called after her.
“Consider this a government-regulated rest break.”
Chapter Six
Half an hour later, showered and shampooed, Tess returned downstairs. Ian had barely moved. He stood by the kitchen window only a few steps from where she’d left him. Wren was crying, and instead of walking her, he held her as if she were a grenade about to detonate. Any hopes she’d had that leaving them alone would break the ice around his heart disappeared.
“I’m not doing this,” he said stonily.
“I see.” She went over to the counter to pour herself another cup of coffee. Wren looked like a mouse in his big hands. His frown became a thunderstorm as Wren worked herself into a full frenzy. He thrust the baby toward her. “I have to get to work.”
She tucked the baby in the crook of her arm and began to readjust the blanket only to stop, her hand stilling on the soft fabric as she was struck by the possibility that she’d gotten it all wrong, right from the beginning. She went after him. “Wren isn’t yours, is she?”
He paused in his path from the kitchen. “What makes you say that?”
“If she were your baby, I don’t think you’d ignore her the way you have.” She followed him into the living area. “Although, considering your generally unpleasant disposition, I could be wrong.”
“Yes, you could be.” He headed for the front door and grabbed his jacket. “I’ve hardly ignored her. You’re here, aren’t you?” The door closed behind him.
She gazed into Wren’s unhappy face—wrinkled forehead, nose flattened, tiny tongue curled like a potato chip as she howled. Was Tess’s intuition right? But if Ian weren’t Wren’s father, why had he allowed himself to be listed that way on her birth certificate? And if he were her father . . . ?
Too many unanswered questions. Cradling Wren’s fragile spine, she hesitated and then made her way to Bianca’s bedroom. She opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was a womb of sorrow. She couldn’t believe a man who painted with this much emotion was capable of so coldly rejecting his own child. Unless she was thinking about it the wrong way. Maybe all that emotion explained why he refused to get close to her.
Wren had begun to quiet. Tess gazed down at her little frog-face. “I’m not your mother, sweetheart.” But right now, this orphaned baby knew Tess’s touch the best. Tess drew her closer. She had years of practice at professional detachment, and she was too clear-eyed to get attached to this child who wasn’t hers. But whose was she?
“I’m doing my best, Bianca,” she whispered to the empty room. “I promise. I’m doing my best.”
* * *
Ian needed to get away from this house, from her. The Widow Hartsong saw too much. He strode toward the trail that led up the mountain. For someone who’d grown up in the city, he was most at home outdoors. He’d hiked part of the Appalachian Trail, climbed Mount Whitney in a winter snowstorm, and thru-hiked the John Muir. He’d hiked in Europe, too, with nothing much in his backpack but a change of underwear and whatever drugs he’d been able to get his hands on at the time.
A gust of raw March wind made him wish he’d grabbed a heavier jacket, but he wasn’t ready to turn back. The old fire tower rose off to the east. He’d climbed it a couple of times, but today he needed his feet planted firmly on the ground.
A white-tailed deer loped across the path in front of him. He veered off the trail to follow it toward the creek. As he got nearer he heard a different sound from the usual noise of rushing water. Something like a wail coming from what was left of an old moonshine still.
He quickened his step. He’d discovered the still on one of his first hikes, identifying it for what it was by the telltale U-shaped arrangement of creek rocks that marked the location of an abandoned furnace. A corroded fifty-five-gallon drum lay on its side, along with an old galvanized bucket missing a bottom and some broken mason jars cloudy with dirt. But it was the remains of the old boiler that caught his attention, the rusty slabs of sheet metal etched with ax marks left by long-ago revenuers. Now a kid was trapped underneath.
“It hurts!”
The boy’s leg was caught under the heaviest section of the deteriorated boiler. Ian hurried over. “Hold still, Eli.”
The kid looked up at him, tears,