understand why it’s so hard for you to hold Wren.”
She didn’t expect him to answer, but he did, speaking so quietly she barely heard him. “Being around fragile things isn’t good for me.”
The way he said it . . . So stoically. It almost made her feel sorry for him. Almost. “If you didn’t love her, why was she with you?”
His hand stabbed at the sketch pad. “Because I was all she could count on. Enough questions.”
She rearranged Wren’s dark hair into a baby Mohawk. “So here we are, the two of us, taking care of a child who doesn’t belong to either one.”
He flipped to a fresh page. “My lawyer’s trying to find Denning. I should know more in a couple of days.”
Wren mewed. Tess brushed the tip of the baby’s earlobe sticking out from beneath her cap. “I’m getting a cramp.”
He grunted. “Great art requires sacrifice.”
“That’s not great art. It’s a sketch of an ordinary person with a mustache, and you need to change Wren’s diaper.”
That actually made him laugh. For the first time. She sighed and stood. “Come on, Wren. Off to the ladies’ room we go.”
“I’m not done.”
“I am.”
“Do you have any idea how many women want me to draw them?”
“Zillions?”
“Maybe not that many. But a solid half a dozen, at least.”
She laughed, then realized she didn’t like seeing this easier side of him. It made him more human than she wanted him to be.
As she began to shut the door behind her, she heard the sound of paper being torn in two . . . three . . . four pieces.
* * *
On the drive back home from Knoxville the next day, after Wren’s first well-baby checkup, she skittered around remembering that moment he’d touched her face. The feeling she’d had . . . A hyperawareness of her own body—a startling reminder that she was still a sexual being. Remarkable, considering how tired she was from lack of sleep. She’d felt—not exactly strong, but . . . strong-ish. Not so much like a wounded animal. It was as if she’d dipped her toe into a fresh version of her old self—tougher and a tad cynical.
She’d liked matching wits with him. It made her want to go up against him again and badger him for answers to the questions he seemed determined to dodge. What hold did Bianca have over him? Or did he have a hold over Bianca? And why had he tried to isolate Bianca?
For the next few days, she barely saw her housemate. His car disappeared and reappeared. She heard his steady footsteps overhead in the studio where he might or might not be working. She heard him behind the closed doors of Bianca’s almost bare bedroom when she got up at night to feed Wren. She’d see evidence that he’d eaten—a dirty plate, an apple core in the trash, but she never saw him do it. He disappeared into the woods for hours, and once she suspected he stayed out all night.
The Eldridges hadn’t brought Eli back, and that made her uneasy. What if the wound had become infected? She looked out the rear window and saw Ian clearing brush from behind the schoolhouse. He attacked the larger branches with a hatchet and stacked them for firewood.
She bundled Wren and ventured out the back door. The day was overcast with the smell of snow in the air, but he’d discarded his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his denim shirt. A pale white scar formed a half-moon above his wrist.
“Where did a city boy like you learn to chop wood?” she asked.
He wiped his shirtsleeve over his sweaty forehead. “I might have spent too much time at various schools for recalcitrant youths. They’re great places to pick up basic skills.”
“Wilderness survival?”
“Along with hot-wiring cars and making a shiv out of a toothbrush. Most people don’t know this, but there’s a right and wrong way to mug an innocent citizen.”
“The scope of your knowledge leaves me breathless.”
“It’s nice to be appreciated.”
“Except you never mugged anyone.”
“But I could have if I’d wanted to.” He shifted his view toward a stand of trees that edged a gully behind the house. “I’m thinking about building a tree house in that oak over there. Kind of an open-air studio.”
She didn’t know much about artists, but she did know something about human psychology. Building a tree house studio might be productive or it might simply be another form of procrastination—a way he could make himself feel as