The Secrets We Carried

by Mary McNear

  As she turned into the driveway at Loon Bay, though, she pushed that thought out of her mind. She was no more comfortable with fatalism than she was with defeat. She parked, and as she approached her cabin she saw a note taped to her door. Wonderful. More bad news, she decided, as she peeled off the piece of notepaper and unfolded it. Quinn, she read, I was hoping to see you this morning. I have to go back to the city today, but I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. I need to talk to you. Don’t leave yet. Tanner. He’d left his cell-phone number underneath this.

  She folded the note and put it in her pocket. Well, that was one person who didn’t want her to leave Butternut. She let herself into her cabin and, needing something to do, went to make herself a cup of coffee in the kitchenette. This was good, she decided. Tanner being away. There was no possibility of a replay of what had happened last night. Tomorrow, when she saw him, clear minds would prevail, or, at least, sober minds.

  She wasn’t ready to eat yet, but when her coffee was done, she put extra cream in it and carried it over to the reading chair. Something was bothering her. Something beyond the obvious. Yes, Gabriel had said good-bye to her, but it was the way he’d said good-bye to her that was nagging at her. She saw now what he’d tried to do. He’d tried to absolve her from any guilt she might have felt over losing touch with him. And he’d hoped, in doing so, to relieve her from any burden she might have felt to keep visiting him. Did he really think that was why she kept turning up at his cabin? Well, he was wrong. But she could hardly go back and tell him that now. He’d explicitly asked her to stop coming to see him. And what had he said? That she could go back to Evanston?

  There was just one problem. She wasn’t going back. She knew she had unfinished business here. It felt like the only thing she knew right now, but it would have to be enough. There was no clear way forward. No obvious next step for her to take. For once in her life, she would have to wait for it to be revealed. That kind of passivity had never suited her. But perhaps, just this once, she would try to be patient. Of course, patience wasn’t to be confused with surrender. She was still stubborn, or, as her dad had once pointed out, with more than a little pride, “stubborn as all hell.”

  Chapter 25

  Quinn woke, suddenly. She’d had a dream. Not the dream. Not the dream about Jake, in his pickup truck, on the frozen lake at night. She’d had that dream too many times to count. This dream was different.

  She and Gabriel were ice fishing on Shell Lake. But it wasn’t Gabriel from high school. It was Gabriel now, with his shorter hair and work clothes on. Quinn, on the other hand, was not the contemporary Quinn, but Quinn in high school. She was wearing the army-green parka that she’d worn nearly every day of her senior year winter. The two of them were sitting on overturned plastic buckets in the shallow area, about twenty feet from shore. Right near where she and her father had gone ice fishing the day of the accident. The sky was gray, and it was getting later; it was almost dusk. Gabriel was concentrating, reeling something in. “You’ve got a fish,” Quinn said, excited. He pulled his line out of the water, but there wasn’t a fish on the hook. There was a ring. It was the aquamarine ring Jake had given her. The fishing line swayed in the wind and the ring glinted as it caught the light from the setting sun. “You’ve been looking for this, haven’t you?” Gabriel asked. “I knew you’d find it,” Quinn said. “No, Quinn. You found it.” But before she could reach for it, she woke up.

  Now she sat up on the bed, trying to orient herself. She didn’t know what the dream had meant, but it was the second time in a week that she’d dreamed about Gabriel, and the first time, ever, she’d dreamed about the ring. What did it mean? Was Gabriel going to help her find her long lost ring? If so, that was odd. Because Quinn had never told him she’d lost it in the first place. She shivered. The dream had seemed so real. In it, she could practically see her breath in the air, practically feel the wind stinging her cheeks. She reached over to the bedpost for her cardigan, pulled it on, and walked over to the window. The clouds had burned off and now the setting sun had slipped beneath the tops of the pine trees. She saw the Leinenkugel’s light blink on in the window of the bar and grill and realized she was starving. She hadn’t eaten all day. She headed over there.

  Once inside, she paused in surprise. The room seemed to have transformed itself. Last night it had been dimly lit, the jukebox turned up loud, the place empty but for her and Tanner. Now the overhead lights were on, an innocuous pop station played in the background, and three of the tables were already taken. The biggest surprise, though, was the bartender. Where the hapless Gunner had stood, pretending to wipe the bar in between text messaging with his friends, was Annika, who, in her neat ponytail and crisp button-down shirt, looked the picture of professionalism.

  “Hi,” Annika said to Quinn, smiling her familiar reserved smile. She was polishing glasses with a dish towel, and a few stools down from where she stood was Jesse, sitting at the bar. He had a half-drunk glass of milk, a half-eaten plate of chicken strips, and a workbook in front of him.

  “Hey,” Quinn said, sliding onto a stool in front of Annika. “Hi, Jesse,” she added, with a wave, and he looked up and nodded politely before returning to work, a frown of concentration on his face and the eraser end of a pencil shoved into the corner of his mouth. This was the closest Quinn had ever been to him before, and, she had to admit, he was a beautiful child. He was blond and blue-eyed and pale like his mother, but his eyebrows and eyelashes were noticeably darker, and the contrast between them and the rest of his coloring was striking.

  “Math,” Annika said, by way of explanation. She put a cocktail napkin and a little bowl of peanuts down in front of Quinn. “He hates it.”

  “Ugh, so did I,” Quinn said, with a shudder. “And here’s the thing about math: it only gets worse. Precalculus? Junior year? My friend Gabriel carried me for the entire class.” She smiled, remembering how they’d spent many afternoons at her kitchen table while he tutored her. She selected a peanut from the little dish and popped it into her mouth. Why, she wondered, had she brought up Gabriel so soon after he’d said good-bye to her, when the pain was still so new? Maybe, she thought, just for the pleasure of saying his name, and of reminding herself of a time when their friendship had seemed not only durable, but indestructible.

  “What can I get you?” Annika asked Quinn, before glancing in Jesse’s direction.

  “How about a cranberry juice,” Quinn said, thinking that she wasn’t ready for anything stronger than that yet. As Annika went to pour her drink, Quinn dug into her little bowl of peanuts. She wondered if Annika knew about her and Tanner closing the place down last night. Which made her wonder just how friendly Annika and Tanner actually were with each other. Did Annika, for instance, know that Tanner came up to Loon Bay to be “close” to Jake? This still struck her as a little strange. She’d love to hear Annika’s opinion on this. Although, truth be told, Annika didn’t seem to offer her opinions very freely. She was too reserved. Quinn decided she would make it her mission to get Annika to open up a little tonight. She would draw her out.

  Annika returned with Quinn’s cranberry juice. “I should really take your order. What would you like?” she asked.

  “Hmmm,” Quinn considered, putting a peanut in her mouth. “What did Jesse have?”

  “Chicken fingers. They’re from the children’s menu. But I can waive the twelve-and-under rule,” Annika said, with a smile. Quinn smiled back. Maybe she was already making a dent in Annika’s reserve.

  “I’ll have the chicken fingers then,” Quinn said. After Annika brought Quinn her dinner, she was busy for the next half an hour, waiting on tables, and negotiating with Jesse, who’d finished his dinner and his homework, and who wanted quarters to play the deer hunter video game. It wasn’t until Quinn was done eating that Annika reappeared before her.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  “No, thank you. That was delicious,” Quinn said. “It reminded me of the time this guy t
ook me out to this expensive restaurant in Chicago, and all I could think, staring at the menu, was that what I really wanted was the mac and cheese the kid at the table over was having.”

  “Must be nice,” Annika said. “Eating out in nice restaurants, I mean.”

  “I do that sometimes,” Quinn said. “I also eat ramen noodles in front of my computer sometimes. Especially when I’m writing.”

  Annika nodded. “How is your memory writing going?”

  Memory writing. Quinn liked the sound of that. “It’s been a couple of days, actually, since I’ve done any,” Quinn said. “I did a lot of writing on Sunday, though. In fact, twice when I was in my car, I stopped to write. And it’s been amazing. It’s actually helping me understand that time. But yesterday and today, I’ve been more focused on the present.” She realized as she said this that her interactions with Gabriel and Tanner were both weighing on her.

  “What about you?” Quinn asked. “Your present, I mean. Do you like working here, and living here?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “How long has it been?”

  “It’s been almost eight years since I started working here, and about five years since Jesse and I moved into one of the cabins. That’s when I started managing the place year-round. It’s not perfect,” she said with a shrug, “but it works.”

  “Jesse must love it,” Quinn remarked, looking over at him. He was absorbed in the video game.

  “Winters can be long,” Annika admitted, tucking a loose strand of hair back into her ponytail. “But summers are fun. A lot of the families who come return every year. And Jesse’s friends with the kids. He’s on the run all day. I have to force him to sit down and eat.”

  It sounded nice, Quinn thought. But she couldn’t help but wonder if Annika had to do it all alone. It was obvious that Jesse’s father wasn’t at Loon Bay. But did she still have family here? Quinn wondered.

  “What about Jesse’s dad? Or your family, are they still around?”

  “My family?” Annika asked. “Some of them are around. It’s not much of a family, though.”

  “No? What do you mean?” Quinn asked.

  “You’ve never heard of my father? The ‘Crazy Swede’?”

  Quinn shook her head.

  “Well, the name rings true, at least in Winton.”

  “How is he crazy?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t know about crazy. But he does crazy things. Plus, he’s a drunk with a mean temper.” She was quiet for a moment, polishing glasses that already looked perfectly polished. “You know how, in a small town, there are all these legends? About haunted houses or a graveyard or whatnot?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Well, my dad was like that. Most of the kids who grew up in Winton were afraid of him, but they’d still dare each other to go on our property.”

  “Kids can be cruel,” Quinn said.

  “Cruel? Maybe. But they can also be stupid. Because one of my father’s favorite things to do was to stand on our porch with a shotgun and threaten—in Swedish—to shoot anyone who came up our driveway.”

  Quinn was surprised. It was difficult to imagine Annika with a father like that. She was so calm. So reserved. And, obviously, so responsible, managing this place as well as she did. “Did he ever shoot anyone?” Quinn asked.

  “No. He was a good shot when he was sober, but he was almost never sober. It didn’t make it easy for my sisters and me to have a social life, though.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Quinn said. “How many sisters do you have?”

  “Two. Both older. One of them—her name is Britta—moved away. She lives in Tennessee with her family. She turned out all right. Jesse and I don’t get to see her as much as we’d like to.”

  “And the other sister?”

  “Hedda,” Annika said. “She stuck around. She’s not doing so great. She got married at eighteen to a local guy. A jerk. That was her way of getting out of the house, I guess. Going from one bad place to another. Then her husband left her”—Annika shrugged—“so she lost the guy but she kept the house. She’s an angry person, though. We almost never see her. I don’t want her around Jesse.”

  “What about your mom?” Quinn asked, hoping that she wasn’t prying.

  “She still lives with my dad in the same house I grew up in. She never had the nerve to leave him. He’s pretty sick now. So he still sits on the porch, but he doesn’t really cause any more trouble. Jesse and I, we don’t see him or my mom.”

  “That must be hard,” Quinn said. “But you’re like your sister in Tennessee, aren’t you? You got away. You may be only one town over from Winton, but to me it looks like you’re in a whole different world.”

  Annika considered this. “You’re right, I didn’t get very far, but it was far enough, I guess. Loon Bay is our home now. I have Caroline to thank for that.”

  “Caroline Keegan?” Quinn asked, of the woman who owned Pearl’s.

  “Uh-huh. She gave me a job at Pearl’s when I was twenty. She took me to open a bank account. She taught me how to make a budget. She helped me find a place to live before Jesse was born; I’d been staying at Hedda’s house, which was crazy. People were coming there, day and night, to party. And she told me about this job at Loon Bay.” Quinn smiled. Caroline had helped more than her fair share of people get a footing in life. And in Annika’s case, more than a footing. But Annika needed to give herself credit, too, Quinn thought. She told her this now.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said, laughing a little nervously. “And I don’t know why I’m talking so much either.” Annika glanced around the room. “Let me get this table their check,” she said. “And it looks like Jesse’s going to need some more quarters, too.” She hurried away and Quinn sipped her cranberry juice. Annika’s life was more complicated than she’d realized, but she’d been resourceful enough to put distance between herself and her parents. Quinn thought about what it must have been like growing up in a family like that. She couldn’t imagine it. Her dad was the antithesis of the “Crazy Swede.”

  “We need to get going,” Annika said, coming back around the bar and untying her apron. “It’s Jesse’s bedtime. Gunner will take care of you, though,” she said, nodding at Gunner, who was hanging up his jacket. “By the way, do you know how long you’re going to be staying here, at Loon Bay?” she asked.

  “Oh,” Quinn said, surprised by the question. “No. I don’t. Not yet.” She had no idea how long she was staying. Why she was staying was a whole other question. “Do you need my cabin?” she asked her.

  “No. We’re not completely booked until Memorial Day weekend.” After Annika left, Quinn tried to settle her bill with Gunner. But he shook his head. “Annika said it’s on the house.”

  After Quinn walked back to her cabin and let herself in, she brushed her teeth, peeled down to her underwear and a T-shirt, and crawled into bed. Thanks to her marathon nap, she wasn’t tired. She turned over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. She thought about Annika, for a little while, and what she’d told Quinn about her life tonight. How difficult it must have been to bring a child into the world with no family to help. But she’d had a friend, Quinn reflected. She’d had Caroline. That’s what had saved her. A friend who was there for her. And this made Quinn think about her friendship—or lack of friendship—with Gabriel. He’d been her closest friend. Until the night of the accident. After that, she couldn’t go back to the way their friendship had been. And she couldn’t go forward into what their friendship had become. Instead, she’d avoided him, she’d avoided everybody. She been too overwhelmed with guilt. The problem was that in avoiding Gabriel, she’d failed him.

  What was clear now, ten years later, was that she still cared so much about him. The painful part was that he no longer cared about her in the way he once had. You couldn’t make someone care about you. But she wasn’t ready to give up on Gabriel yet. She’d think of something tomorrow. She’d stay for a couple more days, maybe get some more writing done.
She’d come up with something. She had to.

  Chapter 26

  The next morning, Quinn stood in the bread aisle of the IGA and considered the selection. There seemed to be as many different kinds of bread as there were people in Butternut to eat them. She’d come into the store to pick up a Minneapolis Star Tribune and a cup of cheap coffee before heading over to the Butternut Library to write, but she’d ended up roaming the aisles, curious to see what had changed. There was a tiny gluten-free section now, and some half-hearted organic selections in the produce department. Quinn was about to leave the bread aisle when she saw Theresa Dobbs come around the corner. Her first impulse was to hide. Her second was to run. She went with the second. She turned and headed in the other direction down the aisle, brushing past an older man who’d stopped to pick up some rolls. She made it as far as the crackers—walking as fast as she could without attracting attention—before she heard her name being called.

  “Quinn. Quinn!”

  Oh, God. Not this again, she thought.

  “Quinn, wait!” Theresa called from directly behind her. Quinn stopped. Best to just get this over with, she decided. She turned around. Theresa, who was holding an empty grocery basket, looked better than she had several nights ago. She was wearing a Minnesota Wild T-shirt, a pair of skinny jeans, and a quilted down coat, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. When she came up to Quinn, though, and stood much too close to her—what was it about this woman ignoring personal space?—Quinn saw that her nose and cheeks were covered with tiny, spidery red veins. Gin blossoms, they were called, though in Theresa’s case, vodka blossoms might have been more accurate. Quinn could smell it on her breath. Gabriel had said Theresa drank a lot, but he hadn’t mentioned she started before noon.