Blood shot straight to his groin. The absence of music made her seem bewitched, both eerily beautiful and more than a little mad. April, with her goddess eyes and kitten’s pout…The girl who’d spent the seventies servicing the gods of rock and roll…He knew this disruptive virago dancing at the edge of the pond to the very marrow of his bones. Her excesses, her wild demands, her sexual recklessness had been toxic to a kid of twenty-three. A kid he’d left behind long ago. Now he couldn’t imagine her bending to anyone’s will but her own.

As she rocked to the imaginary beat, the light spilling from the cottage’s back door fixture caught on the cord of a headset. The music wasn’t imaginary after all. She was dancing to a song coming from her iPod. She was nothing more than a middle-aged woman kicking up her heels. But knowing that didn’t break her spell.

Her hips beat out a final tattoo. Her hair shimmered one last time, and then her arms fell to her sides. She pulled out the earphones. He slipped back into the woods.

Chapter Twenty-one

Blue gazed at the finished portrait before she left the house. Nita wore an ice blue ball gown from a dancing exhibition in the fifties and a sixties beehive that showcased the diamond earrings Marshall had given her as a wedding present in the seventies. She was slim and glamorous. Her skin was flawless, her makeup dramatic. Blue had posed her on an imaginary grand staircase with Tango at her feet. Nita had made her paint out Tango.

“It’s not as bad as I expected,” Nita said the first time she saw the portrait hung against the gold-flocked wallpaper in the foyer.

Blue correctly translated that to mean she loved it, and, despite its excessive glitz, Blue was happy with how perfectly she’d captured Nita’s view of herself: the sex kitten’s sparkle in her eyes, the alluring smile on her frosted pink lips, and the perfect shade of platinum in her beehive. More than once, she found Nita in the foyer studying it, an expression of yearning in her aging eyes.

Blue had money in her wallet now. She could leave Garrison anytime.

Nita appeared behind her, and they took off for Sunday dinner at the farm. Dean and Riley grilled burgers and Blue made barbecued beans accompanied by a watermelon salad flavored with fresh mint and lime juice. When Dean started eating his hamburger, he began baiting her about not doing the murals, accusing her of ingratitude, artistic cowardice, and high treason, all of it easy to ignore. Until April spoke up.

“I know how much you love this house, Blue. I’m surprised you don’t want to leave your mark on it.”