Their grandfather came in from the front porch then, bringing an early warning of the reason for it.
“Uh, Dad, hope you brought a diaper,” Ben said to Tanner as he approached the kitchen.
“And that’s my cue to get to work loading Mac’s stuff,” Quinn said. He stood and took his cup to the dishwasher, then hightailed it out the back door and to the shed.
His grandfather used the shed as a workroom, but when Quinn had shipped the packing boxes filled with the General’s things home, Ben had stored them in one corner of the shed to await Quinn’s arrival. That was where Quinn found them now.
There were more than he remembered—too many to carry to the front of the house, where his truck was parked. So he left the shed to bring his truck as far around back and close to the shed as he could get it.
Discussing the General had allowed Quinn one of the few breaks from incessantly thinking about Clairy, but just the mention of her moments before put her back in his thoughts as he moved his truck.
It wasn’t Clairy alone on his mind, though. It was also the fact that beginning that afternoon they’d be going through her father’s things together, revisiting the General’s entire career, his history, his decisions and actions. And it was coming after Jill’s call this morning.
I’m going to have to tell you. The whole damn story...
Those early weeks after Mac’s death, he’d wrestled with his own guilt over their argument possibly causing it and with keeping his mouth shut to protect Mac’s memory. Then he’d decided he couldn’t do that for the sake of the women marines, but he still hadn’t considered airing that last fight and the potential consequences of it. But now...
Now that something was going on between him and Clairy on a personal level and he was going to have to tell her about her father, tell her that he didn’t know what the outcome of a formal inquiry into Mac’s actions would be, now that he was going to have to confess that he and Mac had battled, it was going to come out that that battle might have been what led to her father’s death.
And now that Clairy was uppermost in every thought in his head, what was that going to mean?
Are you going to start hating me all over again?
That thought was particularly hard for Quinn to have because he didn’t think it would take much to cause her to start hating him again.
And while at the start of this he’d only been interested in coming to a peace accord with Clairy to get through this memorial-and-museum work with as little fuss as possible, somehow her not hating him had become important to him.
Really important.
“But today’s the day...” he told himself sternly, worrying about just how important Clairy not hating him had become.
Maybe just how important Clairy had become to him...
“That’s some risky business,” he warned himself on the heels of that thought, which had slipped in on its own. “You know you’re not ready to get involved with anyone,” he reminded himself out loud, as if it might carry more weight if he heard it rather than merely thought it. “You’ve blown it bad with two women already—worse than bad with Laine—and you don’t have any business messing around with someone else until you figure out how much of Mac’s disregard for any woman’s feelings you might have channeled.”
But ready or not...
Quinn sighed as he slid another box into the bed of his truck.
What was churning around inside of him when it came to Clairy shouldn’t be. But Tanner’s crack about him being sweet on her wasn’t wrong. He didn’t know if he’d fooled his brother or not, but to say that he was sweet on Clairy was actually way too mild a description. That kiss last night had been more hot and spicy than sweet.
Jeez, what a kiss...
A kiss he shouldn’t have let go as far as it had—something he was reminded of, especially when telling her about her father nagged at him.
Nagged at him and brought up the questions he’d been chewing on for a while now about himself and where he went going forward with his own relationships. What he really wanted.
Looking at his own history with women through the same lens he was now looking at his mentor, he’d come to realize that he couldn’t keep getting involved with women in the same way he had been. It had become a pattern with him. Not consciously, not intentionally—he hadn’t even recognized it until he’d begun to compare himself to Mac—but a pattern of general disregard for what was important to a woman involved with him, a general disregard for their own wants and needs. A pattern of treating them as if they weren’t as important as he was, as the marines were. And it had to stop.
It had to stop, he had to regroup and he had to decide how to proceed from here. He had to figure out if he should accept that serving his country in the marines was the be-all and end-all for him forever—what he’d believed since he was a child.
If it was, then from now on he had to make sure the only women he spent any time with were women who were satisfied being relegated to recreational status. Or women who could accept never being as important to him as the marines, but were still willing to have a future with him being fully aware of that...if women like that existed.
But one way or another, until he actually figured it out, he shouldn’t be messing around with any woman, let alone with Clairy.
He just couldn’t seem to help himself...
But you need to!
As long as he had as much weighing on him as he did, until he sorted out everything he needed to sort out about Mac, about how much his mentor might have colored his own views and actions, he needed to keep to the straight and narrow.
And that went double—triple—with Clairy.
He was just losing confidence in his ability to stick to that straight and narrow when it came to her.
“But telling her what you have to tell her now might take it out of your hands...”
* * *
“It’s up to you, honey, but I think it should be known that even big important generals start out as little boys.”
“You know we would have to fight him to put it in, though—he never would have let us do it willingly,” Clairy laughingly answered her grandmother.
Clairy had put off Quinn this morning because it was the only time in Mim’s busy new schedule for her to come over to go through family photos. Clairy’s goal was to find out what her grandmother might want contributed to the General’s memorial.
The elderly woman had made several choices that documented the early high points and transitional moments of her son’s life—graduations, awards, being carried on the shoulders of teammates after football victories, becoming school president.
But on a lighter, sweeter side, she’d also come across a picture of Mac when he was four years old. In the weathered black-and-white snapshot he was wearing his father’s army jacket and cap—the jacket hung to the floor, while the cap was tipped back on the small boy’s head to rest on his shoulders. And her dad was giving a touching salute.
It was a cute picture, and because it represented a branch of the service, Mim thought it should be the start of the display, to show the General’s early, innocent interest in the military.
Clairy liked the idea but still felt inclined to point out that her father would have considered it undignified. That was what she was doing as they walked out to Mim’s car after the lunch Clairy had made for them.
“Well, now he doesn’t have a say,” Mim insisted. “And I’m his mother and I want one picture of him as my little boy.”
“Okay,” Clairy conceded. “I’ll have it framed with a plaque underneath it saying it was donated by you.”
“Good.”
Mim opened her car door, gave Clairy a hug and said, “I better get going. Harry is waiting.”
“Tell him I said hello,” Clairy instructed as her grandmother started the engine and pulled away from the c
urb at a snail’s pace.
Then she hurried back inside with barely an hour to get ready for Quinn’s scheduled arrival at three.
She’d showered early and now dressed in a pair of black ankle-length slacks and a pale blue sleeveless cotton shirt with a ruffled front edge that crossed over to close with four buttons that ran from her hip to her waist to form a modest V neckline. As the time neared, she bent over, swooshing her hair to hang free so she could brush it from underneath. Then she put the long, full mass into a high ponytail with a scarf tied around it. She added soft pink lip gloss and a pair of slip-on sandals for the final touches, then went downstairs and stopped near the living room’s picture window just as Quinn drove up.
He parked his big white truck where her grandmother’s sedan had been, and that was all it took for Clairy to forget what she’d been about to do and stop where she was as he turned off the engine and got out.
Was her heart actually racing?
Just because of him?
Come on, Clairy, get it together!
But her heart was racing and it just went on racing as she watched him come up the walkway.
Gone were the slacks and shirt of the previous evening. He’d replaced them with tan cargo pants and a navy blue crewneck T-shirt with the marine emblem over his left, well-accentuated pec.
Back to rugged, Clairy thought as she watched him approach the house, wishing she could find fault with the well-groomed stubble, the artfully disarrayed hair and the more casual clothes.
But she failed miserably.
So miserably that for a split second she fantasized about skipping what they had planned today, so she could drag him inside, close the door behind him and spend the afternoon making out with him on the couch like a couple of teenagers...
Shaking off that idea, she retraced her steps to hold open the screen door for him. “Hi. Come in,” she invited.
“How you doin’?” he greeted her as he entered, both of them sounding like they were barely acquainted.
“I’m ready to dig in to my father’s storied career to see what we’re dealing with,” she answered, having needed to bolster herself a little in anticipation of wading through the evidence of all the things her father had prioritized over her.
She had no idea why that brought a frown to that handsome face, and it wasn’t explained as Quinn came in and said only, “So, to the attic?”
He definitely didn’t sound eager. But it occurred to her that while she was facing the evidence of all she’d failed to compete with in her father’s career, Quinn was facing reminders of things he’d shared with the General.
They were both revisiting their separate griefs, and she realized she shouldn’t expect the job ahead to be lighthearted, the way going through pictures of happy family times with Mim had been.
“I brought down everything I found in the attic,” Clairy informed Quinn. “But since my father gave you instructions for where to find things, you better check it out and make sure I didn’t miss anything.”
“Sure.”
And weren’t they just so down-to-business, as if barely more than twelve hours ago they hadn’t been locked together at the lips.
But getting down to business was as it should be, Clairy told herself.
Even if last night had ended the way it had.
In the attic, Quinn found only one box of her father’s things that Clairy had missed. As they added her boxes to those in the back of his truck, he explained that his boxes contained things Mac had given him since putting the plan for the memorial and library in the works, as well as the contents of Mac’s Camp Lejeune office and private quarters.
“I guess it was lucky you were there to pack all his things when he died,” Clairy commented along the way.
That produced another dark frown and no response from Quinn.
Which was essentially the tone of the day and evening as they worked. Quinn was unusually quiet, solemn and somber.
Clairy continued to attribute it to grief—something she felt more strongly herself as they went through her father’s things. Underneath her resentments and longings and regrets, the General had still been her father and she’d loved him despite it all. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have cared that she hadn’t seemed important to him. And as she and Quinn went through Mac’s things, it was her own grief at the forefront, too.
Late in the afternoon, they were interrupted by the delivery of the display cases she’d ordered for the memorial and the sofa designated for her office on the second floor.
Clairy tried to persuade the deliverymen to bring everything to their final destinations, but they refused, leaving it all just inside the library’s front entrance.
“I’ll bring my dolly and we’ll do that tomorrow,” Quinn promised.
Clairy had wondered if today would be the end of their work together—after all, once he made the decisions about what was to be included in the memorial and how he wanted it presented, it was just up to Clairy to carry out his instructions. Hearing him promise more of his time and physical prowess went a long way in brightening her mood as they returned to the job at hand.
For dinner they ordered pizza at eight, eating as they did a tour of everything they’d spent the previous hours setting out on the large library tables.
Because her father’s final wishes were for Quinn to have the last word on what would best memorialize him, Clairy took notes on Quinn’s decisions on what should be displayed, where, how and in what order.
She lobbied for a few changes, and when she did, Quinn accepted her suggestions, but on the whole, the memorial was more Quinn’s vision than hers. Clairy reasoned that not only was that how the General had wanted it, but Quinn had also known and understood her father, what he wanted and how he thought better than she had.
They finished about nine o’clock and it was a relief to Clairy to have made it through the emotions this dive into her father’s things brought with it. She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
But it didn’t seem as if the same could be said of Quinn. In fact, he seemed so distracted by his own thoughts that twice when Clairy asked him something she’d had to repeat herself because he didn’t hear her the first time. And more than the somber expression he’d carried throughout their hours of discussing her father, he appeared to sink even further into brooding.
Even so, rather than ending the evening when they reached a stopping point with the memorial, he measured her newly arrived sofa, the opening and inside of the elevator, and said, “I think between the two of us we could get this upstairs to your office tonight.”
“Today hasn’t done you in?” Clairy ventured, uncertain what was going on with him, but worrying that he might just want away from memories of her father, and maybe of her, too.
“I think I can push myself,” he said facetiously.
“I’m willing,” she said, flinching internally at the unintentional innuendo that hovered around the edges of that comment.
But Quinn was still so mired in whatever was on his mind that he didn’t even catch it. He just went to the tufted leather sofa so they could slide it to the elevator.
When they got it there, they upended it to get it in. Then, since Clairy alone could fit in the elevator with it, she stood alongside to steady it for the ride and Quinn met her on the second floor.
They slid it to her office, where they put it against the wall she’d designated for it.
Quinn pulled off the protective plastic and sat in the center to give it a test-drive.
“That’s a lot more comfortable than it looks,” he proclaimed. He patted the seat. “Try it out.”
Clairy did. “It isn’t bad,” she said, judging for herself. “I chose it because it looked stately, something for a library or den. But when you order online, you never know how it is to sit on it. It could have gone either way.�
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“But this is comfortable enough to sleep on if you ever get stuck here overnight.”
“I can’t imagine why that would happen, but it feels pretty good now—it’s been a long day.”
But she didn’t want Quinn to take the comment as a cue to call it a night, because she wasn’t ready for that. Even if he was quiet, preoccupied company. She at least wanted the chance to draw him out of his melancholy.
So before he could use her words against her, she pivoted enough for her spine to meet the couch’s corner, where the sofa’s back became the sofa’s arm without a change in height. Facing him, she made a guess... “Today was hard for you—going through my father’s things, everything being a reminder of him.”
“For you, too, wasn’t it?”
“Yes...” she answered, hedging. “But it was a reminder for me of where he really lived his life, what his life really was to him and how I was a distant afterthought in it, not a part of it. For you it had to be a reminder of what the two of you have always been about, what the two of you have shared since you were an eight-year-old kid, that you don’t have him to share it with anymore.”
Quinn turned enough to face her, too, laying his arm along the back edge of the couch, but he still didn’t respond readily. And when he did, there was some hedging in his voice, too.
“Yeah, all of that... But there’s more now...more even just today.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. “Grief?”
“Sure...”
“But something else, too?” Clairy persisted. She recalled what he’d said on Sunday night over dinner in the square after she’d given him the first tour of the library. “Is this what you said before about knowing something now that you hadn’t known before?” she asked, her curiosity about that revived.
Once more he was slow to reply, and even when he did, he didn’t give her a straight answer. “It’s been a rough five months, Clairy. But there’s some things I have to tell you.”
He stalled, looked at the floor, obviously reluctant. Then he looked squarely at her and sighed. “You’re not going to thank me for the information,” he warned.
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