by Kay Bratt
The messages he’d left on her phone made her feel crazy—he said he loved her and he’d slipped, but it meant nothing. That he was lonely and vulnerable because he felt she didn’t want him with her. That she was his everything. Quinn found herself believing it one minute, then feeling angry again the next. Would she ever be able to forgive and forget? Did she even want to try? And how many times had he slipped in the past that she was too naive to know about?
She felt such a keen sense of loss and longing for her mother that she was dizzy. If her mother were here, Quinn would be calling her. Telling her the news or asking what she should do.
But then, if her mother were here, Quinn wouldn’t have had a reason to take the test or seek out the truth about who her father was. She wouldn’t know that the man she’d always thought was her deadbeat dad actually wasn’t.
Quinn remembered what Auntie Wang had said about the birth certificate.
It was so frustrating. Her mother had started all this, and now, when Quinn needed her the most, Quinn had to navigate it alone. A catch in her chest alerted her to how lonely she felt.
She went to the bed, and after pulling off her dusty clothes from her day out with Liam, she climbed in, too overwhelmed and weak to even think about showering. For once, she wasn’t even going to go through taking off her makeup and the regimen that normally followed.
What was a film of sweat and dirt when she was soon going to meet someone related to her by blood?
In three days.
It would be only the second relative she had ever known. If he even was a relative. How much could a wad of spit really tell you about your family line or connect you with a relative half a world away? Was it really as accurate as people said? Could it be a mistake? What would she say to him? What would he think about her? And maybe he was a weirdo. A freak. A murderer who had hacked her account and was drawing her in as prey.
She turned over, clutching the pillow to her chest. Now she was getting melodramatic. But being alone with so many torrential thoughts was making her crazy. She needed to talk to someone.
A friend.
Liam was out of the question. The next thought that came to her was a surprise out of left field.
Maggie Dalton.
She hadn’t talked to her former best friend in quite a few years, she thought as she cringed, remembering that she hadn’t even contacted Maggie when her mother died. That would hurt her. Maggie had always said Quinn’s mom was like a second mother to her.
In the trauma of the long illness and then her mom’s death, Quinn wasn’t in her right mind. She’d mentioned Maggie to Ethan, but he’d encouraged her to just focus on the arrangements, telling her that she didn’t need a distraction. That Maggie would want to make a long visit out of it, and Quinn wasn’t in a state to entertain. At the time, she’d felt he was right.
It wasn’t fair to Maggie, though. Quinn knew her best friend would’ve been comforting. Not demanding.
Quinn sat up and swung her legs over the bed. She picked up her phone and found Maggie’s number.
When she pressed it, she prayed that Maggie was still as forgiving as she’d been back in the day. Every spat they’d ever had was short-lived; Maggie’s personality was one that didn’t hold grudges.
It rang only once, and then a voice came on telling Quinn the number had been disconnected.
Damn. She needed to talk to someone. And if it couldn’t be her mother, then she wanted it to be Maggie.
Maggie had always known what to say. What to do. While Quinn tended to slink into the corners around others, Maggie was the exact opposite and was never afraid to be outspoken or take a stand for them both. Maggie was their mouthpiece, if Quinn really wanted to be honest with herself.
She went to her laptop and brought it to the bed. She pulled up Maggie’s email address and wrote a quick message telling her to please call as soon as possible, that the last number she had was disconnected.
The whoosh from hitting “Send” was followed up immediately by a chime that signified a new email. It was the message to Maggie, rejected as undeliverable.
What was going on? Maggie had changed her phone number and her email address?
Now that was strange.
Quinn stood and went to her bag. She dug through a side pocket until she found her address book, then returned to her cross-legged position, the laptop beside her.
The address book had been through many years and was barely staying together. Quinn was never without it. You never knew when your phone might get stolen, or you might lose it and have no way to contact anyone. You might even lose your laptop at the same time. Then what would you do?
Her address book was her next lifeline.
But because Quinn didn’t have any family other than her mom, and barely any friends from the past, her book was mostly full of professional contacts, with just a few acquaintances scattered in. And passwords. Many, many passwords.
Quinn flipped through the pages.
There was Lea from the hotel in Houston. They’d gone for drinks once. And Rosalind, their social media manager for the hotel. Quinn had thought they were friends for a while, until she kept seeing girls’ night out pics on Instagram and realized she was never invited.
She kept going past a few more pages as she looked for a name that might sound comforting to her.
None did, until she got to the Ds.
Dalton.
Grace Dalton, to be exact. Maggie’s mom.
She figured it was as good a time to call as any. It rang once. Then twice.
“Hello?”
It was Grace. Quinn would recognize her voice no matter how many years went by.
“Hi, Mrs. Dalton. It’s Quinn,” she said.
There was a pause.
“Quinn? Quinn Maguire?”
Well, how many Quinns did the woman know?
She always was a bit foggy. In an endearing way.
“Yes, it’s me. Quinn Maguire. How are you?”
“Oh, honey, I’m fine. Other than the arthritis in my hips that is keeping me down. I don’t venture too far from home now. How are you?”
“I’m—well, I’m okay. Listen, I’m trying to get ahold of Maggie, but the number I have has been disconnected. And I tried email, but that didn’t work either.” Quinn tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. Now that she was talking to Grace, the memories were flooding in, and she wanted to talk to Maggie more than anything she’d wanted in a long time.
Grace hesitated again before replying.
“Quinn, I can’t give you her number,” she said, her voice sad.
Quinn felt stunned for a moment. Maybe Maggie knew about her mother dying and was angry at her?
“Oh, well . . . okay, I guess,” she replied. She wasn’t sure how to ask why without inspiring the woman to say something that might put Quinn in an even worse emotional place than she currently was. “Can you tell her I called?”
“Of course,” Grace said. “It’s not you, Quinn. It’s, well . . . it’s everyone. She doesn’t want anyone to have her information.”
Now that was weird. What was going on with Maggie?
“Is something wrong, Grace?” Quinn couldn’t not ask. And in her worry, she forgot to address her respectfully.
“I’ll tell her you called. If she wants to tell you more, she can contact you herself. Is this the number you can be reached at?”
“It is,” Quinn said, nodding her head, forgetting the woman couldn’t see her. But she really needed Maggie. “Um, Mrs. Dalton?”
“Yes?”
Quinn swallowed the lump in her throat. “Can you tell Maggie I really need to talk to her? It’s sort of important. Or, if I promise not to share it, you could give me—well, you know . . .” She stopped just short of begging the woman for Maggie’s number.
“No, I can’t,” Grace said. “I’ll tell her you called. But, Quinn, it’s time to feed the chickens, so I need to go.”
The phone went dead.
&
nbsp; Quinn sat there, still holding it to her ear.
Finally, she put it down and leaned back, crashing into the pillows again.
She’d have to face everything by herself.
Suddenly she only wanted to shut everything out and sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
Quinn was navigating a long hospital corridor, a folder with her name on it stuffed under her arm. The folder held her identifying information, including the name of her father. She’d dodged the mysterious faces pursuing her and had just pulled the folder out from under her arm and was opening it to peek when the fire alarm began to shriek, and medical personnel from every room, nook, and cranny came storming at her.
She awoke sweating, her heart racing.
It wasn’t a fire alarm.
It was her phone.
Ethan?
For a second, she felt a happy rush that he was calling her. Then as she struggled to reach the phone, she remembered what he had done.
She picked up the phone and squinted at the screen.
Unknown number.
Usually she wouldn’t answer unknown numbers, but this time, something told her she should do it.
“Hello?”
“Quinn? Is that you?”
Quinn sat up in bed and switched the lamp on. “Maggie! It’s me! I can’t believe you called me back.” She felt a rush of emotion just hearing her best friend’s voice, so familiar she’d recognize it anywhere.
“Of course. Mama said it sounded urgent. And you do sound weird.”
“I was asleep. I’m in Maui, six hours behind you. It’s two in the morning here.”
Maggie laughed. “Oops. Well, you did say to call you. What are you doing in Maui? Vacation?”
Quinn wondered how to tell Maggie everything she needed to say. Especially after she’d pretty much dumped her.
“My mom died,” she blurted out, getting the worst of it over with.
“I know,” Maggie said, her voice softening. “Mama saw it somewhere. That’s all she does is sit on the computer. I’m sorry I didn’t call you, but I didn’t know until after the service.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “And it wasn’t much of a service. You know my mom. She kept to herself. Not really anyone in her life except me. And her clients. But even those she kept separate from her personal business. They sent flowers.”
“I’ve missed you,” Maggie said.
Three little words that held a lot of forgiveness. Before Quinn could answer, she was crying. Finally, she had someone who cared about her and who could listen. Give her advice. Soothe her and tell her that it would all work out.
Quinn couldn’t hold back the sniffles.
“What is it?” Maggie said. “Is Ethan okay?”
“Yes. I mean, well . . . no,” she said, bringing her tears under control. “Oh, Maggie. My life is such a disaster. And I’ve got scary things in front of me. I’m a grown woman, and now that my mom is gone, I’m supposed to be adulting, but it’s just too damn hard.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Maggie said. “I’ve got some stuff going on that will blow your mind. There’s a reason you can’t reach me unless you do it through Mama. My troubles might give yours a run for the money.”
“Hold on,” Quinn said. “I’m getting up. I need to make a cup of tea, because it sounds like this is going to be a long conversation.”
As she headed toward the kitchenette, Quinn felt that the weight she’d carried to bed was getting lighter by the second.
At half past five, Quinn finally hung up the phone and climbed into bed. She and Maggie had talked nonstop, catching up on the last few years as they ping-ponged information back and forth.
Maggie had a stalker. She called him the Ghost.
And not some high school crush pining after her. This was serious stuff.
It floored Quinn and filled her with guilt that Maggie had been dealing with such a horrible experience on her own, skipping from town to town and job to job as she stayed just steps ahead of the psychopath, with almost no help from law enforcement due to the fact that the weirdo hadn’t yet made physical contact. That was, until he broke into her home and was caught on camera.
Quinn was feeling goose bumps while Maggie told her story and only breathed normally when Maggie reported he was finally in jail.
“I can’t get into all the details right now,” Maggie whispered. “Charlie, my son, is here, and I don’t want him to overhear.”
When she said son, Quinn was speechless.
Maggie had a son!
Quinn instantly felt like an aunt—albeit a slack one. As Maggie bragged on and on, she made Charlie sound like an amazing kid, but imagining Maggie as a mom was difficult. She was always the free spirit, the one who Quinn thought would travel the world unencumbered as she tackled each experience on her bucket list.
But as life tends to go, that’s not how things played out.
It was all hard to even accept. Maggie had been dealing with some bad stuff without a best friend by her side. Quinn wanted to be there for her now.
She needed Maggie too.
Quinn told her about her mother’s earth-shattering deathbed declaration, the inheritance, Ethan’s cheating, and the mysterious possible relative.
First, Maggie erupted when she heard what Ethan had done. She admitted that the last time she’d come around, Ethan had acted kind of creepy toward her too—a real sucker punch to Quinn, considering that during that same visit he was telling her that she needed to put some space between herself and Maggie, that her friend was a bad influence.
Quinn wasn’t ready to completely throw Ethan under the bus, but she was glad to hear Maggie tell her over and over how Quinn could do better for herself, something Quinn was starting to wonder about now too.
They talked more about Thursday’s meeting, and Quinn admitted that she was nervous but didn’t feel comfortable asking Maria or Liam to accompany her.
Maggie being Maggie—usually a relentless fireball—quizzed Quinn on just who Liam was, but Quinn refused to take the bait. She didn’t really know what to think about Liam herself. He was a friend, though the word didn’t feel sufficient. So she moved the conversation back to her anxiety about the upcoming meeting and the many what-ifs involved.
“It could be my father,” she told Maggie. “This time my real father.”
A small part of her felt like a child, wishing that she would finally have a father figure in her life, a dependable man who cared about the daughter he’d sired. And what if all these years, he hadn’t even known about her? Maybe that was the reason her mother made up the Maguire name. She wanted to keep Quinn from her real dad. That could also explain her mother’s reluctance to have any connection to family.
As the minutes ticked by, they discussed every possibility. Then, Quinn almost started crying again when Maggie insisted she was going to leave her son with her mom and come to Maui. She wanted to be by Quinn’s side when she met the mysterious possible relative.
They ended the call reluctantly, both wanting to hold on to their renewed connection for as long as they could. It just felt so right to be talking again.
Quinn laid the phone on the nightstand, then snuggled under the comforter, a small smile creeping across her face.
Maggie was coming.
Already that made everything seem a whole lot better.
She would not have to sort out her life alone. With that knowledge, she felt peace wash over her, and she finally allowed herself to drift into a calm, peaceful slumber.
Chapter Seventeen
Over the next day, Quinn kept to herself, spending the mornings answering work emails and pushing already-delayed meetings even further out. Some of her coworkers were getting impatient with her, but they were just going to have to wait. There was too much happening now for her to leave Maui. She’d submitted her request for a leave of absence. She hated to drain her banked vacation hours, but she could think of nothing more important that would come up.
&
nbsp; Her request had caused a chain reaction, and Quinn’s boss had sent an email asking for a call. That sent a shiver of fear through Quinn, but she wasn’t even going to answer that one yet.
She simply wasn’t ready to face her job again, and she sure as Hades wasn’t ready to face Ethan, especially not when she was getting ready to finally meet another biological relative for the first time.
Even the thought made her heart skip around in a crazy way. One thing at a time, though.
First, Maggie.
Being the spur-of-the-moment fireball she was, Maggie had arranged for her mother to keep her son, then booked a flight that would have her in Maui less than eighteen hours after their call, insisting she needed a day to acclimate before the big meeting.
Quinn couldn’t be more grateful. Having Maggie there would help keep her from taking a call from Ethan before she was ready.
By midmorning Quinn was dressed and anxious to head to the airport early. One bad accident on the road could leave her sitting in traffic for hours, and there was no way she as going to leave Maggie waiting for her.
Her phone rang, and it was Auntie Wang.
“Quinn, I just want to check in with you and tell you I’ve found a Carmen Crowe on the island.”
Quinn sat down on the bed, feeling suddenly breathless. “Do you think it’s the right one?”
“I don’t know. She’s around the same age, though. I’m meeting with her this afternoon. She wasn’t really interested, but I talked her into it.”
“Does she know what you want?”
“No,” said Auntie Wang. “I told her I wanted to talk to her about being on the board for a new organization that promotes Hawaiian history. I appealed to her pride in being asked. I’ll ask her about your mother face-to-face so I can gauge her reaction.”
“Jeez, Auntie Wang. When she finds out you’re lying, she’s going to be really upset.”