Finn said, turning his attention back to the pool game, “for a geometry teacher, Mr. Dale kinda sucks at pool, don’t you think?”
Joe downed some more of his beer. “Car accident. Glass eye. Throws off the depth perception.”
“No shit,” Finn said.
Without so much as a flicker of a smile to acknowledge the lightening of the moment, Joe gave a small nod. “No shit.”
Chapter Six
Tessa sat in her living room, flipping through the channels on the television. There was a great documentary on about the Templars, but it couldn’t hold her attention. She hit the button and got an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Took her a full minute to get restless again. She hit the clicker to see a romance author painting her furniture on a craft show. The woman had even painted her television in a blue checkerboard pattern.
Tessa smiled. Mom would have loved that.
She flicked the TV off and sat for a moment in the dark of her living room. Illumination drizzled in from the streetlights outside, giving her just enough light to meditate on the extreme blandness of the room. The sofa she sat on was beige. The walls white. The floors wood. The occasional throw rug cream-colored. It was like living in a large vat of vanilla ice cream.
It hadn’t been like that when her mother was alive. Karen Scuderi had been all about the kitsch; the place had been littered with crafty items. Sweeping matron dolls on shelves in the kitchen, ceramic cats on top of the upright piano, school art projects displayed throughout the house. It had been her mother’s paints that Tessa had borrowed to cover the Thing with flowers. They might not have had a lot of money, but one thing about the Scuderi women—they were colorful.
After the state had taken Izzy away, though, the kitsch and the color had been too much. Tessa had spent an entire weekend packing up everything of her mother’s, even little art projects she and Izzy had done, and shut it all up in the attic. It had never occurred to Tessa that her home and her life were one big blah; she’d been too busy getting a job, proving herself a responsible adult, and covering up any evidence to the contrary. Then, once she got Izzy back, she had neither the time nor the inclination to brighten things up, to get back to the person she used to be. She hadn’t even thought about the fact that she hadn’t painted a single daisy in ten years.
Mom would have hated that.
Still, deep inside, Tessa knew it wasn’t the lack of daisies in her life that was eating at her. At the diner she’d been able to distract herself with work, but since coming home, she’d been unable to outrun the tension she was feeling. She’d cooked dinner. Cleaned. Tried to read some magazines. Nothing had worked. Nothing could get Finn’s face, the feel of his hands on her body, out of her mind. And it seemed the harder she tried to push him away, the more stubbornly he held on.
“One good kiss,” she said out loud. “That’s all it was. One good kiss. I’ve had plenty of good kisses in my life.”
Of course, that wasn’t exactly true. She’d dated a bit over the years, but none of the men had given her the zing that Finn did. Not even Joe, who had proved to Tessa once and for all that looks good on paper is not a reason to date someone. It certainly wasn’t Joe’s fault; he had been great. He’d paid attention to her. He’d brought her flowers. He wasn’t too needy, nor was he too standoffish. He was good-looking, honorable, trustworthy. He was perfect, actually, the only problem being that there’d been no zing. Not like there was with Finn.
Of course, looking at it from another angle, Joe had never stolen her car. Big bonus points for Joe. And if it had been any other guy, she might have let it go on. But Joe was so good. He deserved two-sided zing.
The front door opened and closed, followed by the sound of Izzy’s keys hitting the hall table. Tessa listened as her sister padded through the foyer and the large open French doorway that led into the living room. Izzy got three or four steps into the living room before seeing Tessa in the dark on the sofa, at which point she screamed and clutched at her chest.
“Jesus, Tessa!” Izzy said, catching her breath. “Lurk much?”
Tessa sighed and rested her head on the back of the sofa, staring up at the white ceiling. “Sorry. Just sittin’ and thinkin’.”
Izzy grinned, flew over, and bounced onto the sofa, folding her legs under her in midair before landing gracefully on the cushions.
“You wouldn’t happen to be thinking about making out with your ex-boyfriend in a public street, would you?” Izzy batted her thickly mascaraed eyelashes at Tessa. “Come on, girl. Gimme some girl talk.”
“I wasn’t thinking about Finn,” Tessa lied.
“Is he cute?” Izzy asked, taking off her black wig and going to work on releasing her long blonde tresses from the elaborate web of bobby pins. “I’ll bet he’s cute. I remember cute. Of course, I was six when I saw him last.” Tessa pulled her head up from the back of the sofa and looked at her sister.
“Do you ever run out of energy?”
“I don’t know,” Izzy said, pulling out the last of the bobby pins and shaking her hair loose. “What’s it feel like?”
“My life.”
“Oh, my poor decrepit sister,” Izzy said. There was a slight pause, then she said, “Is he still in town?”
“Who?”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “Finn. Doof.”
“Why?” Tessa asked, suspicion deepening her voice.
“No reason. I just think it’d be fun to see him again, see if he’s like I remember.”
Tessa eyed her sister. “Hasn’t changed a bit.”
“Quit it with the hairy eyeball,” Izzy said.
“The what?”
“I’m not up to anything,” she said, with just the slightest hint of indignation. Not enough to cause a fight, just exactly the amount that seemed reasonable.
“You are up to something,” Tessa said. “Just because I haven’t figured it out yet doesn’t make it not true.”
“Geez,” Izzy said, standing up. “Paranoid much?”
Tessa sighed. “Whatever it is, just make sure it doesn’t involve Principal Hinkel’s parking space.”
“You know, you’d think he’d at least appreciate the artistry of it,” Izzy said. “I mean, it was a total Gaslight reference. Classic. Most kids are spray-painting Skool suks on the gym walls, and the misspellings aren’t even intentional, so they don’t even have the irony going for them—”
“They’ll take you away, Iz,” Tessa interrupted.
Izzy was silent for a moment, then said stiffly, “No. They won’t.”
Tessa sighed. “They did it once.”
“I was six.”
“I remember what it was like and, Izzy, I can’t go through that again.”
Izzy looked up, and Tessa could see the guilt on her face. She hated doing that to Izzy, hated pulling the guilt trip card, but damnit, it was pretty much the only card she had left. She sighed, sat up, and put her hand on Izzy’s.
“Iz, I know you don’t believe me, but that social worker in Brattleboro is just waiting for either one of us to screw up, and she will, she’ll take
you away. I know it’s only one more year of high school, but...” Tessa sat back. She didn’t want to think about it. Her brain was mush as it was. “So whatever you’re up to, I know I can’t stop you. Just please. Don’t get caught.”
Izzy smiled. Not too much, not too little. Just the perfect amount. “Stop worrying. I’m not up to anything.” They exchanged looks—Izzy trying to convince, Tessa trying to believe.
“Stop looking at me like you expect me to screw things up,” Izzy said. “It’s gonna be okay. Really.”
Tessa sighed. “Can’t you just be the shy, demure, bookworm type that never gets in trouble? Just until you turn eighteen? Then, I promise, it’s straight to Mexico with us. We’ll drink questionable beer and get regrettable tattoos and we can both finally relax and have some fun.”
Izzy laughed. “It’s a deal. I’ll be good. You start planning that trip.”
Tessa smiled. “Deal.” She watched her sister for a moment, wishing she could know what was going through her head. Izzy was a good kid, a great kid. She just didn’t appreciate consequences, or the power of evil social workers.
“Well,” Izzy said, “I need to shower off this Eau de French Fry. See you in the morning?”
“Sure,” Tessa said, and watched as her sister disappeared up the stairs. She knew she should probably do more. Lock Izzy up in her room. Let her out only for school and the occasional church social. But she lacked the energy to monitor her sister day and night, and most of what Izzy did was relatively harmless, just mischievous enough to raise eyebrows in Brattleboro and get Izzy placed in foster care again. The thought alone made Tessa’s heart seize up in panic. Izzy might not remember those three years too clearly, but Tessa did, and a repeat performance might just send her over the edge she’d been so carefully straddling all these years.
But for the moment, Izzy was safely upstairs, and there were bigger fish to fry. Like making sure Finn was out of town before someone started asking the right questions about the events of the night he left.
Stupid town bell.
Stupid Finn.
Finn.
Her chest filled with equal parts anger and longing at the thought of him. She smoothed the pillow on her lap, working from the center to the edges the way her mother used to when she needed to calm down.
The Comeback Kiss Page 6
