Little Broken Things

by Nicole Baart

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. “Go.” She hadn’t told him about her sister’s text. And she wasn’t about to when he was already concentrating on something else.

  I have something for you.

  What was Quinn supposed to do with that? A single cryptic message was typical Nora, and Walker would tell her as much. He wouldn’t give it another thought, and his nonchalance would only make Quinn feel silly for wondering. For worrying. But she couldn’t help it. I have something for you implied a transaction of sorts. She hadn’t seen Nora in over a year and she longed for her older sister with an almost childish desperation. They had never been close, not really, but absence and an air of mystery had rendered Nora the stuff of dreams. Her random texts and even less frequent phone calls felt almost illicit, dangerous, though as far as Quinn knew the worst thing her sister had ever done was walk away from a full-ride scholarship to Northwestern and shrug off Sanford family expectations.

  Quinn envied her sometimes.

  Walker didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong, and he winked at Quinn as he walked away, his flip-flops slapping his heels in rhythm as he carried his find to the boathouse.

  It wasn’t much, that tiny piece of glass. Walker’s installations were usually magnificent in size and stature, and Quinn had a hard time reconciling the artifacts he was digging up from the lake with the immense sculptures her husband was known for.

  He had been almost spiritless since they moved from Los Angeles to Key Lake, Minnesota, at the beginning of the summer. At least, artistically speaking. Quinn had loved the undivided attention she’d received for the nearly two months of Walker’s creative dry spell, the way that he trained the intensity of his concentration on her. She was his outlet for the long, hot weeks of June and July, her body and the plane of her hips, the way that her back lowered to her narrow waist, the object of his obsession. Walker had always been a singular man, devoted and laser-focused since the moment she met him in an introductory art class in college. He had been the professor’s work study, but Walker ended up teaching most of the class. And Quinn had admired his obvious devotion from the start. She’d wished maybe she had more of whatever Walker possessed hidden somewhere in her own soul.

  Quinn wasn’t nearly so exceptional. But she was determined. And as far as she was concerned, this humiliating homecoming, these months of living under the watchful, disapproving eye of her mother, were nothing more than a detour.

  She shielded her eyes against the sunset and stared across the lake, daring Liz Sanford to stare back. All at once she was grateful for Walker’s boxers, for the unruly flip of his dark hair, for the way her life was on display. Even an enigmatic text message from her sister couldn’t get Quinn down. She knew what she wanted. And this time she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.

  NORA

  NORA GLANCED IN the rearview mirror and saw that the girl had buried herself in the dusty car blanket. It was wrapped completely around her, a plaid cocoon from which only the toe of one purple sneaker peeked out. She wasn’t even sitting up anymore. Instead, her seat belt was pulled taut over the soft mound of the blanket and her tightly curled body, the fabric twisted so that Nora wondered if the restraint was doing any good at all. Maybe this wasn’t safe. Maybe transporting a child required a special endorsement on her driver’s license. Nora remembered the complicated five-point harness of the little girl’s toddler days and wished she would have remembered to grab the booster seat.

  The last few hours had been a fog. A grueling blur of tears and exhaustion. Of trying to comfort and failing miserably. Nora couldn’t help it—she was tense, scared, and the child had wilted beneath the strain of the stifling atmosphere in Nora’s apartment. She sat with her back tight in a corner and cried as though the world would end. Hot dogs didn’t help, though Nora drowned them in ketchup just the way the girl liked. Neither did cartoons, but the only kid-friendly TV shows were reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants. The child had seemed more afraid than entertained.

  Nora had been there when the girl was born, a truly terrifying affair that disabused her of the notion of ever having children of her own. When it was all over and the doctor had cheerfully announced, “It’s a girl,” Nora had taken the nameless infant into her own arms. She felt all elbows and thumbs, awkward and angled, as she cradled the tiny bundle, a hesitant participant in what should have been a natural rite of new life. The baby wasn’t quite what she expected either. The skin on her newborn cheeks was white and peeling, her fingers so diminutive that Nora hardly dared to touch them for fear they would splinter. But the infant was wide-eyed and quiet, her lips parted as if she were about to say something.

  “She’s amazing,” Nora said. And she was. But she was also strange and unnerving and miraculous. “What are you going to call her?”

  “Her name is Everlee.”

  “It’s pretty,” Nora forced herself to say. But she hated it. And in the years after, she used every excuse she could not to call the girl by her ill-chosen name. Sweetie or honey or bug. Anything but Everlee. She had a hard time even thinking the name.

  “Honey?” Nora called, shifting her eyes to the rearview mirror again. The child was still balled up under the blanket. Maybe she was sleeping. She certainly needed it. “Sweetheart, can you hear me under there?”

  No answer. But then, she wasn’t much for talking and never had been.

  “We’re going to play a little game, okay? A pretend game.” Did this sound like fun? Nora hoped so. She wanted to make it as painless as possible. “It’ll be great. Like playing dress up, only we’re going to put on a different name. Just for a little while. You get to pick what you want to be called. Won’t that be fun?”

  Silence. Nora could see the blanket shift a bit in the rearview mirror, but it seemed she was only pulling the swaddle tighter.

  “What’s your favorite name? Should we call you Courtney? Or Piper? What about Olivia like in those books I bought you?”

  Not even a flicker this time.

  Nora sighed and adjusted her sunglasses as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. The sky was all vivid pastels, long sweeps of clouds like brushstrokes as she drove into the light. It was too cheery for her errand. So picture-perfect it was almost artificial. It reminded her of the place she was going, and not in a good way.

  I have something for you, she wrote, and then couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  What could she say? Get the guest room ready, I’m strapping you with a reticent six-year-old for I don’t know how long. Oh, and I don’t intend to tell you a thing about her.

  Nora knew how that would go over.

  Details. Quinn would want details and an annotated outline and the entire freaking story beginning with the very moment that the girl was conceived. And Nora couldn’t tell her anything.

  Perfect little Quinn. Lovely, good, careful Quinn, who played the part of the wide-eyed baby sister so beautifully. Her degree was in secondary education, high school English to be exact, but Nora understood that she was better suited for preschool even if Quinn wouldn’t admit it herself. Quinn was an optimist, a happy girl who had once been both the head cheerleader for the Key Lake Titans and the vice president of the student body. She was supposed to marry the captain of the football team and have lots of adorable babies to populate Key Lake. But Quinn had uncharacteristically gone against everyone’s expectations and decided to do something different altogether.

  Quinn was trying to be someone she was not. Marrying that unbearably sexy, but totally weird, artist. Moving to Los Angeles. Pretending she could handle a roomful of teenagers when Nora fundamentally understood that high school students would eat her sister alive.

  The last time Nora saw Quinn, her hands and wrists were hennaed, elaborate flowers and intricate designs crisscrossing her fair skin like a map. Walker was experimenting with graffiti and tattoos, and his wife had become his favorite canvas. That had been almost two years ago, a rare family Christmas at the Sanfords’, and Nora had fe
lt downright sorry for her sister. Quinn seemed bewildered by her own life. She stared at her husband with a naked longing, a look that made Nora feel as if she had witnessed something shamefully private. But then Quinn’s eyebrow would quirk and it was as if Walker was a complete stranger to her. Lips slightly parted and head tipped just off-center, she gazed at her own husband as if seeing him for the very first time. It was unsettling. The henna began to smudge partway through the day and Quinn drank just a bit too much champagne during the gift opening and began to seem blurry and indistinct herself. She was melting away, fading like the orange dye that stained her hands.

  But Quinn was great with kids. At least, she had been. A dozen years ago.

  “What about Annie?” Nora asked, directing the question to the back seat. “I love the name Annie. To match your hair.”

  A shuffle. The slightest scuff of blanket on car upholstery.

  Did she say something?

  “What?” Nora tilted her head so that her ear was angled toward the back seat while her eyes remained on the road. The last thing she needed to do was end up in a ditch with a child bundled like a caterpillar in the back. The girl would look like the victim of a poorly planned abduction. “Did you say something, love?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “I want that, too,” Nora said, because she didn’t know how else to respond. And it was true. But it wasn’t possible. Not anymore. Not for either of them ever again.

  Nora stifled a shiver and told herself that the goose bumps sprinkled across her arms were because the air-conditioning was on too high. She reached for the vent, angled it down and away, and then grabbed her phone from its resting place in her cup holder. The girl would probably be scarred for life, would grow up to text and drive and kill herself in a fiery crash, but Nora set a bad example anyway. One eye on the road and the other on her screen, she pecked another text to Quinn: I’m coming.

  Wednesday

  9:10 p.m.

  Quinn

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  Nora

  Meet me.

  Quinn

  Now? Where?

  Nora

  Boat ramp.

  Quinn

  Redrock Bay?

  Nora

  10.

  LIZ

  THE COMMERCIALS LIED. None of those artificial glass cleaners could come close to the power of vinegar and newspaper. A little warm water in a bucket, a tangy splash of vinegar that probably should have put her in mind of pickles but instead made Liz think: clean. She had a special cloth that she reserved for this purpose alone; hand-washed weekly so that it would never become sullied by detergents or coated in buildup from the Island Fresh Gain fabric softener that she liked to use on her sheets. All Liz had to do was dip the cloth in the vinegar water, scrub the window one pane at a time, and then dry the streaks with a handful of crumpled newspaper. Usually the Key Lake Gazette, which wasn’t good for anything else anyway.

  Liz Sanford’s windows sparkled.

  So did the lens of her telescope.

  It wasn’t hers, not really. It had been Jack Sr.’s before the day less than two years ago when he claimed he had a twinge of heartburn and died in his leather La-Z-Boy while Liz washed the supper dishes. By hand, of course. Only people who didn’t care about the state of their china would dare to use a dishwasher.

  She felt guilty sometimes. Guilty for sending Jack to his office with a Tums in hand and then humming to herself as she lathered the two Crown Ducal Bristol-Blue dinner plates they had used for what would be Jack’s last meal. Guilty because Liz didn’t check on him until almost twenty minutes later, when the silver was nestled in the drawer and the Waterford crystal wineglasses had been placed in their designated spots in the reclaimed-barn-wood hutch. By that time he was already cool to the touch.

  The grief counselor (her physician had insisted she see him—Liz had only gone twice) assured her that it wasn’t her fault. Nor could she blame the rib eye they had enjoyed that night. The diced potatoes she had crisped in butter and bacon fat. The warm white bread that her husband had torn off in hunks and dredged through the drippings the steak left behind.

  Jack Sr. was the picture of health before he suddenly wasn’t. He had never been corpulent or breathless or sweaty, all things that would have repulsed Liz. In fact, he’d been tall, quite trim. He even had a full head of tawny hair when he died—though his tidy goatee was more silver than gold. Jack’s death taught Liz that sometimes the surface is not an accurate indicator of what lies beneath. Sometimes these things just happen. There’s no way to know. No way to predict.

  No one to blame.

  Liz didn’t go back to the grief counselor because she decided that she didn’t blame herself. Guilt was a sneaky emotion, a scavenger that fed on scraps meant for the burn pile, and she managed it quickly when it reared its ugly head. Liz had been a good wife. Of that there was no doubt. Jack was her king and his home was a castle, neat and spotless, the decor so subtle, so tasteful that Liz sometimes stopped with her fingertips on the slate slab counter because she was overcome by the synergy of her own design. Good lines, soothing colors, leather and wood and earth and stone. But Liz also knew the power of fire, and her fabrics were a spark of inspiration in the most unusual of places. Carnelian and tangerine, indigo and pink stirred so soft it looked like the raspberry sorbet she had loved as a girl.

  Liz wasn’t an artist—she would never stoop so low as to call herself that—but she was artful. In her kitchen, in her garden, in her bedroom. When Quinn eloped and Liz could hardly breathe for the disappointment, she mustered up one piece of advice and handed it to her daughter like an ill-suited gift.

  “Never say no,” Liz whispered, hugging her daughter stiffly, pretending that all was well and would be well when she knew that it would not.

  “What?” Quinn tried to pull away but Liz held tight, bony arms pressing the lush curves of her youngest close.

  “If he … wants you, don’t ever turn him down.” It was advice her own mother had given her, and Liz followed it with religious fervor. If her daughter was disgusted by the sudden intimacy of her counsel, Liz didn’t care. She knew how to keep a husband happy—in a dozen different but equally important ways. And though she doubted the unfortunate union between her baby and that artist would last long, she couldn’t entirely abandon her offspring.

  It was this singular dedication to the fruit of her womb that absolved Liz of any guilt she felt when she bowed her head over the telescope and peeked in on Quinn and Walker from her vantage point across the lake. From what Liz could tell, Quinn had taken her advice to heart—even if she had blushed crimson and hurried away when Liz had given it. Not that Liz needed or even wanted to know details. She was no voyeur and quickly took up her dust rag, her vacuum, her apron at the slightest indication that things were turning romantic across the lake.

  If only she could peek in on Jack Jr. and Nora as easily as she looked after Quinn. Liz had never exactly been the mother-hen type, but she did love her kids. And she liked to offer her advice when necessary.

  Besides, it wasn’t all mere observation. Liz had learned something from her surveillance and it justified what others might consider untoward. It seemed, after just a few months of haphazard examination, that her daughter and son-in-law had two settings: together and apart. Together was cover-ups abandoned on the deck, doors half-closed, hair disheveled. Apart was Walker in the boathouse and Quinn, alone.

  They would never last.

  What would Jack say if he could peer through the telescope? What would he think of Liz’s impetuous decision to offer the unlikely couple the swankiest lake rental they owned? Most important, what would Jack do? But though she fretted over this question at night, propped in the very middle of her now practically obscene king-sized four-poster bed, night creams and wrinkle emollients making her skin as slick and shiny as an oil spill, Liz was baffled.

  She had spent three-quarters of her life with him, but she had abso
lutely no idea what Jack Sr. would do.

  Besides, of course, keeping tabs on his daughter through the antique telescope that was ostensibly purchased for bird-watching.

  In some ways, Liz thought of the telescope as her husband’s legacy. It was more meaningful than the rental properties that were scattered around the lake or even the contents of Jack’s safety deposit box. Liz had always known the box existed, but never officially saw it until the week after the funeral when she entered the Key Lake Union Bank as the newly widowed Mrs. Sanford, key to the mysterious repository in hand. There wasn’t much inside. A copy of their will, Jack’s father’s class ring set with an emerald that Liz was sure was authentic. But at the very bottom, Liz was shocked to find a letter that she had written nearly forty years before. It was a love letter of sorts, though Liz wasn’t sure it could be called that since it lacked the usual frippery of such correspondence. She did not dot her is with hearts or tell Jack that she loved him. It was really quite matter-of-fact, a note passed in their senior world history class that informed him of a party that weekend and her wish that he would attend. With her.

  It was the beginning. Liz had forgotten that she had been the one to start it all.

  How bold.

  Liz liked herself a little more, remembering.

  And she liked the way she felt when she put her eye to the telescope for the very first time, less than a week after Jack had passed. Liz hadn’t bothered with it before, but now that her husband was gone it felt like something that she should do. After all, Jack had once spotted a house fire through that telescope. He’d called 9-1-1 before anyone else even realized what was happening. Another time he spied a stranded boat that had dropped a propeller, and then rescued the family himself. Their telescope was a service to the lake. Their telescope. But now it was hers.

  Liz took to it quickly. In fact, she rarely walked through the living room without pausing for a gander, a tiny hit that strengthened her ties to the small lakeside community. She was just a part of the tapestry—much like a paisley flourish on the expensive fabric she designed—doing what she could to ensure the peace and stability of the place that she called home.