Little Broken Things

by Nicole Baart

  And Liz was performing this important task late one evening as she headed to bed, wrapped in a silk robe embroidered with trailing orchids and sipping an herbal tea that her nutritionist swore would erase crow’s-feet while she slept. It was just a teensy peek, a moment of curiosity that should have yielded nothing more than the faint glow of bedside lamps between the drawn shades of nearly every home around Key Lake.

  But instead of being greeted by the orange flicker of the occasional bonfire on the rocky shoreline, Liz found her gaze yanked to the A-frame where Quinn and Walker lived. All the lights in the boathouse were on (not unusual) but the cabin was black (very unusual). Even more alarming was the flicker of headlights through the trees as a car pulled down the long gravel driveway away from the house. It was that ridiculous purple Kia Quinn and Walker owned.

  Apart.

  Liz glanced at the clock above the mantel. Almost 10:00 p.m. She didn’t know whether to be happy or concerned that Quinn was leaving her husband at such an odd hour, but she did know that something had taken root in her chest. It was a fledgling thing, a hope or a wish or a fear so thin and gauzy it didn’t yet have an object or even a name. Liz straightened up quickly and smoothed her silky robe. Smiled.

  Something was about to change.

  QUINN

  QUINN LEFT WITHOUT telling Walker where she was going.

  Nora could do that to her. They weren’t close, hadn’t been for years. Or ever, for that matter. And yet, one word from her sister and Quinn was all too happy to go.

  It made her irritable, and it wasn’t like Quinn to be moody. Even when Nora was going through her teenage activist stage and the Sanford house felt more like a war zone than a home, Quinn tried to keep everyone chummy and smiling with fresh-baked banana bread and a steady stream of heartwarming clichés.

  “You shouldn’t provoke them like that,” Quinn once chided Nora. Her sister had come downstairs for school wearing a T-shirt with curlicued letters that read “Ask me about my radical feminist agenda.” Of course, it made Jack Sr. see spots. Their older brother, Jack Jr.—JJ—wasn’t buying it either, and a shouting match ensued that only ended when their father insisted Nora remove her T-shirt and she obliged. In the middle of the kitchen. Just a few inches of the pale skin of her slender midriff made Jack quickly retract his demand, and he and his son all but fled the room.

  Nora scowled at their retreating backs.

  “He loves you, you know,” Quinn said around a mouthful of Cheerios.

  “Shut up, Quinn.” Nora straightened her shirt with a tug.

  “What did I do?”

  “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

  Quinn didn’t even know what the problem was, much less how to be part of the solution. And whenever she tried to share anything troublesome in her life, Nora assured Quinn whatever she was facing was a first-world problem and she should get over herself.

  “First-world problems,” Quinn muttered as she flicked on the blinker and pulled down the long drive that led to Redrock Bay.

  It was just before ten, but the surface of Key Lake was deep purple in the fading twilight. The single-lane gravel road forced Quinn to slow down as it curved through the trees, away from the water, but not before she sent a spray of dust and rocks pinging into the shallows.

  She wished she had a friend. Someone to call as she hurtled through the night toward Nora and her cryptic decree: I have something for you. But the thought was so pathetic that Quinn was embarrassed for herself. As if she was so unlovable. So awkward and eccentric she was incapable of forming meaningful relationships. It wasn’t that and she knew it. Quinn was good with people, quick to make friends, and perennially popular. But Key Lake was an anomaly.

  There were girls left over from high school, a handful of old friends who had married their childhood sweethearts and moved into cute little houses in the center of town just like their parents always hoped they would. Quinn had been like them once—idealistic and more than a touch naive—but these women were so different from the teenagers they had been that she hardly recognized them. Or maybe Quinn was the one who had changed.

  The first weekend that Quinn and Walker were back in Key Lake, the old guard invited them to a barbecue at Redrock Bay. The man-made beach was in the heart of Key Lake State Park, a bit of an inconvenience if you didn’t have an annual pass and had to pay the six-dollar daily fee, but worth it for the fine sand and the view of the serpentine lake as it meandered around the peninsula. It was a place rife with fond memories, and Quinn found herself warming slightly to the idea of living in her hometown after swearing she’d never again be counted on the Key Lake census. But there they were, meeting friends on a hot summer night for a party on the beach. Boxes still littered the floor of their temporary home, they hadn’t even made a proper grocery run yet, but maybe lake life wouldn’t be as bad as she thought. Perhaps she and Walker could actually be happy here.

  They bought an annual pass at the ranger station and affixed the sticker to the windshield of their rusty hatchback with an air of optimism. Walker had spent the better part of the afternoon looking for the case of wine they had shipped from LA, and when he finally found it in the closet under the stairs, he chose Quinn’s favorite: a bottle of Méthode Champenoise because it was sparkling and light, festive. He pulled it out of the back seat with a flourish as Quinn grabbed the fabric grocery bag that contained her homemade tapenade and a crusty baguette of Walker’s own creation. When he wasn’t working on a project, he put his hand to bread. Focaccia and boule and a brioche that was so buttery it tasted more like cake than bread. Quinn was suddenly, overwhelmingly proud. She couldn’t wait to introduce her wonder of a husband to the people who had once been the center of her universe.

  They emerged from the trail that led from the parking lot to the beach, breathless and expectant, cheeks blushed with lust for each other. Walker and Quinn had married for longing, and as they cleared the trees Quinn was sure the passion of their relationship was written all over her face. She put a hand to her cheek and tried to steady herself as she waited for the inevitable shouts and clumsy embraces, the cheerful reunions made awkward by their stale familiarity.

  No one noticed them.

  Quinn glanced around the beach, cataloging people in her mind and noting differences as clinically as a psychologist. Kelly’s hair was short, shorn at her jawline in a cut that was stylish, but a poor choice for her round face. There was a baby on her hip, chubby and grasping, and he squealed as he reached for the blunt ends of her hair and missed. Kelly was deep in conversation with Ryan. Sarah’s husband? It was hard to remember. Sarah had ping-ponged between Ryan and Mark for years. Quinn could hardly believe they were all still friends.

  There were twentysome adults spread out across the beach, clustered in twos and threes like Kelly and Ryan or standing ankle-deep in water as they dipped the fat toes of their matching babies in the cool lake. Quinn’s friends were changed, all of them, older and softer, a few of the men sporting a little salt and pepper at their temples and the women wearing practical tankinis instead of the sexy two-pieces they favored back when Quinn had known them so well. She fingered the long string of her own black bikini where it looped out from beneath the collar of her T-shirt and felt almost indecent.

  Part of her was jealous at the patent motherhood around her, of the life she was supposed to have. It had been within her grasp, all of it. The little house, the small-town simplicity, a spot firmly in the center of this tight-knit circle. Quinn had once been the queen bee, her kingdom complete with faithful subjects and a man (boy?) who she believed was the love of her life. But sometimes things are far more layered than they seem. More complicated, impenetrable. Quinn had hated this world and the sticky, menacing gospel of exclusivity and self-preservation it preached.

  She still did. Even as she deflated a little, Quinn was filled with a sort of ferocious pride in the lavish curves of her own unblemished body. She felt like an ingénue in
a crowd of worldly women. A child herself at twenty-five, but markedly different, younger somehow, than the women who were her peers. Just stepping foot on the beach had suddenly and irrevocably thrust her beyond the border of some inner sanctum. Quinn was not a woman who knew. Who had crossed the divide and bore the scars to prove it. She both loved and loathed herself for it.

  The one thing that Quinn was not conflicted about was the overwhelming urge to flee. They didn’t belong here.

  “Let’s go,” Quinn whispered to Walker. His hand was in the back pocket of her jean shorts and she was gripped by a need to be alone with him. To prove that though her body failed at what it was supposed to so naturally do, it never faltered when Walker trailed his mouth across her skin.

  “Too late,” he whispered back.

  Kelly had spotted them and there was a tepid facsimile of the warm welcome that Quinn had hoped for. One-armed hugs around toddlers, halfhearted hellos as infants screamed for attention. A picnic table was laid out with potato chips and pasta salad, and Theo was roasting hot dogs over a fire, six at a time on a two-pronged stick lined up in a perfect, nauseating row. No one touched Quinn’s tapenade, and when Walker offered wine the men looked affronted while the women assured him that they were breastfeeding. As if he should have known just by looking at them that they were ripe and life-giving and incapable of imbibing even a sip.

  Quinn shuddered, remembering. She and Walker had left long before it was polite to do so, claiming exhaustion though they were anything but. They made it halfway back to the car before they fell against each other. Lips. Hands. Clothes damp and clinging. Fingers frantic on hot skin and the taste of salt mingled with expensive French wine. They had finished off most of the bottle by themselves and it made them weak. They surrendered to the ache that brought them together in the first place, that sustained them in those harsh, artificial years in LA, and that would carry them through the brilliant glare of a Minnesota summer. It was enough, Quinn told herself. She didn’t need diapers and the toothless grin of a little person who looked like Walker but had her periwinkle eyes.

  But she did.

  They did.

  Quinn sighed as she pulled into the empty parking lot by the boat docks and turned off her car. When the engine went silent she could suddenly hear the hum of the waxing night through her open window, the forest coming alive as the first stars began to prick the sky above her. Frogs, and cicadas in the trees, water lapping hungrily at the shore. Maybe she should have been afraid. In LA, Walker had worked hard to convince her that a measure of fear was healthy, essential. He showed her how to splay her keys in between her fingers and made her promise to always be aware of her surroundings. Of people who might lurk in the shadows.

  There was nothing ominous about Key Lake. Quinn left the key in the ignition and the car unlocked when she got out of it.

  It was just like Nora to be late. Quinn walked to the nearest boat dock and wandered all the way to the end, forcing herself to leave her phone in the back pocket of her shorts instead of checking it yet again. It was set to ring and vibrate—she wouldn’t miss a call or a text. But that didn’t stop her from worrying, from nursing a familiar ache that started a slow, dull throb at the thought of her sister. No, it was more than that. Nora’s abandonment was a swath of scorched earth, black across the landscape of Quinn’s past. A tendril of smoke whispered from the ashes.

  What now, Nora?

  Quinn swallowed the hope that floated up and up in her chest. Tried to prepare herself for the worst.

  NORA

  IT WAS ALMOST ten thirty when Nora finally wound her way down the road to Redrock Bay. A sign near the ranger station at the entrance to the park admonished her to pay for admittance utilizing a wooden drop box and the honor system, but she drove right past it. She didn’t plan on staying long.

  The small parking lot near the marina was empty save for a purple hatchback with California plates. Quinn was standing beside it, her legs and arms bare and golden in the glow of the headlights as Nora swung the car around. She hadn’t expected to feel much of anything, but the enormity of seeing her sister after so long hit Nora square in the chest. She struggled to breathe.

  Quinn looked warm and wholesome, her skin tanned and her dirty blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail that put Nora in mind of her sister’s cheerleading days. At twenty-five, she still shimmered like a teen, her limbs smooth as pulled taffy, her expression so earnest, even at a distance, it was easy to tell that she still longed for approval. Love me, everything about her seemed to whisper. And it was impossible not to love Quinn. But sometimes, it was hard to like her.

  Nora squeezed the steering wheel until her knuckles glowed white in the dashboard lights. A part of her wanted to put the car in reverse and speed away, leaving Quinn in a cloud of dust. But it was too late for that.

  “I’ll be back in just a minute,” Nora finally said, clicking off her seat belt and swiveling around to consider the blanketed girl. The child had tugged the fabric below the line of her sea-glass eyes and was regarding Nora with an indecipherable gaze. “What do you think?” Nora attempted a smile but it felt fake and fragile on her lips. “Amy? Should we call you Amy?”

  Nothing.

  Nora sighed and stepped out of the car, leaving the door ajar so that the girl didn’t feel completely abandoned. What to do? Wave? Smile? The gravity of the situation made Nora’s feet feel weighted. She was halfway to Quinn and had no idea what to say to her sister.

  But Quinn didn’t hesitate.

  “Nora!” Quinn flung herself across the remaining distance between them and crushed her sister in a hug. “I didn’t think you were going to come!” Then she backed away and held Nora at arm’s length, a frown cutting a perfect line between her eyebrows. The wrinkle reminded Nora of their mother. But she would never say so to Quinn.

  “Hey, Q.”

  “I should hit you.”

  “Maybe,” Nora agreed. She didn’t bother to apologize.

  So Quinn wound up and smacked her in the arm, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to leave a bruise. It was a sisterly science, an exact measurement of force and velocity divided by the profound desire not to get on the wrong side of Jack Sr. He wasn’t a fan of fistfights between girls, even if JJ—the perfect child—had been the one to institute the mild sibling abuse that marked their home.

  “I deserved that,” Nora said as her baby sister worried her lip.

  “You cut your hair.”

  Fingering the nape of her neck, Nora toyed with the feathered ends of her blond fringe, the frayed, wavy edge that made her look like a rock star. All she needed were tattoos and an abundance of earrings, but Nora had an unusual affinity for the purity of her own body. She had no desire to be branded or pierced, save a tiny tattoo on her shoulder in the shape of an arrow—her best friend, Tiffany, had a matching one—and when she dabbled in drugs it was only because she was an angsty teenager and that’s what angsty teenagers did. She didn’t like the way they made her feel. Nora figured she wasn’t the addictive type.

  “I needed a change,” she offered, knowing that the haircut must be a shock to Quinn. The last time they’d seen each other, Nora’s flaxen waves had nearly touched her waist. Now, a long sweep of bangs complemented her cheekbones, and short layers exposed her neck and jaw. The overall effect was an aura of self-possession, of power. She used it to her advantage.

  “It looks great.” But Quinn’s eyes were narrowed, hurt. They were strangers, and the strain of their awkward conversation was apparent. Nora wished she could rewind the clock, right past wrongs. But she couldn’t worry about Quinn’s feelings right now.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s good to see you. I mean …” Quinn didn’t finish, and didn’t have to. Nora could see it all written across her face. I’m lonely. I wish things were different. I’m so angry at you. I miss you.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” Nora said, because what else could she say? She didn’t want to see her sister
now, under these circumstances, but what choice did she have? Quinn wasn’t the only Sanford sister whose life hadn’t turned out the way everyone had planned.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Quinn suggested with an air of finality. “Let me buy you a drink. Malcolm’s serves Guinness now. Crown and Coke?” Quinn was already walking back to her car, clearly expecting Nora to follow so they could slide into one of the tattered booths at Malcolm’s on the Water and pretend things were different.

  “Quinn, stop.” Nora hadn’t followed a single step, and when Quinn turned around the distance between them seemed unexpectedly large. “I don’t have time for a drink.”

  “But you came all this way.”

  “I can’t—”

  “It’s late.” Quinn shrugged one shoulder and offered up her most charming smile, dimple on the right. But there was something sharp in the line of her mouth. Unforgiving. “Spend the night. Walker is working on a project and the house is so big. You can have the suite off the kitchen. I’ll make you crepes in the morning, whipped cream and all.” Was she being sarcastic? Nora couldn’t tell.

  Nora didn’t mean to be harsh, but she shook her head and fixed her sister with a warning look. She had used this particular glare a thousand times throughout their childhood, and Quinn recoiled just like she had when she was eight and still in lopsided pigtails.

  “What?”

  “I need you to do something for me. To keep something safe,” Nora said.

  Quinn put her hands on her hips. “Okay. There’s a safe in the master bedroom of the cabin. Walker knows the code.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Then … ?”

  “You have to promise me something first.”