Senseless Acts of Beauty (6 page)

T
ess lurked by the sliding glass doors of the main lodge, pressed against the wall in the shadow of the curtains, watching her natural daughter stride behind Riley as they both headed toward the lodge.

The last time Tess had laid eyes on Sadie, her daughter had been only three days old. Tess had been so loopy from pain medication that she’d somehow convinced herself if she just swaddled her daughter right, then the Camp Kwenback towel would protect her baby from all harm. But Sadie kept stretching her legs—plump with rolls—as Tess tried to bundle her. The baby girl inadvertently nudged away all the careful folding, making Tess laugh, making the whole process a wonderful game. Just when Tess thought she’d finally done it right, the nurse had swept in, startling Tess, startling Sadie. Sadie had let out a cry that released a slow, sliding weight in Tess’s chest that she later recognized as her first milk dropping.

Help me, Tess had said to the nurse, who stood there implacable, holding out her arms.

Help me.
Tess had fumbled to gather Sadie and all her twisted blankets close.

Help me.

“Hey, there you are.”

Riley stepped through the sliding door, leaving it open for the shadow coming in behind her.

“You were starting to worry me, Tess.” Riley toed off a sneaker. “How’s the headache?”

Tess pressed her thumb against the throb pulsing behind her right eye socket, the medicine-muffled remnant of the migraine that had descended with a vengeance last night. Her palm obscured her vision—and her face—as Sadie stepped into the room.

“It could be better,” Tess said, blinking. “I could use some industrial-strength joe.”

“I’ve got some of that made already, as well as some cranberry muffins in the kitchen. Let me just take care of Sadie here. Sadie, don’t bother taking off your sneakers, it’ll only take me a minute to fetch the library card.”

Riley set off toward the reception desk. Tess held her breath as she lowered her arm and faced her daughter. She tensed against a thunderclap of recognition, a lightning flash of womb-deep acknowledgment of shared blood and body and bone, expecting it, dreading it, and hoping to God that it wouldn’t happen.

Then the reality of Sadie came at her in a rush: The sharp jaw, the narrow shoulders, the wide cheekbones just starting to emerge under the rounded face she recognized from the social media photos. Sadie’s nostrils flared as if she sensed she was under perusal. She crouched to tighten the laces of her sneakers, the ridge of her spine visible under the ribbed tank top. Her hair was a bright red, the legacy of an aunt Tess had only seen in pictures in her childhood home—her mother’s only sister, the one who’d died in her teens.

Sadie’s ponytail dangled with bead charms.

Tess had rehearsed a little speech last night as she struggled to sleep, and now it stuttered out, her voice artificially high. “Sadie, is it? Is this another niece, Riley?”

“No, she’s a guest,” Riley said, from where she dug into some drawers across the room. “Sadie, this is my friend Tess. Tess, Sadie. Tess and I go way, way back to our high school days.”

“Sadie.” Tess spoke the word like it was foreign, like she hadn’t rolled it over a thousand times in her mouth. “That’s not a name you hear often.”

“My parents met each other at a Sadie Hawkins dance.”

Her daughter’s voice was monotone and husky low, as if the girl was reciting something she’d memorized by rote.

“Are they around here right now?” Tess asked. “Your parents?”

“Nope.”

Sadie’s reply was hard on the
p
and offered up no other explanation. Tess didn’t really need an explanation. She’d learned many months after it happened that Sadie’s parents had died in a car accident, a wreck on the interstate six years ago involving an eighteen-wheeler like the ones Tess drove across North Dakota.

Then Sadie stood up, sweeping up the backpack poised by the door. The girl gave her a baleful look, and with a gut kick, Tess realized that the eyes Sadie turned upon her were pale green—green like alfalfa fields in the early spring when the shoots first rise out of the ground—and without stepping any closer, Tess knew there would be a rust ring around those pupils.

Those were her mother’s eyes.

Just then the migraine shot a shiv through her skull, a cold, sharp pain that buried deep in her brain.

Sadie said, “Hey, are you all right?”

Tess squeezed the skin between her nose and brow, hoping Sadie didn’t notice that it was the sight of Sadie’s green eyes that had cut right to the soft unprotected pith of her, cracking the shell of numbness she’d spent fifteen years developing.

“Tess gets migraines,” Riley explained as she approached and handed Sadie a card. “The library’s only open for a few hours today, so you’d best head into town now. You can take one of the bikes in the barn.”

“Okay…thanks.”

And then Sadie was gone, her shadow slipping out the back door and into the sunshine as swiftly as if she’d gone up in smoke.

“Wow.” Riley came close, folding her arms and peering at her in concern. “You really don’t look so good.”

Tess closed her eyes and fought to pull her shattered self together. “About that coffee…?”

“Right.”

Tess stumbled after Riley, resisting the urge to glance out the sliding back doors, telling herself the worst was over because she’d made it through the initial contact and Sadie hadn’t recognized her. She told herself that it was
good
that Sadie hadn’t recognized her, even as she felt some lonely ghost of herself peel away to trail the young girl toward the barn.

She’d been lucky, she thought, as she pressed her thumb against her eye socket. She shouldn’t risk another face-to-face. She had to get this wayward runaway back to her home before Sadie got herself in real trouble. And Tess had to do it without revealing herself, something she could do only if she played her cards right with Riley.

So she followed Riley into the kitchen, which looked exactly the same as it had all those years ago, right down to the long butcher-block table and the battered white cabinets. Tess turned and gripped the edge of the table. With a little push, she lifted her backside onto it.

“Ancient reflex,” Tess said, catching Riley’s over-the-shoulder grin. “I don’t see any health inspectors around.”

“No health inspectors. This is no longer a commercial kitchen.” Riley poured the last of the coffee into an old mug emblazoned with the faded letters
CK
. “And keeping up to code is the least of my worries these days.”

Tess took the mug in both hands. The coffee was thick and strong and well-cooked and lukewarm, just like it had come out of some brown-stained glass-bottomed industrial coffee carafe in any truck-stop diner. She gulped it down and concentrated on the weight of it sliding into her.

She stopped long enough to breathe. “Being in this kitchen again makes me think of your grandmother and her legendary gingersnaps.”

“Nothing is as good as Nana’s gingersnaps. I swear we ate half the dough whenever she made them.”

“Have you made any cookies with that runaway of yours?”

Tess watched over the rim of her cup as Riley blinked. Riley opened her mouth and then shut it just as quickly. Her old friend had a face as transparent as glass. Riley should never play poker for money.

Tess said, “You seriously thought I wouldn’t know?”

“Not unless you’re psychic. You haven’t left your room since you arrived yesterday afternoon.”

“Runaways give off a vibe.” Tess pressed the coffee mug against her thigh, grateful for the caffeine hit just starting to dull the pain in her head. “Skinny kid, dirty clothes, battered sneakers. No parents in the vicinity. A rucksack she grabbed when I eyeballed her. She answered my questions with one syllable. She kept ducking her head. Remind you of anybody?”

“About six of my nephews.”

“I drive trucks. I come upon runaways all the time hitching on the road and in the parking lots of roadside diners. You start to sniff them out after a while. How did this girl wind up crashing in Camp Kwenback?”

Riley shrugged and leaned against the sink. “I caught her in the generator shed yesterday, when she was trying to find shelter from the rain. I lured her into my clutches with the offer of a warm fire and hot chocolate. If I had to guess by the bug bites on her legs and the clothes I found drying in the farthest cabin, I’d say she’d been hanging around town since the end of blackfly season.”

Tess feigned surprise, though she knew it had been at least two weeks since Sadie had gone silent on social media. “She’s not a local?”

“No.”

“But you checked for alerts, right?” Tess took a sip of coffee, leaning back on her other hand. “Missing children websites, that kind of thing?”

Riley grabbed a dishtowel and did her best to rub a layer of skin off her hands, watching the process as if she had money on the outcome.

“Oooookay,” Tess said, trying to keep her voice light, like this wasn’t any real concern of hers. “I’m just thinking about her frantic parents.”

“She told me that she doesn’t have any.”

“Oh, I’m sure no runaway has ever said that.”

“She said they died in a car accident.” Riley tossed the dishtowel aside, opened a cabinet, and grabbed a canister of coffee. “And yes, I believe her.”

“Having no parents doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a guardian. She may have grandparents, aunts, even foster parents—”

“I’ve considered all that.” Riley swiftly shoveled ground coffee into the filter.

“Have you considered checking those skinny arms for track marks?”

“Oh for goodness sake, Tess, she’s not a junkie. She’s here because she’s looking for her birth mother.”

Tess started. She grabbed the counter for stability and felt the grit of embedded flour under the edge. Tess hadn’t expected Sadie to confess her real motives to Riley. That made Tess’s situation in Pine Lake all the more difficult.

“She owns a Camp Kwenback towel,” Riley explained, as she closed the coffeemaker and hit the On button. “She told me that she was wrapped in it when her adoptive parents picked her up from the hospital.”

Tess pinched the bridge of her nose again, even though the migraine had ebbed, because the action would hide her face.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Riley said, “but just think of what that kid had to do to trace the logo to this place.”

Tess didn’t have to think. She knew. Sadie must have found a service that did searches for trademarks and logos. Sadie had saved up money somehow, paid for the search. Sadie had posted something mysterious a couple of months ago about finding what she’d been looking for. Oh, she was a smart one, her daughter. Knowing herself and Sadie’s bastard of a father, Tess wondered where the brains came from.

Tess willed the throbbing behind her eye to ease. “So you’re a redhead, Riley,” she said lightly. “Got any secrets to confess?”

“What?”

“With that hair, you could pass as her mother easily.”

“No, no, no way, no how.” Riley raised both her palms and leaned back against the counter. “I’ve never had any kids. And I have a soon-to-be-ex-husband to vouch for the fact that I never intend to have any.”

That hung in the air for a moment, a confession of a different sort. Tess paused, debated whether to follow up on it, and then seeing how Riley looked away, Tess chose instead to stay on track.

“Okay, then,” Tess said. “I have to assume your runaway came here because she knows you’re an adoptee, too.”

“No, I told you, there was a towel—”

“Easily filched.”

“—and she didn’t know I was adopted. She was surprised when I told her.”

“It’s a small town, Riley. She’s had a couple of weeks to ask around, right? Heck, five minutes in one of the booths at Josey’s and any stranger would know everyone’s business, including yours.”

“C’mon, Tess. Who’s gossiping about me being adopted?”

“Fair enough. I’m just saying it’s quite a coincidence.” Tess raised her hand to gesture to the solid roof, the kitchen full of food. “Being an adoptee would make you sympathetic to her situation. It’d make you more willing to help, give her place to crash, whatever. All it would take is a sob story about dead parents and the theft of a single towel.”

Riley blinked, nonplussed. “You’re making it sound like Sadie’s some kind of manipulator.”

“On the street, kids learn how to hustle. Real fast.” Tess, sensing Riley’s hesitation, took the chance to press a little harder. “You know Sadie’s last name. Right?”

“No.”

“Do you know where she came from?”

“No.”

“Do the authorities know she’s here?”

Riley crossed her arms as the coffeepot began to gurgle behind her, looking around the room as if seeking spiderwebs in the ceiling corners. “The girl is just looking for her mother. She needs a couple of days to do some research. Once she realizes that her birth mother hasn’t been hanging around for the past fourteen years, waiting for her to show up, I’m sure she’ll go back to where she came from.”

“Riley, did you ever go searching for your own birth mother?”

Riley turned so pale so fast that Tess felt a kick of guilt. She’d gone too far. Tess didn’t have the right to ask that kind of question.

Tess raised a hand in apology. “Hey, look, I’m—”

“It’s okay.”

“No, really, it’s none of my business and—”

“I did look for her.” Riley rocked against the counter. “It didn’t turn out well.”

Riley stared at the kitchen floor, but Tess could tell Riley wasn’t seeing the odd-size gray slate tiles.

“I’m sorry.” Even as she spoke, Tess knew she had to use this unexpected vulnerability for Sadie’s sake. “Did you and Sadie talk about that? About how a search for a birth mother could go wrong?”

Tess hoped the terror of the idea didn’t skitter across her own face as violently as it now skittered across Riley’s.

“We discussed it. A little.” Riley swiveled against the counter, flipped open a cabinet, and pulled down another mug. “So,” she said, her voice firm, “you think I should just throw this girl out.”

“Runaways mean trouble.”