Chapter 23
Tessa scanned the boarding area, looking for the people in the locket photograph, or someone from the book signing.
A fan, tracking her. But there was no one suspicious, no one unsettling.
She’d gotten a few flickers of recognition, but not from anyone she’d seen before.
She’d ignored them, politely, staying small in her molded plastic chair, keeping to herself.
She wrapped her phone power cord into a careful loop, preparing.
They’d be boarding any minute, and she looked forward to the small pleasure of her solitude on the plane as they made their way to Denver. She’d watch for the Rocky Mountains. Take a picture for the kids.
Henry, after dismissing her concern entirely in the airport coffee shop, had changed the FaceTime subject to the many moving boxes that still needed to be unpacked, and Zack’s discovery of a pull-down door in the ceiling of his closet that led to a “sick” attic space above.
“We could make it into an office for me,” he’d said. “Put in a skylight. It wouldn’t be that expensive.”
“Maybe unpack first?” Tessa had tried to keep her voice pleasant. An office for him. For the job he didn’t have. “Speaking of which. Have you put up the family photos? Can we wait until I get there? Make it a family project?”
“Crap, honey.” Henry had seemed contrite, at least it appeared so in the FaceTime.
“That was one of the first things I did. To make the place feel like home. They go up the stairs in a row. First that one of all of us in front of our old house, and then all the way to the second-floor landing. Linny got a huge kick out of hammering nails into the wall, and Zack took photos and made a stop-action video.”
Tessa paused now, trying to remember exactly what that unfamiliar staircase looked like, envisioning that uniquely personal project. Her family, without her, making their home feel like their home. Making once-in-a-lifetime memories. Without her.
“But that reminds me, Tessie,” Henry had said. “I can’t find any old pictures of you. Nothing of you as a kid. I’m thinking I’ve never seen your family album—where’d you pack it? I could take some of the pictures out of it for a family history–like thing. We could make room on the stairway.”
We could make room.
“Family means our family, yours and mine,” she had told him. “My family wasn’t much on saving pictures. If they had some…” She’d tried to think about it and not think about it at the same time. “They didn’t give me any of them.”
“I know your father was—gone. But didn’t you inherit that stuff when your mother died?”
Tessa had wished her departure time was sooner. “Why are you suddenly interested in this? The pictures you put up are perfect, I’m sure.”
She had no recollection of her mother taking photos, not in any of the places they’d lived. Even when Daddy was still with them. Photos were memories, and memories could be dangerous.
“Photos are memories,” she had said out loud. “And memories should be good. Let’s just use our own.”
“I’ll send you a video of it. Okay? So you can tell us what we did wrong.”
“Ha ha. My plane is about to—”
“So you don’t have any photos at all? Of where you lived as a kid, or anything like that?”
“Henry.” She’d taken a deep breath, for some reason she remembered her heart beating just then, as if she were getting ready to pose a difficult question. “What’s this about?”
“Curiosity,” he had said. “No reason.”
An electronic crackle came over the public address system now, stopping her mental replay of her husband’s nonanswers.
Boarding , Tessa thought. Good. Her heart gave a preflight flutter, her imagination’s acknowledgment that she was about to be in a metal tube going six hundred miles an hour at thirty-three thousand feet, and nothing would go wrong.
“For passengers flying on flight 141 to Denver,” a well-modulated and sincere-sounding voice was saying.
Tessa looked up, as if acknowledging the gate agent was the polite thing to do.
“We are experiencing a slight delay in our departure,” the voice went on. “Please remain in the waiting area. We do not anticipate the delay being extensive. Thank you so much for your patience.”
The very air went out of the place, replaced by murmurs of frustration and annoyance instead of patience. Tessa could feel the negative energy, and watched the predictable rush of passengers swarming the gate desk.
So frustrating. She had specifically asked for this later flight to Denver, devoutly wishing to avoid another 4:00 a.m. wake-up call.
And look what that had gotten her, a delay.
And the possible first domino in a disastrous chain, a chain that could cause her to miss her event in Denver.
A ticketed big-deal signing that had been highly promoted.
If Tessa’s plane was delayed too long, the whole thing might be canceled.
It also proved what a tightrope she was walking. At every single moment of her life. Tessa Calloway, high-wire artist.
She needed to let DJ know about delays, but it was too soon to panic the publicist. Ten a.m. in Phoenix ( noon in Rockport , she automatically added, and in New York where DJ was) and that meant she had some leeway.
If she worried, or if she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. She’d worry when the time came.
Smart, Annabelle said. But tick tick.