The Secret of Everything (17 page)

“Oh, I know where I’ve been,” Annie said.

Tessa felt suddenly ashamed to be poking around in her little identity angst when she’d had so much more than either of these two, when her problem was too much pride instead of not enough.

“Are you guys ready to add the cinnamon?” Vita said.

“Yes!”

Vita rolled the dough out very thinly on the floured surface of the steel work space. “We need to have a fairly even rectangle,” she said, folding down a round edge and rolling her heavy marble rolling pin over it. Tessa and Annie, stationed at either end of the table, imitated her as best they could. “A little thinner, Tessa,” she said. “Very good, Annie. Get that corner a little more square. It’s not desperately important, but you’re kind of a perfectionist, so you’ll like getting it exactly right.”

Annie smiled, a crooked half smile that made her look about twelve.

Vita dipped a pastry brush in melted butter and brushed it over the dough until it glistened. “Cover the whole thing,” she said. “Then sprinkle the cinnamon mixture over it. It doesn’t have to be perfectly even, Annie. It’s kind of fun to have surprises.”

Tessa found herself humming under her breath as she rolled the dough into a tight, long tube, and she stopped to listen to what it was.

“Come all ye rolling minstrels,”
she began to sing aloud,
“and together we will try to rouse the spirit of the earth …”

“Those that dance will start to dance,”
sang Vita along with her.

And Annie, too, said, “Hey, I know that song!”

“It’s on the folk-song loop,” Vita said, nodding at her iPod dock. “Fairport Convention. It’s good music for the rush.”

“Ah, that’s it.”

Tessa smiled, pinching the edges of the loaf, and sang,
“Come all ye rolling minstrels,”
and the other two joined in,
“and together we will try to rouse the spirit of the earth …”

When the cinnamon rolls were baked, they sat at the table in the back of the kitchen, muscles aching, and ate them freshly out of the oven, covered in fresh butter cut in thick pats and allowed to melt into the hot bread. It was, Tessa thought, one of the best foods she had eaten in her life.

Ever.

When she got back to her room, Tessa tried to make notes on all the information she’d collected today, but her brain refused to do one more task. Leaving the French doors open to the late-afternoon breezes, she sprawled on the bed, flat on her belly, arms flung upward, and fell instantly asleep. She dreamed in fragments. Music and a red bike and a fire and something about pie.

It was the wind that awakened her. It slammed with sudden and muscular strength into the day, bringing clouds that smelled of rain, gusting and bellowing, knocking over a chair on the balcony and swinging the wind chimes into a frenzy of clanging. A scatter of loose cottonwood leaves flew into the room through the open doors like giant confetti.

Tessa rolled over to her side and looked out to the darkening sky, feeling suddenly lonely. Why had she come here? Why did she still think she had to wander all over the universe instead of picking a place to settle in?

Partly because she didn’t really have any other job to do. Tourism had been her career for nearly sixteen years.

She missed her father. He was the through line in her world, the one thing that stayed the same, year after year, move after move. She always missed him when she first left Santa Cruz on one of her long breaks. No one had ever “got” her like her dad, got her jokes, got it when she was cranky and tired and didn’t want to talk, or listened endlessly when she was in a mood to talk and talk and talk. She missed the dogs. Missed Peaches curled up on her bed whenever she woke up. Missed Sam’s eclectic music collection—all on CDs and vinyl, of course, since he wouldn’t buy a computer, and an iPod required a computer.

She’d get over missing her dad again, but today the contrast of having had his easy companionship every day to being alone again made her life seem kind of pathetic. Maybe she was tired of traveling all the time. She’d be forty in three years. Maybe it was time for a change.

For now she tried again to focus on the information she’d collected today. Green Gate Farms and the beautiful cooking school there that made even Tessa—lifelong indifferent cook—want to buy knives and wear a pale-green coat with her name embroidered on it. Hmm. She should definitely find out if they could get a coat personalized for each person on the tour. Great souvenir and conversation piece.

She thought, too, of baking bread with Vita, who had told Annie and Tessa about her habit of running every evening for three to ten miles. She’d shown them the medals she saved
from the marathons she’d run around the country. Every year she picked a different race in a new city—this year she had run the Chicago Marathon. It was a vacation for her. And she had said, quietly, that running made her strong after she’d escaped an abusive relationship. Annie had looked at her for a long time. “How did you get away from him?”

And Tessa noticed the crookedness of Annie’s nose, the scar along her forehead, and wanted to cry. Cry for Vita and Annie and their scars. Cry for women who had not had anyone in their lives to make them fierce. Cry for Lisa, who had been learning fierceness when nature knocked her flat.

Before the black hole could open again in her chest, Tessa sat up and found her cell phone and called her dad.

“Hey, girl!” he said. “I’m so glad to see your number. How’s it going?”

“Dad, I had such a good day. I went out to the commune, or what was the commune.”

“Wow. Did it look familiar?”

“Maybe a little, and there was an old house I wanted to visit, but there was a conference going on there.”

A little bubble of silence came down the line. “A conference?” he repeated, perplexed.

“Yes.” She laughed. “I’d bet a fair sum of money that you’d never recognize it now. It’s big business. The farms are still organic, and they raise bees for honey and have retreats and conferences there.”

“Holy shit.”

“It’s really cool. And I’m pretty sure I recognized the tea they served in a little café.”

“Is it like a cinnamon ginseng lemony thing?”

“That’s it.”

“Gawd, I love that tea!”

“It was fantastic,” she agreed. “They have farm stands, and they bottle the honey and ship produce to cities all over New Mexico and Colorado, and they’ve just opened a vegetarian cooking school. It’s amazing.”

“A school! Huh.” He laughed. “I’m having a little trouble wrapping my old brain around the whole thing.”

“You should come on out here, check it out. You’d have fun.”

“Nah. You’re gonna be done in a couple of days, right?”

Tessa thought of the school, the hikes. “I might need to stay a little longer. There’s a lot to explore.”

“Sounds like it.”

“You’d have a good time, Dad. Why don’t you take a week and come look around?”

“No. Thanks. I’m not interested in digging around in the past. Look forward, never back.”

“Mmm.”

He said, “How are you doing with all your … stuff?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” She led him back to her questions. “Did we live in the old house at the commune?”

“Yeah. It was a wreck, but it was better for you than a tent in the wintertime.”

“I wish I remembered.”

“You were pretty little.”

She nodded. “I just keep getting the feeling …”

“What?”

“That there’s something I should remember, something important that I forgot.”

“Like what?”

Tessa narrowed her eyes, letting the sensation rise in her memory. “I don’t know. I can’t bring it in.”

“Well, let me know if it shows up. And call me if you need me.”

“I will. Thanks, Dad.”

Her phone beeped, and she pulled it away from her ear to see who was calling.
Vince Grasso
showed on the screen. Something hot ran down her spine. “Hey, Dad. I’ve got a call coming in, okay? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Bye, kiddo. Take care.”

   V
ince had dropped the children with his mother on his way to work. She dismissed his worries about Jade and Natalie’s constant fighting but promised to keep an eye on them when they were in Pueblo.

“And be sure Jade doesn’t get baby teenager clothes,” he said.

“Vince,” she’d said in her ex-smoker’s rasp. “I got it.”

At work, the fire and rescue teams were doing training all week, brushing up on winter tracking, signs of hypothermia, winter survival in all its forms. It was a slower season for them once the hikers and amateur climbers and unskilled rafters headed home for the cold months, but there were always lost cross-country and backcountry skiers, and they did double time as house fires came front and center.

All day, Vince found himself thinking about the long limbs and straightforward gaze of Tessa Harlow. Her card was tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. He had the evening free. She was just passing through, so presumably she didn’t have any big requirements for commitment and he wouldn’t have to worry about his girls having much contact with her.

God knew he could use a little recreational relief.