due consideration.”
Kelly laughed. “Did you really say that? ‘Due consideration’?”
Ava nodded. “He also tried to tell me some things he wanted me to tell you, but I told him I wouldn’t do that. He had to talk to you himself.”
“Good girl.”
“So what I’m thinking is . . . While you figure out what you’re going to do, I might sometimes stay here with you and sometimes stay with him. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is. Your father loves you, and you love him. Nothing will ever change that.”
Ava left not long after, kissing her mother and refusing to take any cookies home to her father.
Tess needed to tell Kelly she’d be staying at the cabin instead of the schoolhouse. She could lie, say she didn’t want to distract Ian from his work, but Kelly had been honest with her, and she deserved honesty in return. She cuddled Wren and told her the truth. Or most of it, anyway. She didn’t tell her how deeply she’d fallen in love with Ian, and she definitely didn’t mention their astonishing sex life. When she finished, Kelly regarded her sympathetically. “Well, aren’t we a pair?”
“That we are.”
With both Michelle and Savannah on leave, Tess had promised Phish she’d work that night. As she went upstairs to get ready, Kelly asked her about Wren.
“I’m taking her to Heather’s.”
“Why don’t you leave her with me? I’d love to watch her.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not at all.” Kelly smiled fondly at Tess’s sleeping daughter. “It’ll be like the old days.”
* * *
Tess received a hero’s welcome at the Broken Chimney. It was as though she’d never been the town pariah. Everyone wanted to hear about last night, and she had her hands full talking and filling orders at the same time. Two hours elapsed before she realized she’d left her phone in her car. If Kelly had an emergency, she couldn’t reach her.
She abandoned a half-made salted-caramel hot chocolate and raced out the back door.
The rain had stopped, but the security light spread a rancid yellow phosphorescence across the alley. A shadow moved behind her car. A shadow that shouldn’t have been there.
Tess took a quick step to the side and saw Courtney Hoover. Her hand was frozen in midair—a hand that held a tube of lipstick. Smeared across the rear window of Tess’s SUV were seven letters and part of the eighth:
MURDEREI
Tess charged forward. “You’re the one!” she exclaimed.
Hostility radiated from Courtney like toxic waste. “Everybody in there is kissing your fat ass!”
Tess grabbed the lipstick from her. “I wouldn’t call it fat. I’d call it ample.”
Courtney wailed like a petulant kindergartner. “I work out every day. It’s not fair!”
“My ass?”
“Artie! It’s your fault that we broke up!”
“Artie?”
“We were doing fine until you showed up.”
Slowly, the pieces came together. Tess remembered how many times Artie had arrived at the Broken Chimney only to have Courtney appear, too.
“We were going to get back together. We always got back together. Then you started coming on to him.”
“That’s right,” Tess retorted. “I’m married to the sexiest man in Tempest, Tennessee, but secretly lusting after Artie Thompson.”
“You’re always talking to him!”
“I talk to everybody. If you and Artie broke up, it doesn’t have anything to do with me, and you know it.”
“We always got back together. Right until you and your fat ass—”
Tess shoved Courtney and her pristine white jacket against the lipstick-smeared rear window. “That was one ‘fat ass’ too many.”
All of Courtney’s exercising was no match for Tess’s anger, and she fended her off well enough to dive into Courtney’s pocket, pull out her phone, and hold it up to her overly made-up face to unlock it. “Smile.”
Courtney lunged at her, but not before Tess snapped a photo.
“Give me that!”
“Not yet!” With a sharp jab of her elbow, Tess sent Courtney back against the car. Tess examined the photo. It couldn’t have been better. Shadows from the security light had turned the Instagram Queen’s eye sockets into sulfurous holes and formed wrinkles where there were none. “Not your best shot.”
And then she texted it to herself.
With a cry, Courtney once again grabbed for her phone. This time, Tess let her have it. “Just so you know, that’s going straight to the cloud, where it’ll stay. Unless . . .”
Courtney whimpered.
“Unless you piss me off again.” Tess retrieved her own phone from the car. As she shut the door, she pointed to the rear window. “Clean up that mess. And don’t even think about coming back to the Broken Chimney until