Chapter 3
three
Tessa
Thursday is only my second time at the reading program, but Kaylee moves her bag off the chair beside her and says "the little ones are already asking about the fox," and I sit down and pick up where we left off.
Nora is on the rug before I've finished settling. Close enough that her knee presses against mine inside thirty seconds. She's brought a drawing of a fox, rendered in orange crayon with an enormous tail and a slightly menacing expression — and she presents it to me with both hands.
"That's for you," she says. "Because you do his voice the best."
I accept it with appropriate solemnity. I will keep it. I already know this about myself.
We finish two chapters, do a craft that involves an alarming amount of glitter, and I help two of the younger kids sound out words in the picture book section while Kaylee manages the older group.
Nora doesn't need managing. Nora sits beside me with her elbows on the table, watching my face while I read like she's studying technique.
At two forty-five I hear the truck.
I hear it before I see it and my posture changes about half a second before my brain registers why. My spine straightens. I'm aware of the door.
He comes in with sawdust in his hair and a coffee cup from somewhere, and Nora gets up from the table in the unhurried way of a child who has decided to be dignified about it. She walks to him instead of running. He crouches anyway. Same arms. Same face going soft in the same way.
He catches my eye over her head. Nods once. I nod back.
I notice his hands carrying Nora's backpack without being asked. Fitting around a coffee cup. I notice that he scowls at most things and doesn't scowl at Nora and doesn't quite scowl at me, which is its own category that I've stopped pretending I'm not tracking.
I'm a grown woman. I drove nine hours to escape a bad breakup. I shouldn’t be thinking like this. Still…
My phone buzzes in my pocket while I'm helping Kaylee stack the craft supplies.
"How's the moping vacation?" My sister Cara asks, when I pick up.
"It's not a moping vacation. I'm at a children's library program." I wedge the phone between my ear and shoulder. "Helping with glitter crafts."
A pause. "That's — why?"
"Because there was a sign and I'm a teacher."
"Are you okay? You sound—" A longer pause. "You sound different."
"I'm fine."
"No, you sound — are you with someone?"
I glance up. Beckett is waiting by the door, Nora on his hip, looking out the window. Not listening. Politely not listening, which is different and I notice that too.
"I have to go," I say.
"Tessa?"
I hang up. Beckett looks back from the window. He has the expression of someone who has heard enough to find something faintly amusing and is being very polite about not showing it.
"Sister," I say.
"I figured."
"She wanted to know if I was moping."
"Are you?"
I think about the way I'd been sitting in my hotel room four days ago, staring at the ceiling, running the Daniel argument on a loop I couldn't find the end of.
The slow grey weight of it. I think about Nora's fox drawing, which is going on the dresser in my room tonight.
Darlene's coffee. The river in the morning.
This room, this afternoon, the way the last two hours felt full in a way the last two weeks haven't.
"Not right now," I say.
He holds my gaze for a moment. Something moves through his expression — opens, just slightly, before he closes it back up. Then he says to Nora, "Say bye to Miss Tessa," and Nora twists around and waves at me with her whole arm, and they go.
I'm at Juniper's an hour later, booth by the window, cup of tea I'm not drinking, when he comes in.
Beckett comes through the door and his eyes go straight to me — no scan of the room, no pause — and something about that lands before I can decide what to do with it.
He stops at the counter, says something to Darlene, then crosses the room and sits down across from me without asking.
Just puts his coffee on the table and sits.
Like it's obvious. Like this is simply the next thing.
This wasn’t planned. This wasn’t a date. Right?
"Nora's at a birthday party," he says.
"How long do you have?"
"Two hours." He wraps both hands around the mug. "She'll come home with cake in her hair and be wired until nine."
"The birthday party experience. Consistent across all demographics."
"You like kids," he chuckles.
"I do." I turn my tea mug in my hands. "I've wanted them for a long time.
My ex didn't. We were together three years and he never said so directly — just redirected every time I brought it up.
And I let him, because I was trying to be someone who didn't need things.
It took a long time to stop doing that."
I don't know why I'm telling him this. Except that he asked a real question and he's looking at me. So, I just tell him things.
He's quiet for a moment. "That's a long time to wait," he says.
"Yeah."
He picks up his coffee. Then he looks at me directly and says: "Since my brother, her father, Jace died, she's been careful. With new people. She doesn't attach easy." A beat. "She attaches to you inside twenty minutes."
My throat tightens. I don’t know what to say. No words are enough when thins are like this.
"I don't know what to do with it." His jaw is set. He's honest to the point of discomfort, paying for it right in front of me.
"You don't have to do anything with it," I say. "I'm just reading her a book."
He looks up at me then. His eyes are very dark and very steady, and they stay on mine long enough that I feel the particular helpless sensation of being seen by someone who doesn't look at things carelessly.
"You staying past Sunday?" he asks.
My heart knocks once, hard. "I haven't decided."
He nods slowly. Files it somewhere. Finishes his coffee, leaves cash on the table without checking the amount, stands up.
"Nora'll want you to finish the fox book," he says.
"I know."
He looks at me for one more moment and then he picks up his jacket and goes.
I stay in the booth a long time after that. Darlene refills my cup without being asked. Outside, the light turns golden and then amber, and the street does its slow evening shift, and I think about Sunday and I think about Tuesday and I know perfectly well what I'm going to do.
I just need the rest of the evening to pretend I'm still deciding.
I walk back to the hotel with the June sun on my face and I realise I haven't thought about Daniel in two days. Not once. Not even close.