The Mermaid Collector (15 page)

“Wait, you’re saying this boy knows? How do you know he won’t go to the police, Frank?”

“He doesn’t know my name, and even if he did, I don’t think he would risk it. I don’t think he can be without the money now.” Frank looked to the window again, his gaze falling this time on the lilac bush that hugged the side of the garage. “I’m going out there in a few weeks. It’s a conference—I don’t really have any business going, but I’ve told Joan I need to. Really, I just want to see them.”

“See them? Frank, you can’t do that.”

“I don’t mean face-to-face,” said Frank. “Just…I don’t know…drive by their house. Just see if they’re all right.” He turned back to Buzz, his eyes filled with tears. “I just have to see them for myself.”

“But this young man has proof,” Buzz pressed. “He has your confession. He could take all that to the cops, for Christ’s sake.”

But he never did. Buzz would remind himself of that fact over the years. Tom Grace had said nothing, and neither had Buzz. And now the young man was an adult, and that adult was here in Cradle Harbor. Tom Grace was here, and Frank was gone.

God, Buzz missed him. This mess he’d made with Tess, the days it seemed he couldn’t do right by her—which were more than the days he
could
—Frank could always seem to set things right between them. It was the salesman in him, Frank would say, always brushing off any admiration Buzz would send his way. But it was more than that. Frank could talk a pack of wolves off a found fawn. He made people see what they were missing, see what a waste of time being angry was, that life was too short for grudges; that they might not get a second chance to do the right thing, to say they loved someone, to say they were sorry. Frank had been that way before the accident. Afterward, it was his religion, and Buzz alone knew the reason for his total conversion.

Now Buzz looked out from the trailer window, hoping to see Tess’s VW returned but finding the space in front of the woodshop empty. He did, however, see Beverly Partridge’s white sedan.

Curiosity gnawed at him. It wasn’t like him to check up on guests; far from it, his manner being the seen-not-heard school of hosting, but he did feel particularly responsible for this guest. He’d chastised Tess for her concerns over the safety of her mother’s things; the last thing he wanted was to have to eat his words.

The cottage porch was quiet. Buzz took the steps carefully, hoping he wasn’t disturbing her. He knocked just once, stepping back from the door in case she wanted to peek out. A few moments later, Beverly arrived.

“If this is about the quilt…,” she began stiffly.

Buzz frowned, confused. “What quilt?” he asked.

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Who?”

Beverly folded her arms. “Your daughter. She threw quite a tantrum earlier.”

“Oh hell.” Buzz sighed, then rubbed at his beard. “I’m sorry. I probably should have mentioned to you that she might be a little chilly about your staying in here.”

“Chilly? She was positively hostile.”

“I’ll speak to her,” said Buzz, glancing back to the woodshop.

“Don’t bother,” Beverly said. “The last thing I need is another earful from her. I will, however, need a new quilt for my bed. She took the one that was here because I had the
nerve
to air it out over the railing for a few minutes.”

So that was it,
Buzz thought.
Ruby’s favorite quilt
.

Beverly frowned at him. “Why
are
you here, then?” she asked pointedly.

“I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable.”

“Aside from the
un
welcoming committee,” Beverly said, “yes, I’m managing.”

Buzz smiled gratefully.
The
un
welcoming committee
. Well, at least the woman had a sense of humor about it all, which was more than he could say for Tess.

“I’ll bring you down a replacement right away,” he said.

Beverly nodded tightly. “And a few extra towels, please.”

“All right.”

He could do that. He could do more than that; somehow Buzz felt as if he should. He’d balled up her reservation, and now Tess had given her hell for innocently hanging out a quilt. He was damn lucky Beverly Partridge hadn’t reported him to the Better Business Bureau.

“If there’s nothing else then,” Beverly began suggestively, her hand on the door, her smile polite but clear.

“No,” Buzz said, stepping back. “I’ll get you that quilt and those towels.”

“If I’m not here, you can leave them on the porch,” she told him. “I’ll be going into town in a bit and I turn in early, so I’d appreciate it if you could get them here before seven.”

“Not a problem,” Buzz said cheerfully, barely getting the words out before she’d closed the door on him.

WHILE TOM WARMED THE PAN
, Tess set the table: two unmatched plates, two glasses, a plastic pitcher of water, candles she’d found in the pantry.

They moved about the kitchen together, shifting quietly around each other like passengers on a subway switching seats—passengers who’d shared looks of interest, quick ones, then longer ones, until it was clear that something romantic was at stake.

At the table, Tess cut into the lasagna, feeling Tom watching her as she dragged the knife back and forth.

“You sure he won’t mind that I’m eating his dinner?”

She shrugged. “It’s not his anymore.” She served them each a fat square, the stringy cheese sticking to her fingers. “He had his chance.”

“I don’t have to worry about him coming over here in the middle of the night and challenging me to a duel or something over it, do I?” Tom asked. “Because I’ve never hit anyone in my whole life. I wouldn’t even know where to aim.”

Tess grinned, thinking Libby Wallace was right. He
was
handsome. “No,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

They ate, the sky growing dark outside, so dark that the scalloped-edged noodles on their unmatched plates looked blue, even with the candlelight, but she had asked him not to turn on the overhead.

“I hate those lights,” Tess said, glaring up at the old fixture. “They make every room look like an empty pool.” Which had, of course, made Tom think briefly of Dean, but as was becoming common around her, thoughts of Dean were easily swept away. The smell of dinner was working its magic on the room, on the whole house. For the first time since he’d arrived, the house felt to Tom as if someone might live there. With the scents of life—food and company and the sounds of their conversation—suddenly the walls didn’t seem so bare, the floors so cold.

She’d taken off her sneakers. He kicked one by accident under the table, startled at first.

“Where did you learn to carve like that?” he asked.

“Here and there. I’m self-taught, mostly. I wanted to paint like my mom, but I couldn’t quite work the colors the way I wanted to, so she suggested I try something else. ‘Something without colors,’ were her exact words. Buzz knew a sculptor, and he showed me a few things to get me started. After that, I couldn’t stop, really.”

“You’re very talented.”

She smiled at him across the table. It had been a long time since someone had told her that, since she’d been asked about her work. She liked talking about it, liked thinking about it. For Buzz, for Pete, everyone who knew her, those stories of how and when were second nature. It was strange to think this man didn’t know anything about her life. Tom Grace knew nothing about her mother, about the world they’d built together, about the years after she’d gone. But then, she knew nothing about him, either.

“I don’t have an artistic bone in my body,” Tom said, sawing at a stubborn rope of mozzarella. “I’m one of those people whose drawing of a person looks exactly the same way at thirty-five as it did when I was five. But I can draw a mean hangman if you ever want to play.”

Tess laughed at that, tucking one foot under herself. “Well, I can’t spell my way out of a paper bag, so you’ll win for sure.”

He was ravenous; Tom couldn’t remember ever being this hungry before and couldn’t recall food ever tasting this good, this fresh, this rich. When he’d scraped up the
last swirl of sauce and ricotta, Tess looked at her own empty plate and said, “It’s late. I don’t like to drive in the dark. I’m terrified of hitting a deer or a raccoon.”

“You could stay,” he suggested, then added quickly, “I don’t mean
with me
. I’ll bring in the mattresses. I should anyway. You could have your own room. There’s plenty of them upstairs.”

But she didn’t want her own room. Wasn’t it too early for bed? Then why was she so tired, so ready to collapse? She glanced to the window, seeing the silhouette of the hedges shiver in the breeze.

“Don’t bring the beds in,” she said. “Leave them out there.”

“What for?”

She got up from the table and moved to the door, beckoning Tom to follow. “You’ll see.”

OUTSIDE, THE AIR WAS ALREADY
crisp with night’s chill, the wind stronger when they rounded the house to the lawn. Only one of the spreads had broken free from its stone weights and been blown a few feet away. Tom swept it up and carried it to where Tess stood beside the least lumpy of the mattresses. She dropped down and looked up at him, waiting for him to join her. He did, tentatively, and they lay shoulder to shoulder, looking up.

The canopy of stars was endless.

“Do you know the constellations?” she asked.

Tom didn’t. He’d grown up in the city, where it was rare to see the stars. He reached up, connecting the dots of Orion’s belt, the only one he knew, the one everyone knew.

Tess liked the way his body felt next to her, the crispness of his shirtsleeves against her as she lifted her arm to point. “Okay, let’s see who else is out tonight.…I see Lyra. And can you see those stars that make a cross? That’s Cygnus, the Swan.…”

This was something Dean would do, Tom thought suddenly, watching Tess’s face, caught in the path of the parlor light he’d left on, her fingers tracing the air. He wasn’t thinking of just this moment, but all of it—stumbling upon a woman half dressed, making love to her soon after, lying under the stars in a sea of mattresses. These sorts of things happened to Dean, not to him. But Dean wasn’t here. For now, for once, Tom could breathe.

“It’s cold,” he said. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Freezing,” she confessed. He shook the spread out over her. Tess gripped it gladly, pulling it around her shoulders and thinking at once she was wrong. The smell of the salt had gone; now there was only sunshine and cold grass.

She turned to Tom, considering him a long moment before she asked, “So, what are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your sign.”

“Oh God, I have no idea.…”

She rose up on her elbow, frowning disapprovingly at him. “How can you not know your sign?”

Tom shrugged. “Because it doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” Tess said, indignant now. “It explains who you are.”

“An astrological sign doesn’t explain who I am.…”

“Want to bet?” She narrowed her eyes in challenge. “When’s your birthday?”

Tom stretched out his legs, crossing his feet at the ankles. “Oh, come on. I don’t believe in all that.”

“I didn’t ask if you did. I asked you your birthday.”

Tom gave her a weary look and surrendered. “January sixth.”

“Capricorn,” she said.

“So does it?” he asked. “Does it
explain me
?”

“Maybe.” She grinned. “Capricorns are earth signs. They’re grounded and responsible and very, very serious.”

Tom frowned, too enchanted to be sore or even defensive. “Coincidence,” he said.

“What about your brother?”

“Don’t you want to quit while you’re ahead?”

She smiled. “I can’t lose. The signs are always right.”

“Fine,” he agreed. “December second.”

“Sagittarius. I know all about them. My mother was one. Everyone wants to be near a Sagittarius. They’re irresistible.”

That was Dean, all right, Tom thought as Tess dropped down beside him again. He turned his head to her as she
settled back under the blanket, wanting very much in that moment to corral the hair that blew around her face, to guide those auburn waves behind her ear, that ear with all the empty holes.

The desire to know things about her—anything,
everything
—consumed him suddenly. Try as she had to raise a wall to him that morning, her emotions had won out. He knew if he pulled even gently on a seam, the whole of her heart might open up for him. It was a possibility that should have terrified him, but in that moment, lost under the stars, Tom didn’t care.

He reached out, gathered a few strands of her hair, and tethered them. Tess closed her eyes, as if she’d slipped into a warm bath.

“It can be hard to be around people like that,” Tom said.

Tess’s eyes opened. She twisted her body to face him, perplexed. “What do you mean?”

She didn’t agree; Tom could see that at once. “They can wear you out, that’s all,” he said.

Her expression remained dubious. “Only if you try to control them,” she said firmly. “Only if you try to change them. And I know that’s true, because that’s exactly what Buzz did with my mother.”

Tom studied her as she traced the edge of his collar.

She looked up, meeting his eyes. “Not so much in the beginning.” Her face softened again, as if she’d caught a sweet scent that reminded her of something. “At first they
were so crazy about each other that my mother would have believed the sun was made of orange Jell-O if Buzz had told her to believe it. But then she started having her white days again, and he decided everything had to change.”

Tom frowned. “White days?”

Tess smiled sadly. “That was what she used to call them. They weren’t blue days, she’d say, because she never thought of blue as sad; blue was the color of water, and the water made her happy. But white was the absence of everything—the saddest, loneliest color she could imagine.” Tom ran his knuckles along her cheek; again she closed her eyes, pressing into his hand like a cat.

“That must have been hard on you,” he said.

“I was used to it. Those days never lasted long. We always got through them. But Buzz didn’t understand that. He pushed her to see someone, to take medication, which she couldn’t bear. He pushed and pushed.…” Tess hesitated, her eyes staying closed, squeezed shut for a moment; then they opened, slightly misted. “You can’t push a Sagittarius,” she said. “They won’t change for anyone.”