Three Little Words

He hesitated at the sound of silverware clinking and voices that rose and fell as if carried by waves. “Me? I was cursed with curiosity.”

“Cursed?”

His eyebrows lifted. “Or blessed. At the moment, I’m feeling it was a curse.” He brushed the comment away with a wry smile. “What were you escaping?”

She blinked. “There’s that curiosity of yours.”

“I can guess. Your parents.”

“Sure you can guess. I already gave you a clue, back in Sonny’s room.”

“Most people don’t call their parents ‘acceptable.’”

“What can I say? They weren’t ideal, but they weren’t terrible. No abuse or blatant dysfunction.” Did it count as abandonment if you still had your mother?

“But…?”

She gave in to his probing. The man was subtle and skilled; she wanted to talk. “Well, my dad was out of the picture.” She flicked a hand as if to shoo her father away even though their contact had been sporadic at best through her growing-up years and practically nil since then. He’d never pushed for a rapprochement in all this time, and she wasn’t willing to put herself forward for another rejection. As far as Tess knew, Tony Bucek had forgotten he even had a daughter.

“And my mother was barely functional, particularly when I was a child. She had frequent migraines—during her spells, she needed the house to be kept quiet and dark. We lived in the country, with only two neighbors. I was on my own a lot. So I developed an active imagination to keep myself amused.”

Connor gazed at her for a long, quiet moment. Even the other tables had a lull.

She thought he might use a platitude. Instead, he asked, “Did you have an imaginary friend?”

She was so surprised at his whimsy, she blurted, “Rosehip Fumblethumbs,” as the waitress arrived at their table with a basket of bread and plates of salad.

Connor asked for another beer. “There must be a reason for a name like that.”

Tess picked the onion out of her salad with the tines of her fork, moving it to the edge of her plate. “If there was, I can’t remember. I was about four.” Her father had left home; her mother was all doom and gloom. Tess had quickly learned to walk on eggshells.

Four years old and she’d begun to live small.

“Rosehip Fumblethumbs did everything I wasn’t supposed to. She scratched my mother’s records, she turned up the volume. She tore down the curtains and opened every window and door. She broke things. Bounced on the bed. Yelled out loud.” Tess stopped and laughed at her own reverie.

Connor dragged a curl of escarole through blue-cheese dressing. “Sounds like a typical kid, if you ask me.”

“I suppose so. But Rosey did have green hair, orange freckles and fairy wings. She slept outdoors, in a bed of roses. We had tea parties under the porch.”

“Vivid imaginings for a four year old.”

Tess tried to remember. “Rosey developed over the years.”

“Years?”

“She stayed around until I was at least ten.”

“That’s a long time. Most imaginary friends have shorter life spans.”

“You’re an authority, are you?”

Connor grinned. “You caught me. I’m talking out my ear.”

“No imaginary friends of your own?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Even at the lighthouse? It must have been lonely there.”

“Yeah, at times. But I considered it an adventure, even when the road was washed out and we had no electricity. My grandfather was a widower by then, so life at the lighthouse had become rather rough and undomesticated. Perfect for a ten-year-old boy.”

Growing up, Tess had longed for a normal life with fancy guest soaps, home-baked chocolate-chip cookies, seasonal holiday decorations and waxed floors scattered with rag rugs. The sort of domestication she observed at friends’ houses, when her own mother could barely summon the strength to climb out of bed and go to work. When she’d discovered the boisterous closeness and comfort at the Johnsons’, she’d believed that she had finally come home.