Chapter 44
“We always tell each other everything, right, hon?” Henry was leaning into the FaceTime screen, his face earnest or worried or both.
Tessa’s hair, still wet from this morning’s rushed shower, dripped on the unmade hotel bed.
She had fifteen minutes before she had to throw on clothes, zip her suitcase, and leave for her flight.
But Henry had called, and now she was behind, and might have to go to the airport with wet hair.
But she imagined someone seeing her like that in public, taking a video, and wouldn’t that be fun, #messyTessa trending on social media. She had to cut this discussion short. A discussion that within five seconds had devolved into the worst possible question.
“What do you mean, we tell each other everything? What’s wrong?” she asked. “What’re you not telling me?” Only one thing worse than that. That he was asking about something she hadn’t told him . She’d wait, see what Henry meant.
Why are you waiting? Annabelle asked. Take control.
“Or do you mean you think there’s something I’m not telling you ?”
“Don’t be mad,” Henry said.
The damp white towel around her shoulders grew heavier. The ruthless air conditioning made her shiver. She drew the bedspread around her, getting that wet too, mentally apologizing to the housekeepers. “What do you want me not to be mad about?”
She pulled back her emotions. “Look. I’m not going to be mad. And yes, we tell each other everything,” she lied, “so please tell me whatever it is. Okay, sweetheart?”
Henry did not answer, but was motioning someone toward him. “Come on,” he said. “She’s not going to be mad.”
“She,” Tessa thought, “ she’s” not going to be mad , as if she were some alien creature or despot who was infinitely to be feared. Henry was Fun Dad, and she was the mom who would be mad at whatever it was.
Henry’s laptop moved, and Linny’s face filled the screen. “Hi, Mom. How are you?”
“I’m fine, darling,” she said, consciously making an I’m-not-mad face. “What’s up?” She frowned, remembering. “Where’s Zackie?”
“Yeah, well.” Linny’s face was so unnaturally close to the camera it was like a fisheye lens.
“Stand back, darling, I can’t see you properly,” Tessa said. “You know how to FaceTime.”
When the laptop moved, Linny came into focus, head and shoulders.
Tessa blinked at the camera, trying to grasp what she saw.
“’Isn’t it awesome?” Linny scrabbled her fingers through her now shaggy short hair, the ends spiked up and sticking out like a perky dandelion, or a ruffled awkward duckling.
“You cut your hair?” Tessa tried to remember being eleven, tried to remember begging for pierced ears, begging for whatever kind of shoes were cool, trying to be like everyone else.
But Linny had loved her long blond hair.
Loved putting it in pigtails, and braids, twisting it up into a ballerina bun.
It would take years to grow back. You’re only eleven once, Tessa tried to tell herself, speed of light; don’t be critical, you’re not home. You’re not with her. Be her mom.
“Awesome,” she used Linny’s word, hoping to sound enthusiastic. “It’ll be so easy to take care of.” There was more to this story. Had to be. Yesterday her hair had been in pigtails. And now, it wasn’t. “Did you… cut it yourself?”
“No, Mom, that would be so lame. Remember Mrs. Delaney who I told you who was so cool? She said I should get a haircut like this, and she took me to her place. It’s called a salon. And Dad and Zack and Tristan went to get waffles.”
The entire hotel room ceiling could have crashed down, on top of her and her wet hair and her still-not-packed suitcase, and Tessa would not have cared.
She had carried her darling daughter for nine months and two days, had named her Linnea, and had then been the first person in the world to see her, and had been her best friend, she hoped, for eleven years.
Linny had never had a haircut, not ever, not ever!
without Tessa there. And now cool Nellie had swooped Linny up in her talons.
Usurped the very fabric of motherhood. Stolen one of the sacred moments only mothers and daughters could share.
No mother, no real mother, would cut another mother’s daughter’s hair. Nellie was a bitch, and a little too obvious. Henry was a complete idiot. And she, Tessa, had to go home. Right now.
Whoa, Annabelle said.
“So cool, honey,” Tessa said. “Yay, you. I can’t wait to see it in person.” Nellie Delaney was now in her sights. She just wished that woman was not in Henry’s sights. Or he in hers. “I wish I could have been there with you. Did Mrs. Delaney ask your father first?”
“I’m back.” Henry’s face appeared. “Isn’t she cute? Our own pixie child.”
“Pixie,” Tessa repeated. “Sure, adorable.” When Henry told Nellie—she could not even say that phrase—that Tessa had been sanguine about Linnea’s hair, she’d know her obvious tactics were doomed to failure.
“What else is new?” Tessa asked, obviously and bluntly changing the subject.
Perhaps Henry would get the message from her icy tone.
“It sounds like you all are having an awesome time. Any other surprises about to come my way? Especially about you and Nellie? Since as you said, we tell each other everything?”
“Lin, I’ll meet you outside, okay?”
Five minutes before she had to dry her hair. Ten minutes before she had to call the Uber.
“Okay.” Henry’s face on the screen again. “I needed to get rid of Linny so you and I could have some privacy. Nellie seems to think I’m helpless as a father. God knows what she thinks I would do if left too long on my own.”
“On your own?”
“Well, yeah, me and the kids. What did you think?”
“Nothing,” Tessa said, knowing that was the placeholder for “everything.” “Anyway, anything else? I have like, no minutes before I have to get to the airport.”
“Yeah. One thing.” Henry sat down, somewhere. “It may be nothing, but remember I told you about Barbara?”
“Yeah, Barbie the dog walker?”
“She’s not a dog walker.”
Tessa heard the impatience in his voice.
“Exactly what she is, I don’t know,” Henry went on. “But, honey? She’s still asking about you.”
“About the books?” Tessa curled her bare toes into the pile of the hotel carpeting. “Did she turn out to be a fan?”
“Yeah, must be. And man, not sure how you deal with that every day. She asked where you grew up. Who were your parents. Your mother. That kind of thing. I was vague, and I didn’t have much choice, since I don’t know many details anyway.
They were gone before you and I even met.
Your mom had a heart attack and your dad—I know they weren’t sure exactly why he died.
While you were at college. That’s what I told her. ”
“Yes, all true, but why would you tell her that?”
“Because she asked. And what does it matter, it’s basic new-neighbor stuff. But I started thinking about it, and it seemed… whatever. I thought you should know.”
She had been at college, and remembered the late-night phone call. And soon after, her mother’s will, when it became clear everything was gone. “I mean that’s ridic—”
“No. It isn’t. You’re the one who told me about persistent fans, right? That’s why I even told you. Do you think your family is exempt from that?”
“ No one asks how someone’s parents died.” Tessa tried to ignore Henry’s possibly correct logic.
“She didn’t ask how they died. She said something like, her mother must be so proud of her. Can we not talk about this?”
“No, we can’t not talk about it. So proud of me? That’s not a thing people say. Unless there’s an agenda. Did she ask about your mother?”
“Tessa, you’re making way too much of this. I should never have mentioned it. She’s obviously a fan. I must not be used to it like you are.”
“Why not tell her the whole thing?” Tessa could not resist going on.
“Tell her, oh, the last thing Tessa knew of her mother was when she was awakened by a midnight phone call from the police, on the night before she was set to come home for summer vacation, informing her she’d died of a heart attack.
You could explain how that left her utterly alone, since she’d discovered her estranged father had died the year before.
And oh, listen, tell her how we met, too, soon after. Think how fascinated she’d be.”
She paused, the silence after her tirade louder than the words. The air conditioner kicked on, and Tessa saw the electronic green numbers on the nightstand clock tick ahead.
“Tessa, honey,” Henry finally said. “I am so sorry. I forgot it was this time of year when it happened. June. I wish you were here.”
Tessa felt her heart break; at the universe, and at the distance between them, and at the incalculable whims of providence.
And at Henry, whose face seemed to have collapsed in remorse, and who was doing the best he could.
New neighborhood, new neighbors, new everything.
And a wife who was no help to them at all.
“Mail call, mail call!” Linny’s voice came from off camera, and she then bounded into the room, brandishing what looked like letters. “You’ve got mail, Mom! A picture postcard of…”
She paused, fully on camera now, her hair like a blond porcupine, turning over a card in her hand. “Phoenix. It says Welcome to Phoenix. Like one of those old-timey ones.” She held it up, reading. “It says thanks for a wonderful evening.”
Henry moved into the camera shot. Tessa saw him take the postcard.
“Who is Sam?” he asked.