by Nicole Baart
No, Lucy couldn’t go outside.
They were at an impasse. So after hours of trying and failing, Quinn finally gave up and let Lucy click through stations on the flat-screen TV. And that’s exactly what the child did: flip, flip, flip. Past Wheel of Fortune and MSNBC and Ellen. Home improvement shows and Say Yes to the Dress and reruns of The Big Bang Theory. Whenever Curious George ambled across the screen or Princess Sofia made an appearance, Quinn held her breath. But Lucy never stopped.
Quinn was grateful when the sun began its slow descent and she could bundle Lucy off to bed. The child didn’t make so much as a peep.
“She’s in bed?” Walker asked when he came in past dark.
Quinn was curled up on the couch, a magazine in hand though she hadn’t read a single paragraph. “Of course she’s in bed. She’s not a teenager.”
“That bad?” Walker plopped down on the couch and grabbed Quinn’s ankle, settling her foot in his lap. He ran his finger lightly down the curve of her arch. She squirmed.
“You know I hate that.”
He smiled, pressing his thumb into the soft spot beneath the ball of her foot and circling slowly. “But I know you love this.”
Quinn sighed and tipped her head back against the couch cushions. She had always considered herself a kid person; she’d loved babysitting in high school and couldn’t wait to be a mom herself, but an entire day with Lucy had thoroughly scuffed the patina on those shiny dreams.
Walker moved his hands over Quinn’s foot, gently cracking each bone in her pretty little toes. She stifled a shiver.
“I think …” Quinn wasn’t sure she dared to voice what she really thought.
“What?”
“I think there’s something wrong with her.”
Walker exhaled through his nose and fixed Quinn with an arch look. “You’ve just figured this out?”
Quinn reached over and punched him on the shoulder. “I mean, besides the obvious.”
“Let’s see,” Walker mused as he put his shoulders into massaging Quinn’s heel. “She was abandoned—”
Quinn tried to protest but Walker talked right over her.
“—with a stranger—”
“Hey!”
“—in a strange place. She’s lonely and frightened and confused. And who knows what she endured before she was dropped in our laps.”
“I’m not sure she was dropped in our laps.” Quinn sounded accusatory, which was an accident. She was going for lighthearted. With an edge. The truth was, she had felt alone all day. Abandoned in her own way.
Walker stopped rubbing her foot. “Excuse me?”
Why did she push him away when what she really wanted was to hold him close? I wanted you here, is what she meant. With me. Quinn crawled across the couch and straddled her husband’s lap, cupping his face in her hands. But he didn’t melt like she hoped he would. Walker held himself still, aloof. “I didn’t mean that,” she whispered. “Not that way. It’s just that you’ve been so busy lately.”
“Working,” Walker interjected.
“I know. But …”
“No buts, Quinn.” He lifted her easily and set her aside, then strode into the kitchen, where he yanked open the door of the cupboard above the refrigerator. “We need the money and you know it. I don’t need a guilt trip from you.”
His words stung. They had only been in Key Lake for two months—not even—and Quinn had sent out a dozen resumes. The one job she really wanted at the preschool had fallen through, but she couldn’t bring herself to fill out an application for Walmart. Not yet. How could Walker throw that in her face?
Quinn was equal parts miffed and contrite. Well, not quite equal. She was spoiling for a fight and found herself wanting to hiss across the space between them that Walker’s piece wasn’t sold. But she managed to control the urge. Accusations would accomplish nothing except for pushing him further away. Instead, she warned: “Shhhh!” Quinn pointed at the closed door to the spare room where Lucy was, ostensibly, asleep. She hoped.
If Walker heard her he didn’t let on. Instead, he grabbed a bottle of Crown Royal and a highball glass and poured himself a double shot, neat. He took a few sips before splashing in a bit more and leaving the bottle uncapped and sitting on the kitchen counter. He returned to perch on the arm of the couch. Far from Quinn.
“You know how I feel about this,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“I really can’t handle you complaining about it.”
Quinn dipped her head in acknowledgment. “You’re the only person I have to talk to.” She didn’t mention her mother and the fact that there were now three of them who knew Nora’s secret. She wasn’t ready to tell Walker that. “It’s just a lot to deal with.”
When Walker softened it was a visible, tangible, obvious thing. Like butter melting. Like ice transforming to a puddle on a sun-warmed picnic table. To Quinn, it was hope itself, and she lifted her face to him now, expectant.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?” He looked at her warily, as if her answer mattered much.
“For everything. All of this. For Lucy. For making you do something you don’t want to do.”
“It’s been a rough summer,” he admitted.
“Do you regret coming here?”
He tipped his glass, watching the dark liquid inside. “I’d go anywhere with you,” Walker said eventually. He meant it, Quinn knew he did. He told her they were one in a million, a love story for the ages, and she believed that it was true. Usually. He was a lot to contain. Too much to know. There were things about her husband that were still a mystery, and Quinn feared she’d always follow a step behind. Forever reaching for him.
“I’d go anywhere with you,” she said.
“I know.”
Walker gave her a stiff smile, but he slid off the arm of the couch so that their knees were touching. On again, off again. Hot and cold. Lust and love and desire and longing and all the things that she could put a name to plus several that she couldn’t.
“I love you,” she said, because it seemed like the only thing that she could say.
“I know.”
“My mom’s having a party tomorrow night,” she blurted when the silence between them began to turn stale. A classic Quinn move. Distract. Redirect. Anything to keep the peace. Of course, her attempts to pacify sometimes backfired. Quinn didn’t quite understand the difference between keeping the peace and making peace. One required diversionary tactics. The other, battle plans.
But Walker was willing to play along. “Ah.” He smiled and tossed back the last of his drink. “A legendary Sanford gathering, I presume?”
“Of course. My mom is begging us to come.”
“Us?”
“Of course.”
“It’s an event.” Walker nodded sagely. “How many years has it been?”
“Lots. I don’t know. I hated them when I was a kid. All those adults with sour breath and wrinkled clothes. My mother is the picture of propriety, but those parties always had a slightly desperate air to them.”
“Those are some pretty profound thoughts for a kid.” Walker put his empty drink on the table and Quinn restrained herself from slipping a coaster underneath the glass.
“I was a teenager when it hit me that they were playing at youth,” Quinn said.
“What do you mean?”
“I walked past a group of my mom’s friends and they started commenting on my skin, my hair, my legs. They thought I couldn’t hear them, but …”
“But what?”
“I know now that they were jealous. Of a seventeen-year-old.”
“I imagine every woman you meet is jealous of you.” Walker’s hand was on her bare leg, his thumb tracing the arc of three small freckles on her thigh.
Quinn’s skin tingled where he touched her. This was different from the foot rub, different from the way he reached for her throughout the day as if she were a lodestone and he simply needed to be grounded. She lov
ed it when he touched her like this. With intent. With desire.
“I don’t know about that,” Quinn managed as Walker’s fingertips brushed beneath the hem of her khaki shorts. They were so short he didn’t have to reach far to graze the lacy edge of her hip-hugging panties.
“I do.” Walker pushed her back gently into the pillows and kissed her slow. His mouth was fire and longing. Warm and insistent. Quinn both loved and loathed the way he made her feel consumed. As if she were drowning, but instead of gasping for air she let herself be pulled under, deeper still.
There were things that they should talk about. Realities to face. But Quinn was in no state to address them. She gave in and kissed him back, her hands twisting in his hair, holding tight.
“Go to your mom’s party,” he told her, nibbling at her bottom lip.
“Lucy …” she whispered, but the girl was little more than a ghost of a thought.
“I’ll stay with her.” Walker’s hand was under her shirt now, following the line of her hip, her waist, the fine bones of her arching rib cage.
“But—”
“Go. I’ve got this covered.”
And then, suddenly, Quinn didn’t care about anything but his body above her.
NORA
THE DOOR WAS OPEN, the narrow gap dark as a wound, and that scared Nora even more than the silence. It was eerie, the quiet. The night was hot and sticky, stagnant when it should have been alive with the chirp of crickets, the low whine of cicadas in the trees. But the world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the first few raindrops of the storm that swelled on the horizon. Even the house was still, the shades pulled, the windows black.
Nora had stood on these steps dozens of times. More. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in the wrong place. Where was the tinny soundtrack of a show turned up too high on the TV? Sometimes the radio played tug-of-war with sitcom stars, and sometimes Tiffany’s voice drowned it all out. The bark of her laugh or belted show tunes that filled the farmhouse with a warm luster. Tiffany loved to fill up space with sound, to talk, laugh, sing, and Nora was used to hearing the muffled noise through closed doors. Tiffany believed in shutting the world out. In padlocks and chains. And she never turned from a door without securing it behind her.
Not this time.
Nora put her palm on the door and squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to walk away, to call 9-1-1 and let the authorities handle whatever had happened inside. But she couldn’t. The tug of responsibility—and something much more complicated—forced her to swallow a steadying breath and call through the crack: “Tiffany? Tiffany, honey, are you in there?”
Nothing.
The door creaked when Nora pushed it open, a scream that split the night so violently her heart thudded in her chest. She felt sure that Donovan was gone—he spent most evenings at the Cue and his car was nowhere to be seen—but if anyone was inside they would surely come running. Nora held her breath for a heartbeat or two, but nothing interrupted the sleep of the decaying farmhouse.
Nora was surprised at the sudden stab of anger that caught her square in the chest. When she found Tiffany she was going to smack her.
Nora balled her fists. She was jumping to conclusions. Tiffany would be okay. Everything would be just fine.
Her sneakers squeaked on hardwood as she walked fully into the house and fumbled for the light. “Tiffany?” she called again. “It’s Nora. You haven’t responded to any of my texts …”
She trailed off as her fingers found the switch. The bare bulb in the living room sputtered to life and Nora blinked in the dim half-light.
The house looked as if the storm had blown through already. Chairs were overturned and the television screen smashed to blistering spiderwebs that glittered strangely in the dull light. Nora stepped over an old pizza box with only one slice missing and righted a lamp that had been knocked off a scarred end table. But the bulb was shattered, and Nora’s heart splintered like the jagged edge of glass when she realized what was dusting the worn tabletop. It was nothing really, a fine sprinkling. The residue of dirty white powder.
Tiffany hated needles, wouldn’t have anything to do with them, but the powder was powerful enough to send her on a trip for nearly a day. Once was never enough. She binged when she started and tweaked hard when she came down. Nora had raced Tiffany to the hospital on more than one occasion, raw from the drag of her own fingernails and convinced that Nora, her only friend in the world, was a demon sent to torture her.
But that was then. Nora shuddered and tried to push down memories that were so close to the surface they bled through all her defenses. It was too late. Her nostrils filled with the scent of old eggs and cat urine, the telltale signs that Donovan was cooking meth in the kitchen. Nora pushed down a wave of revulsion at the memory. That had been the worst. Rock bottom. Tiffany had forgotten to eat for nearly a week, at least nothing of substance, and the skin beneath her cheekbones had caved until she was shadow and bone, a wisp of angry ghost that grabbed at Nora with crooked fingers when she ventured close enough to touch. When Nora threatened to take Everlee away, Tiffany had agreed to rehab.
Now, Tiffany was a changed woman. Her brown eyes clear, her frame thin but not skeletal like it had been when she was so out of control her days blurred into one. Less than two weeks ago Nora had treated Tiffany to a manicure, a little happy-twenty-sixth-birthday treat, and had relished the way her friend’s hands glowed smooth and whole beneath the light of the lamp. They had both gotten acrylic nails with squared French tips and felt so elegant they spoke in bad accents all the way home.
“How are you?” Nora had asked, twisting in her seat when they pulled up to the farmhouse and Tiffany reached for the door handle. “I mean, really. How are you doing?”
Tiffany couldn’t hold her gaze, but her eyes flicked to Nora’s and she smiled self-consciously before staring out the windshield. “I’m fine. Really.”
Nora studied her profile, the sharp angle of her slender jaw and the way her skin looked scrubbed clean. Tiffany seemed much older than her age, her eyes and mouth crisscrossed with lines too deep for someone so young. But there was an innocence about Tiffany, too, a vulnerability that always made Nora want to shield her from the world. To protect her.
Nora had failed. On more than just this occasion.
She tripped on an overturned laundry hamper, its dingy contents spilled across the living room floor, and knocked her knee on the edge of an antique chest. The lid was open, the hinge ripped and hanging crooked from the rotting wood. There were toys inside, a stained Raggedy Ann doll and a deflated purple ball amid a rainbow of colors and plastic. “Tiffany?” Nora called again, the name fracturing on her lips.
Maybe Tiffany was gone. Maybe she had left in search of another hit. But Tiffany’s rusty Ford truck was parked where it always was in the gravel drive beside the house. And the little farmstead surrounded by cornfields was too far away from anything for Tiffany to take off on foot. Especially on a night like this. A night with clouds roiling in a slow boil, the radio broadcasting a tornado watch. Tiffany would be tucked in her house, the doors locked tight around her.
Adrenaline was a drug, too, and Nora found herself stumbling through the detritus of the living room with a panicked urgency. She flicked on the lights in the kitchen. Cupboards were open, soiled dishes piled so high in the sink that half of the window was obscured. Something smelled overripe, sickly sweet and nauseating, but in spite of the mess and the stench, Nora felt a pang of relief that Tiffany wasn’t sprawled facedown on the floor. The room was empty of everything but the rebellious artifacts of her sad life.
The rest of the house was equally wrecked, a labyrinth of discarded magazines, toys, clothes. There was a serving bowl in the upstairs hallway, a little striped sock hanging from the banister. A window air conditioner hummed in the dim light, drops of condensation making dark Rorschach blots on the pale carpet. An angel. The thought flicked through Nora’s mind so quickly she had to glance back at th
e wet spot to orient herself. It did look like an angel, the stain, and Nora prayed it was an auspicious sign.
She wasn’t looking for Tiffany anymore.
Closets. Corners. Under the queen bed where Tiffany’s unwashed laundry had been scattered across the faded sheets.
There wasn’t a proper bed in the little closet under the eaves that Tiffany had turned into the prettiest nook in the house. Walls the color of cotton candy, a twin mattress on the floor covered with a quilt in hues of the softest green. Nora had refinished a squat bookshelf for a birthday present and it contained a treasure trove: the entire collection of Olivia and all the original Curious George, Richard Scarry with his willowy Lowly Worm and a hidden Goldbug like a secret on every page. Nora’s favorites were the dog-eared procession of Anne of Green Gables paperbacks, but they were simply biding their time, waiting on the bottom shelf for the day when the picture books would be set aside.
Thank God the little girl was gone. Thank every celestial creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth that at least she was safe. As for Tiffany … ?
Nora put a finger on the spine of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and slipped it from the bookshelf. They had chosen the book purposefully, deciding that a trip through the wardrobe was exactly what they needed. A fresh start, a clean break, a new beginning. But when Nora felt for the manila envelope they had hidden, it was gone. She started yanking books, dropping them to the floor as she searched for the packet. It was no use.