Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) (12 page)

The series ripped away the shroud of privacy protecting
them.  Tess responded by dismissing all of her friends from her life.  No one
could be trusted. 

After stashing the papers under her bed for years, Tess
re-read the articles for the first time the morning she’d graduated from high
school, and she’d forced herself into other re-readings since.  Each re-reading
gave her a different perspective.  During her sophomore year in college, she’d
cried after reading the article featuring her brother, her sister and herself. 
The article she once saw as invasive was really a sympathetic view of a family
shattered by the selfish act of a parent.

She rubbed tired eyes burning from lack of sleep and taxed
from re-reading the familiar but still foreign story again.  She’d regret it
later when she was squinting over some old painting.  Gray light crept through
her living room window.  It was almost time to get dressed for work. 

As her eyes scanned the newsprint, her heart broke for the
sensitive and creative girl portrayed in the article.  She hardly recognized
that girl as herself anymore. 

Tess stared at the title of the final article until the
words “the other victims” wavered on the page.  The title suggested sympathy. 
The reporter she grew up despising had earned a Pulitzer Prize off the
suffering of her family.  She’d always expected some reparation, some apology,
something to atone for exposing her family’s wounds.

Yet this was all there was, a title acknowledging them as
heirs to the costly aftermath of Randall Wright’s crimes. 

The reporter, Neil Palmer, owed her more than that, she
thought.  She grabbed the phone.  Information didn’t have a listing for him,
but there were other Palmers listed and, on a hunch, Tess bet the publicly
known reporter hid behind his wife.  She jotted down every female Palmer listed
within the city limits.  St. Petersburg wasn’t teaming with as many residents
bearing the same name as New York City was.  It wasn’t crammed full of
Palmers.  There were enough, but only three fitting her criteria.

Tess dialed the first number.  It was barely six in the
morning.

“Yeah, hello,” a voice disoriented by sleep answered.

“Neil Palmer?”

“Who’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

Her heart raced.  She’d found him on the first try.  “Tess
Olsen.”

“Tess Olsen,” he slowly repeated her name.  “Tess Olsen?” 
He seemed to be asking her for confirmation that she was the Tess Olsen his
memory just now had identified. 

“You remember?” she asked.

“How are you?”

“I want to make sure none of this conversation ever
appears in print.”

“Okay,” was his off-balance reply.

“Swear to it.”

“Yeah sure, you have my word.”

“And thousands read them every day.”

He cleared his throat.  “We’re off the record.  Swear on
my mother’s best china.”

Tess continued her interrogation-like conversation.  “The
governor recently signed Randall Wright’s death warrant.”

“True.”

“I want to be there when he’s executed.”  When there
wasn’t an answer, she thought they’d been disconnected.  “Hello?”

“I’m here, just a bit confused.”

“Then let me clarify it.  The state is going to issue the
press passes, isn’t that right?”

“As witnesses, yes, but I think that’s on a lottery
basis.  I’m not up on how that all works.”

“I want one of those passes.”

His sigh blew into the telephone.  “I don’t know how I can
help you with that.”

“You’re part of the press.  You reporters always get the
best seats in the house to any concert or athletic event.  I’m sure you can
come up with a pass to Randall Wright’s execution.”

“Entertainment events and executions are two different
animals,” he countered.

“You must have connections.”

“Even if the Tampa Bay Journal is issued a pass, I can’t
guarantee I’ll be the one who gets it.”

“I’m sure you could use your influence to get it,” she
said, her voice tinged with irritation.  “You certainly influenced a lot people
to talk to you who knew my family.”

“I wish you’d ask me a favor I could grant.”

“I wish a lot of things, too, but life isn’t always so
kind.”

“Are you sure about this?  That’s a pretty weighty desire
you have.”  He was starting to sound paternal.

“If something changes, mail a note to my father’s house
addressed to me.  I’m sure you know the address.  He’ll forward it to me, and
I’ll contact you.” 

She hung up the phone without giving him an opportunity to
say another word.  There was nothing he could say she wanted to hear, unless it
had to do with getting her into Wright’s execution. 

Tess sat across from Francesca studying a painting they’d
both worked on but found her gaze lingering on Francesca instead.  When her
mentor glanced up and caught her eyes, Tess realized she was staring.  Each
time this happened, Tess lowered her weary head and tried concentrating on the
work in front of her, but eventually her eyes found their way back to
Francesca.

Since she’d started working at Mazzaro Brothers, their
workspaces had been diagonal to each other; even so, Francesca was still an
enigma to her.  Since their lunch, she was even more so.  Contemplating this,
Tess recognized the irony in her own thoughts.  Lately, Tess was even an enigma
to herself. 

But Francesca was different; she didn’t keep her
co-workers on the perimeter of her life, except for Tess, but that was her
choice.  Francesca sensed this about Tess and kept a respectful distance.

Sharon couldn’t.  She kept trying to breach Tess’s walls. 
Sharon hadn’t figured out they were there yet, but she would, just as everyone
else had after continually bumping into them.  Eventually, Sharon’s demeanor
toward her would sour, too.  Now that Tess hid Conner behind those walls, it
was more important than ever to keep them impregnable. 

People didn’t handle rejection of any type very well:
employers, lovers, and overtures of friendship and camaraderie.  Tess often
found herself not only ignored by her co-workers, but sometimes she believed
they even loathed her.  The three men and two other women working at Mazzaro
Brothers avoided her corner of the studio unless they required Francesca’s
expertise. 

Tess was always polite about her rejections.  Why couldn’t
people just label her as shy and leave it at that?  But they didn’t.  The same
sense that told them Tess purposely excluded them from her inner circle
whispered to them that this banishment was conscious on Tess’s part, and they
resented her for it.

“Is there something wrong?”  Francesca asked without
looking up.

“You’re a sphinx.”

Francesca chuckled.  “For a moment, I thought I was the
Mona Lisa being much admired, but I see that you are puzzling over me instead. 
Another of life’s disappointments.”

“You seem so together.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

She wanted to say “like Ben” but substituted the words
“stable and balanced” instead.

“And you appear much the same way to me,” Francesca
answered.

“Held together by a thread,” Tess responded.  “And one
that more than ever I’m struggling to keep hold of so my life doesn’t
unravel.”  She dipped her head.  “You don’t seem to struggle holding yours
together.  After you told me about your mother’s life and how tragic it was,
the more I thought about it, I realized your life wasn’t a cake walk either,
and yet look at you.”

“Is this what you heard me say?”

“No, but it’s not difficult to figure out that a girl who
grows up in a convent after her mother fails to abort her didn’t have a normal
childhood.”

“It was the only one I had.”

“That’s it?”

Francesca finally looked up.  “Tess, tell me what confuses
you.”

She thought again of Ben, who had a secure upbringing as a
plausible reason for his stable life, while Francesca had only valid excuses
she refused to use. 

“You do.”

“You want to hear how bleak my life was?”

“You just seemed unfazed by it all.”

“It was my life.  Maybe if I had been orphaned as an older
child, then sent away to live with the Sisters, it would have been different. 
But I cannot lament for what I did not know.  I had twenty mothers.  What could
be better than that?”

Sharon poked her head around the soft walls surrounding
Francesca’s work area.  “Are we still on for lunch?”

“Is it that time already?”  Francesca glanced at her
watch.  “Time is very impatient.  It moves much too quickly.  Tess, care to
join us?”

“Too tired.”  Tess pushed away from the table and avoided
looking at Sharon.  Her intense focus on Francesca and their work had acted as
a repellant to Sharon when she’d drifted past them twice earlier while
meandering through the studio.

“Our Tess did not get enough sleep last night,” Francesca
explained to Sharon.

“Did the boyfriend spend the night?”  Sharon winked at
Tess. 

Her restless glance flickered past Sharon’s cheerful smile. 
“Just insomnia.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?  It’s been so
long for me that I wouldn’t know.”

Francesca stood up, put her arm around Sharon, pulled her
close and remarked to Tess, “Our young assistant brings a certain charm to this
stuffy old place, is that not so?”

“Oodles,” she responded flatly.

“I bring life,” Sharon boasted.

Francesca smiled.  “The gift of the young.” 

“Too bad we can’t take a little nip during lunch.  They
have the best beers where we’re going.  I’d love a nice big pint of Guinness
right about now,” Sharon said to no one in particular, but her musings about
Ireland’s favorite brew drew Tess’s immediate attention. 

“What about you, Francesca?  Seeing as how you’re in
charge, if you go first, we won’t have to feel guilty,” Sharon said.

Francesca’s face soured.  “Guinness is too dark for me.”

“You wimpy Italians.  You like wine, right?  The Irish
can’t brag about how wonderful their food is like the Italians can, but no one
can touch their beer.”

“True.”

“Which is why we should drink our lunch today, because I
can’t get excited about lamb stew, but I could about a nice stout.  I only need
one.  I’d be flat on my back if I had two.  But,” Sharon smirked, “that
wouldn’t be such a bad position to be in if my favorite bartender is serving up
the drinks.”

Francesca slipped into her coat.  “This is why we will
drink iced tea or water.”

Tess pushed away from the worktable.  Her slumping
shoulders looked as if they were about to pull her to the ground.

Sharon sized her up with her eyes.  “You could use a
little pick-me-up.  Come on out with us.  A tall glass of iced tea will do you
good.”

Tess nodded.  “I’m just so tired I’m afraid if I stop, I
won’t get restarted.  And if I eat, I’ll just want to curl up in a little ball
and nap.”

“You’re going to miss that Irish pub I was telling you
about.” 

“Another time,” Tess said, relieved to be dodging an
outing that might put her together with Conner and Sharon in the same setting.

***

Tess still lingered at Francesca’s worktable when she
returned from lunch with Sharon in tow.  If staying awake counted as an
achievement, then maybe Tess had succeeded in doing something constructive;
otherwise, it was an unproductive hour.

Francesca pulled open her worktable’s lap drawer.  “Here
they are.  I thought they were in my purse, but I must have put the ones for
work in here.  Ah, the mind is not kind to aging.  Oh well, here is one for
you, Sharon, and Tess, here is one for you.”

She looked up as Francesca handed her a small, white
envelope and asked, “What’s this?”

“Just a small party I am having.  I thought of having a
Christmas party, but people are busy with so many other obligations between
Thanksgiving and Christmas that I decided to have one before everyone’s life
gets too hectic.”

“That means no excuses for not showing up,” Sharon said to
Tess.

“When is it?” she asked as she opened the invitation to
find out for herself.

“In only two-and-a-half weeks,” Francesca said with a
grimace.  “I know it is short notice for you young people and your busy social
calendars.”

“Can I bring anything?”  Sharon asked.

“Yes, a guest.  And you, too, Tess.” 

Sharon fanned herself with the invitation.  “A guest? 
He’ll be a surprise guest, even to me.  But I have two-and-a-half weeks to find
him.  What about you, Tess?  Bringing your writer friend?”

She sidestepped the topic of Ben by saying, “If I tell
you, I won’t give you any mysteries to solve.”

“I bet it’s him.  Francesca, I bet she brings him.”

“I never bet on anything.”  Francesca’s coat was off and
she was putting her bifocals back on, signaling her return to work.

Sharon shrugged.  “I suppose I should head back to my desk
before Mr. Mazzaro comes howling for me.  See you both later.”

Francesca took her seat across from Tess.  “You are tired,
Tess.  Why not go home and go to sleep?  You will feel better tomorrow, and
this work will still be here.”

“I’m okay.  I won’t be able to sleep, so why bother?”

“You had a troubled night?”

She rubbed her eyes.  “If you haven’t already figured it
out, I have a troubled life.”

“You are a smart woman, Tess.  If it is troubled, you have
it within you to change it.”

“You sound like
The Wizard of Oz
.”  She waved off
Francesca’s curious glance.  “It’s a long story: Dorothy, a tornado, munchkins
and a rainbow.  But I suppose if I only had a heart, courage and brains, I’d be
okay.”

“Was there a happy ending to this story?”

“Yeah, Dorothy made it back to Kansas.  I don’t know if
I’d call that a victory, but home is where the heart is.”