While she was thrilled to get the money, she knew a hundred and fifty dollars wouldn’t go very far even if she did shop at Forever 21. Her mother slipped her another hundred and drove her to the mall.
It wasn’t only money; their father debated his kids on grades, activities and even dietary choices.
‘Your mother tells me you want to be a vegan,’ Dad said with a slightly mocking tone one night at the dinner table.
‘Yes,’ Hannah said cautiously, ‘I don’t want to eat animals.’
‘Break it down for me, Hannah,’ said Dad with a ‘gotcha’ smugness in his voice. ‘Explain the pros and cons of vegetarianism to me.’
Jack rolled his eyes and squirmed in his chair.
‘I saw that, Jack,’ Dad said, sneering. ‘You got a problem?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jack said. ‘If she doesn’t want to eat meat, she shouldn’t have to.’
‘I simply want your sister to support her position,’ Dad said, puffing up. ‘If she’s that committed to it, she needs to be able to explain why.’
As usual, the conversation deteriorated and ended with Dad shouting, Hannah leaving the table, Jack going to his room and Mom trying to coax all of them to come out of their corners. Usually, when this kind of thing happened, Dad would turn his anger on their mother. That was the main reason why Jack and Hannah avoided getting into debates with their father. More often than not, their mother paid the price for their freedom of speech.
It was always that way. Dad, the stern argumentative ruler and Mom the marshmallow who wanted everyone to have fun and deluded herself into thinking they were the perfect family.
As Hannah got older, she learned to keep her mouth shut. If her father said black, she said black. If he said the ocean was red, she said, ‘you’re right, the ocean is red, just like a rose, Dad.’
Chapter 32
QUINN
I wasn’t completely clueless. I do have a brain.
It was winter and Alec had just returned from a week-long seminar in Minneapolis. As soon as he walked in the door, I detected something was different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He was in a good mood, and I let my guard down. As long as things were going his way, he was nice and calm, most of the time.
‘Good trip,’ Alec said as he put down his bags and gave me a non-committal hug.
‘Not a waste of time like you thought?’ I asked brightly.
‘It was a total waste of time, so I was able to work out in the gym and even used the tanning bed in the hotel a few times.’
That’s what was different; my husband was tan in January.
Alec was very precise and neat about some things but putting his clothes away wasn’t one of them. The contents of his overnight bag were draped over various pieces of furniture in the bedroom. While he was in the shower, I picked up some of his clothes including one of his nice sports jackets that was rolled in a ball next to his nightstand. I was about to hang it in the closet when I felt something in the breast pocket. It was an airline ticket folder. I don’t know why I looked at it, I just did.
It was his plane ticket, but it was for a flight to the Bahamas. Confused, I examined it more carefully, checking the dates on the receipts. The ticket dates were for this past week.
But he went to Minneapolis, didn’t he? He told me he just came back from a conference in St. Paul. I picked him up at the airport.
I heard the shower shut off and waited for Alec to come out of the bathroom. My head felt like it was going to explode as I tried to make sense of a hundred random thoughts. He probably had a good explanation. He always did. When Alec came out of the bathroom, towel around his waist, looking muscular and tan, I held up the ticket in front of his face.
‘I found this in your jacket pocket.’
Without flinching, he looked at the paper in my hand.
‘My plane tickets. Thanks,’ he said, snatching them from me. ‘I need them to fill out my expense reports.’
‘The tickets are for a flight to the Bahamas.’
‘That’s right. There was a huge mix-up at the airport,’ he said, putting the tickets into his top dresser drawer. ‘Stupid airline had me on a flight to Nassau, almost missed my flight to Minnesota. That would have been a disaster.’
‘You didn’t go to the Bahamas?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Quinn. The conference was in St. Paul.’
‘You have a tan.’
‘I told you. I used the tanning thing at the hotel. Anything else?’
My husband had become a good liar, but I wasn’t convinced. I’d lied about things, too. Guess it takes one to know one.
What do they say, the best defense is a good offense? That sure was Alec’s strategy. The minute you called him out on something, he’d turn it around, and before you knew it, the barrel of the gun was pointed between your eyes.
You’d think after so many years I’d have gotten a clue, but I never saw it coming. Even after he’d criticize my appearance or intelligence and push me around. Sometimes he was heavy-handed with the kids. That bothered me more than anything.
I almost left him once.
‘I’m out of here,’ I had said as I pulled a suitcase out of the closet.
‘You have no money, no job, no skills. Where are you going to live?’
‘I don’t know,’ I screamed, throwing random garments into my suitcase. ‘I’ll figure it out.’
‘Go,’ he said, ‘but let me be very clear. You leave, you can’t come back, ever. You’ll be all alone, and I won’t let you see the kids.’
A few minutes later, I backed down. I couldn’t risk not seeing my kids.
Every time we fought, the pain and humiliation festered inside me for weeks. Sometimes, I wanted to kill him, but I knew if I did that I’d be alone and that would be worse.
There was something else. Something I never told anyone. I don’t know for sure, but I think Alec drugged me. A few times I woke up alone in bed and couldn’t remember how I got there, my underpants were gone and I was all sore down there. I think he might have raped me. Whenever I brought it up and asked questions, he called me crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m just exhausted. I could never tell Erin and definitely not my father. He’d kill my husband and I wouldn’t want my dad to get into any trouble. Also, I’d be too embarrassed to tell anyone. Alec’s not mean all the time and he always apologizes after we have a fight. I know he loves me.
Chapter 33
If there was a loud voice in a room, it was probably Viv DeMarco. No matter how much noise there was, you could always hear her. Everything about her was big and loud. Her hair was bright red, and her clothes had a definite point of view. Of what, most people were never sure. Viv was never pretty, not even cute and she knew it. The way she saw it, beautiful girls knew they were, and the plain ones knew they weren’t. As she got into her forties and fifties, she put on more weight and rationalized that her looks weren’t her calling card. She made up for not being pretty with three sets of brass balls and a biting sense of humor.
The first time Viv laid eyes on Quinn, she was standing on a soccer field. Oblivious that she was being examined, Quinn cheered and whistled for her son as he took a shot at a goal. Viv instinctually hated Quinn because of her perfect little figure and big blue eyes. She decided ‘Little Miss Perfect’ –a name she used to call Quinn before she got to know her – was probably a size four or maybe even a two. Whenever Quinn’s son scored a goal, she jumped up and down, put her fingers in her mouth and made a loud whistle. When she did that, all the dads on the side lines would check her out. Bitch, thought Viv.
To Viv, Quinn was everything she wasn’t. Quinn was the one who always had a boyfriend in high school; the cheerleader, the homecoming queen. Doors routinely swung open for her and opportunities were placed at her feet. Life was one big sundae with two cherries on top for girls like Quinn Roberts. Even after they surprisingly became friends, Viv was always a little jealous of her, until Quinn started to lose her g
rip. Then Viv just felt sorry for her.
The first time she noticed something was off was one night when the Avon Ladies were out partying in a noisy bar downtown. Quinn drifted in and out of the conversation. There were moments when it was clear she didn’t comprehend the gist of what the girls were talking about. At first, Viv thought she was drunk but later realized Quinn had only had ginger ale that night.
A week later, Viv walked up to Quinn at a lacrosse practice. Quinn looked haggard as if she had just climbed out of bed, not her usual pulled together self.
‘Are you okay?’ Viv asked, trying to be diplomatic, which wasn’t her strong suit. ‘You look kind of tired.’
Quinn didn’t answer and stared blankly ahead without acknowledging her friend.
‘Quinn, are you alright?’ Viv asked again, this time touching Quinn’s arm.
Surprised, Quinn turned and looked directly at her friend.
‘Viv,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you.’
‘Didn’t see me? I’m standing right in front of you,’ Viv said. That’s when Viv first knew something wasn’t right. She wondered if Quinn was drinking or doing drugs. That night she called some of the other Ladies and asked them if they had witnessed any weird behavior with Quinn. Everyone said they had. When it started to occur more frequently, the Ladies suspected something was seriously wrong.
Chapter 34
‘I don’t need marriage counseling,’ Alec said under his breath. ‘I need a wife without a loose screw.’
Filled with renewed optimism that Alec had finally agreed to go with her, Quinn had made an appointment with a licensed therapist in Rochester named Naomi Sheridan. While Quinn thought meeting with a counsellor would be the first step to fixing their marriage, Alec intended the session would be a ‘one and done’. He had no intention of wasting his time or money on months of psycho-bullshit. His wife was the one who needed therapy, he thought, not him.
‘I’ll go, but if I think it’s stupid, I’m out of there,’ he said to her.
‘Things are so different between us now,’ said Quinn. ‘We have to work on our relationship.’
‘Look in the mirror,’ he said. ‘I’m not the one with the problem.’
‘Stop saying that,’ she retorted. ‘How would you know anyway? You’re never here, and when you are, you’re mean.’
Quinn and Alec drove in silence to Naomi Sheridan’s office. From the second they sat down, Alec laid on the charm and soon won the therapist over. He could feel his wife seething next to him, and he enjoyed it.
‘I chair the History Department over at UR. I’m away a lot because of my lecture schedule. My kids are off at college, and my wife has been experiencing periods of depression, loose thoughts and paranoia. I’ve begged her to get some help, but her response is always for “us” to get counseling.’
‘What do you think about what Alec just said, Quinn?’ asked Naomi.
Silence.
‘Quinn,’ repeated Naomi, ‘what do you think about what your husband just revealed?’
‘I don’t know,’ Quinn said without any emotion.
‘How do you feel right now?’ said Naomi.
Silence.
‘Quinn, is there something you want to tell me?’ Naomi asked.
‘No. Everything’s fine.’
‘My wife insists there are medical versus mental reasons for all her problems,’ Alec explained. ‘Once she hit a mailbox with her car because she was so “distracted” so she got her eyes checked. If she can’t get out of bed for a week, she claims she has the flu. And her big catch-all is Lyme disease. Every whacky thing she does, she blames on a tick bite.’
‘Do you have Lyme disease, Quinn?’ Naomi asked.
Quinn nodded.
‘Maybe it is the Lyme,’ said Naomi helpfully.
‘At first, that’s what I thought, too,’ Alec said, ‘but there were too many instances. She’d forget things and tell me she talked to people who I knew she didn’t know. Weird stuff and it’s been increasing. Some days she can’t get out of bed at all.’
Alec told Naomi he had seen signs as far back as five years before, but over the last two, his wife had gotten much worse.
‘No matter how much I pleaded with her,’ Alec said, playing the noble, steadfast husband, ‘my wife’s response was to have a couple of drinks and have her ears or blood pressure checked at the walk-in clinic. She refuses to face that she has a serious emotional problem.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Quinn.
‘Tell me what you’re thinking right now, Quinn,’ said Naomi gently.
‘It was my idea to come today,’ Quinn protested. ‘I made the appointment and had to beg him to come with me. Things have been difficult the last few years. He never talks and when he does, he just barks commands. I never smile anymore. He shuts me out and spends all of his time over at his precious school.’
‘See what I mean? She places the blame for her problems on me, so she doesn’t have to acknowledge her own crazy.’
‘I’m not crazy.’
‘No one said you were,’ said Naomi.
‘He just did.’
‘We don’t use that word in here, Alec,’ said Naomi.
Realising he had overplayed his hand, Alec dialed it back.
‘You’re right, that was uncalled for, I’m sorry,’ he said, looking at his wife. ‘I just want you to get help. We need you to get better.’
‘He’s right,’ said Naomi. ‘The first step to getting well is admitting there’s a problem. Alec said that you have mood swings and sometimes get very depressed, so much so that you can’t get out of bed. Is that true?’
Quinn sensed the dynamic had shifted. Alec was so good at manipulating people and now the therapist was on her husband’s side. It wouldn’t matter what she said anymore, Naomi was on team Alec. By the time they ended their first and only session, Alec was off the hook for future marriage counseling. Naomi gave them the name and number of a psychiatrist saying she thought Quinn might benefit from medication.
Alec and Quinn drove most of the way home in silence.
‘You weren’t honest,’ she finally said as they crossed the Avon town line. ‘You told her it was all my fault. You exaggerated everything. What about what you do?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the drugs or the women.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Quinn.’
‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. You think I don’t know. You think I’m stupid. You might fool people like Naomi or your precious students but I know who you really are.’
‘There you go again with your paranoia,’ he said as he pulled the car into their garage and got out of the car. ‘You are nuts. You need to get it together. One day you’re going to wake up and I’ll be gone.’
Chapter 35
The last Christmas at the Delaneys’ in New Jersey was strained. They made their annual pilgrimage to New York City to see the Rockettes at Radio City, a thirty-year Delaney tradition. They baked their favorite holiday cookies, strung popcorn and cranberries into garlands and sang Christmas carols, but something was off.
It snowed on Christmas Eve and all the grandkids, now in high school and college, got up early on Christmas Day and went sledding at a nearby park. Erin, Quinn, Colleen and their mother busied themselves in the kitchen preparing the big holiday feast. There was plenty of laughter and teasing going on in the room reminding Eileen of when the girls were young. After a while, she noticed not everyone was laughing. Quinn had barely said a word and had a peculiar smile frozen on her face. Her eyes looked sad. When Erin and Colleen left the kitchen to set the dining room table, Eileen pulled Quinn aside.
‘Everything alright, honey?’ she said to her daughter. ‘You don’t seem yourself.’
‘I’m fine, Mom,’ Quinn said quietly.
Her mother looked at her with a mix of concern and confusion.
‘Really, Mom, everything’s okay,’ Quinn insisted.
Eileen Delaney knew something was wrong, but at that moment she was up to her eyeballs in cookie dough and chocolate mousse and told herself she’d talk to her daughter the next day when they were alone.
From the kitchen, Eileen heard Alec lecturing Mike, Tim and Ed on the correct way to assemble a bicycle. She and Ed had gotten used to Alec and his thinly veiled condescension, but lately, they both had to work hard at being cordial, especially when he was short with their daughter. He would get dismissive and bark commands at Quinn. It pained Eileen that her daughter went along with it; these days, Quinn didn’t even flinch.
‘Something’s wrong, Eileen,’ said Ed Delaney in bed that Christmas night. ‘He treats Quinnie like she’s a servant. I don’t like it.’
‘You’re exaggerating,’ his wife said. ‘He’s just obnoxious. Alec’s always been a bit that way.’
‘It feels different now,’ said Ed, ‘like there’s been a power shift. She sits next to him like a scared rabbit and waits on him, fetching him beer after beer, agreeing with every idiotic thing he says. That’s not Quinn.’
Eileen knew her husband was right but didn’t want to fan any flames. She had heard Alec make fun of her daughter in a mean way several times. It gave her that same sick feeling she had on Quinn and Alec’s wedding day, right after Linda Roberts mentioned her son’s bad temper.
Chapter 36
QUINN
I was always tired. Everyone kept telling me what to do as if I was incapable of making my own decisions. I just needed more sleep, that’s what was screwing me up. I read that sleep deprivation can do crazy things to your brain and make anyone act nuts, even have hallucinations.
My parents, sisters, Mike and Alec said I had bipolar disorder and that I needed to take my medication. The doctor at the clinic agreed, but I hated taking that stuff. The pills made me feel gooey like I was walking through thick, sticky syrup. Why would I have wanted that?
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