In the living room, Quinn knelt on one knee beside the fire, rearranging logs. Sylvia realized how chilled she felt. Whether it was from the coolish September morning or the anticipation of seeing Quinn, she wasn’t sure. Either way, she was grateful for the warmth in the room. Tending the fire was so characteristic of Quinn. He could have been kneeling before the flames on any ordinary morning, arranging the precise draft of air to feed the fire and keep it crackling with the perfection of a holiday movie.
“Quinn,” Ethan said, “she’s here.”
Quinn’s head rotated toward her, and Sylvia soaked up his face. The shape of it. The color of it. The crinkling features when he smiled. Even his balding head. Sylvia loved it all.
He stood and turned his entire body toward her and held out a hand. “Sylvia, come here.”
She dropped her purse in a chair on the way to him, freeing up her arms to wrap around him. Quinn’s heart beat against her at the core of the embrace.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Sylvia whispered in Quinn’s ear. She knew Nicole and Ethan were in the room, but their presence faded away in the grip of Quinn’s arms around her.
“I would have called if I could have,” Quinn murmured. He kissed her ear as he finished speaking into it and then took her face in his hands.
Sylvia held her breath. Quinn hadn’t touched her this way in years—decades—but she had never stopped wishing he would. When he leaned his face toward hers, she offered her lips.
Quinn kissed her full on the mouth—and lingered. Even when the clapping started behind her, Sylvia felt only Quinn’s nearness.
“So this is the one,” a strange male voice said.
Quinn broke the kiss and smiled into Sylvia’s eyes. “This is the one. The only one.”
Sylvia looked over Quinn’s shoulder, wondering if the man had been there all along and she’d only seen Quinn, only wanted to see Quinn.
Quinn took one of Sylvia’s hands. “Sylvia, this is my brother, Scott Wilson.”
She fumbled for words as Scott shook her hand. “I didn’t know Quinn had a brother.” And why was his brother’s last name Wilson?
“I couldn’t tell you before now,” Quinn said. “I didn’t want to put you in danger.”
“Danger?”
“Do you remember the day we hiked down to the back of the falls and stood for hours in that hollowed space?”
Sylvia remembered. When Quinn kissed her there and said how much he loved her, Sylvia had hoped he’d gone back to the jeweler for the ring they’d looked at. It was the perfect place to propose, an exquisite moment. He kissed her repeatedly that afternoon, but he never reached into his pocket for a little velvet-covered box. They never again talked of marrying, and only later did Sylvia look back and realize his kisses had been good-bye kisses—good-bye to the future they had both allowed themselves to dream of.
She remembered every detail and nodded now.
“In those early years,” Quinn said, “my reasons for coming to Hidden Falls were raw. I had nightmares that my old identity would collide with my new identity and people I cared about would get hurt. I couldn’t put you at risk by confiding.”
What old identity was he talking about?
Nicole sat in the chair closest to Sylvia. “Quinn was in the witness protection program.”
“We both were,” Scott said. “We weren’t allowed contact even with each other.”
Sylvia had read enough novels and seen enough movies to know that if Quinn was in witness protection, he knew something terrible or had seen an awful crime.
“I would have kept your secret,” she said.
“I wasn’t worried about what you would do,” Quinn said.
He didn’t have to say more. Sylvia understood. Whoever Quinn witnessed against was well connected. But here Quinn was, standing in his home in Hidden Falls with his long-lost brother. What changed?
“Are you safe now?” she asked.
Quinn nodded. “After I found Scott, I had to make sure it was safe to come back.”
“What happened?”
Quinn smiled. “It’s a long story, and it involves a surreptitious meeting at the San Francisco airport with a US marshal on his way to Paris. But there’s plenty of time for it later.” He moved to the end of the mantel and reached for a small box.
A jeweler’s box. Sylvia’s heart kicked into high gear.
“I love you, Sylvia.” Quinn went down on a knee and opened the box. “If I haven’t missed my chance by taking so long, I hope you’ll still have me.”
He had gone back to the jeweler in Birch Bend all those years ago after all.
11:30 a.m.
Dani shook her head at Liam’s feeble effort with the fishing rod. How was it possible that they had the same grandfather, who took all his grandchildren out on the water, and yet Liam couldn’t get the hook in the water without tangling the line? And of course, once he’d created the mess, he was useless at untangling. Dani sighed and traded rods, giving Liam the line that was already in the water.
“This was your idea,” Liam reminded her. “I said we should go back to civilization when we got up.”
In the end, after dangling their feet off the end of the pier until eleven o’clock the night before, they stayed the night in the cabin. They hadn’t talked much. Dani’s capacity to listen to the night sounds of the lake was nearly infinite. As long as Liam wasn’t restless, Dani saw no reason to disrupt the peace that settled into the silence between them. A cloudless day slid into a cloudless night, and the longer they stayed out, the more stars they saw. Eventually Liam stretched out with his back on the pier and his hands locked behind his head, staring into endlessness.
It was Liam’s stomach rumbling audibly that reminded them both that they hadn’t had dinner, and Liam admitted he hadn’t eaten lunch, either. Dani still kept their grandmother’s old air-tight tins filled with crackers and dried fruit. Liam ate his fill and fell asleep in front of the fire Dani stoked from time to time. By its light, she watched her cousin’s slumber. His business troubles were not over, and though Dani had never experienced a broken heart in the romantic sense, she didn’t imagine Liam would get over Jessica anytime soon.
It was true that when he woke well after the sun was up, Liam suggested they go back to town. Dani countered by saying they might as well take some fresh fish with them. She knew now that she would have to catch anything they took home because Liam didn’t have a clue what he was doing with a rod and reel. A cooler on the pier held two good-sized trout. Dani was hoping for one more.
When her phone rang, Dani ignored it. Whoever it was could wait. She still had the entire afternoon available to answer calls and decide whether anything was the emergency a caller made it out to be.
Three or four minutes later, Liam’s phone rang.
“Ignore it,” Dani said.
Liam had both hands wrapped around the end of his pole. If he tried to answer his phone, he was likely to drop their grandfather’s best rod into the lake. It was bad enough Dani had lost her brand-new reel when her rowboat went over the falls. But she could replace that one eventually—especially if she would answer her phone a little more often and come out to the lake a little less often. Losing her grandfather’s old equipment was a different story. To Dani’s relief, Liam made no move to answer his phone.
Less than five minutes later, Dani’s phone rang again. “I knew I should have left my phone in the Jeep.”
“Somebody’s trying to reach us,” Liam said. “Maybe it’s Cooper.”
Liam put one hand in his pocket, and Dani grabbed his pole. She wasn’t taking any chances. Her phone rang four times, went silent, and immediately rang again. Dani answered it this time.
“Dani?” It was Nicole’s voice.
“What’s up?” Dani said.
“Are you at the lake?”
“That’s right.”
“By any chance is Liam with you?”
“Yes.” Dani glanced at Liam, who was pu
nching buttons on his own phone.
“Grab some of your famous fish and come to Quinn’s house,” Nicole said. “There’s someone here who would love to see you.”
“He showed up, did he?”
“Yep. Get over here before you miss the whole story.”
Dani handed one rod back to Liam. “Do you think you can reel this in without falling into the lake?”
“Give me a little credit.” Liam began to crank the handle on the reel.
“We’re going to Quinn’s,” Dani said. “He’s there.”
Liam’s gaze snapped toward Dani. “Quinn’s back?”
“Didn’t I just say that?” Dani had her line in. “I told everybody he’d come back when he was good and ready.”
“Are you sure he wants to see me?” Liam asked.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Liam finally got his line reeled in. Dani secured the cooler in the back of the Jeep and drove straight to Quinn’s.
“Looks like the party started without us,” Liam said when they saw the cars parked outside Quinn’s house.
Dani knocked on the front door but didn’t wait for an answer before trying the knob and finding it unlocked. While she had never been as seriously concerned that something was wrong with Quinn as some of the people around town, Dani admitted—at least to herself—that she was curious to hear Quinn’s explanation of his actions.
And she hadn’t expected the news that Nicole’s suspicions were not so far-fetched or that Quinn had a younger brother. Sylvia kept coffee cups filled as Quinn’s account unfolded.
“I was fifteen,” Quinn said, “and Andrew—Scott—was twelve when it all started. Our parents died within a few months of each other from unrelated causes.”
“It was as if lightning struck twice,” Scott said. “You don’t expect it the first time, and you certainly don’t think it will happen again.”
Nicole took in air audibly. “No wonder you understood how I felt when my mother died.”
“What happened to you after that?” Sylvia asked. “You were both underage.”
“We had an uncle,” Quinn said, “my father’s brother. He and his wife had lost their only child when she was very young. They weren’t quite sure what to do with a pair of adolescent boys, but they took us in. Scott and I were together, and it was all working, though we knew we’d be on our own once we finished school.”
“So what happened?” Ethan asked.
Dani wished everyone would quit asking questions and let Quinn tell the story in his own time.
“We were almost there,” Scott said. “Quinn was in college. I was in high school—still underage.”
“This was all in New York City,” Quinn said. “I had a scholarship, but to save on expenses, I was living at home. I planned to help Scott through school next. Then one night my uncle asked me to run a fairly routine errand for him.”
“Swatches,” Scott said. “He had a modest interior design business and had promised to get some swatches to an impatient client.”
“It was on my way to a night class,” Quinn said. “I just had to get off the subway one stop early and walk a few blocks.”
Dani scanned the room to see how the story was sinking in.
Quinn got out of his chair and paced slowly in front of the fireplace. “I’m not going to tell you every sordid detail. If I had just walked away when no one answered the door, I would never have come to Hidden Falls or missed out on my brother’s life. But my uncle had been emphatic that the swatches had to be delivered that night, so I tried the door and it opened. I walked in on a gruesome crime and it wasn’t quite over. But I’m not going to put those images in your heads, like an episode of Law and Order. I care about all of you too much.”
The silence was breathless, vacant. Sylvia’s eyes leaked tears. Nicole clutched Ethan’s hand. Liam paled. Dani ransacked her memory for any reference Quinn might have made, even years ago, that would point to this rendering of events.
“I dropped the swatches and ran,” Quinn said. “It turned out someone had already called the police because of strange noises. An officer thought my behavior was suspicious and stopped me. Spending forty-eight hours in custody because they thought I was an accessory to the crime probably saved my life.”
Scott cleared his throat. “Then one morning a note arrived threatening my life if Quinn testified about what he’d seen.”
Whether he was Adam Kreske or Ted Quinn, this man in whose living room Dani sat now would have done the right thing. Of course he testified.
“The police did everything they could to keep us safe while we waited for the trial,” Quinn said. “We stayed in school but otherwise kept to ourselves. We got so we could spot the plain-clothed officers watching us. But even when the trial was over the next year—with a guilty verdict—the danger wasn’t. The police found the continuing threats to be credible and suggested protection. I was old enough to be responsible for my brother, and anyway, by now he was only months away from being a legal adult. My only requirement was that we both go into the program—together.”
Dani realized now that the man she’d seen come to visit Quinn every year must have been a US marshal, Quinn’s one contact with his past.
“Then what happened?” Nicole asked.
“It was all set,” Quinn said. “I went with a marshal for some orientation about where they were sending us, and they only gave me documents for one new identity.”
“You became Ted Quinn,” Sylvia said.
He nodded. “I created a fuss that would make you all proud and refused to go without Andrew. But by the time I got back to our uncle’s home, Andrew was gone.”
“They broke their deal with you?” Dani finally gave in to the urge to ask her own question.
“Something glitched,” Scott said. “My uncle said I should go with the marshals who came for me, that everything would be all right. Adam would sort it out. But somehow the arrangements had been made for us separately instead of together.”
“I never saw Andrew again,” Quinn said.
“And then Nicole told you the birthmark story,” Ethan said.
Quinn nodded. “I’d been looking for years, on my own and through several private agencies.”
“Santorelli,” Liam said. “The envelope that went to my box by mistake.”
“But it was the birthmark,” Quinn said. “I had no reason to think anyone knew about it, but what if they did? What if Andrew was exposing himself by being willing to do that newspaper story?”
“My big brother still wanted to protect me,” Scott said.
“What about never leaving the county?” Liam asked. “Wasn’t Scott under the same restriction?”
“That was my personal rule,” Quinn said. “At first I was afraid and wanted a controlled existence. Then I was … well, happy.”
“But you couldn’t give up on your little brother,” Nicole said.
“That’s right. So I went to St. Louis.” Quinn stopped his pacing and pointed at Nicole. “That newspaper you work for is in complete disarray. It’s a wonder they get an edition out at all. It took me three days before I could even get someone to talk to me. A woman named Terry came up with the name of the lawyer you worked with. I had the feeling she was thumbing her nose on her way out the door.”
Nicole sighed. “That sounds right. She quit when the reorganization was announced.”
“I staged a sit-in at the attorney’s office.” Quinn’s eyes gleamed. “He’d found Scott through a multistate network of doctors he was working with and had been ecstatic Scott was willing to go to St. Louis.”
“I had business there from time to time anyway.” Scott positioned an ankle on the opposite knee. “A couple of meetings weren’t a big deal.”
“The attorney wasn’t very forthcoming, though,” Quinn said. “I finally drew a sketch of the birthmark. Since no photos of it had appeared in the paper—or even a description—that convinced him I did know the person with the birthmark.”
“Probably spooked him,” Nicole said.
“The lawyer called me,” Scott said. “It was sort of a heads-up. If I didn’t want to see the nutcase from Illinois, I didn’t have to, but I was duly warned he was on his way to Oklahoma. I looked at him through the peephole, and the rest is history.”
“But the danger,” Sylvia said. “How are you sure you’re safe?”
The brothers looked at each other.
“People get old,” Scott said. “We insisted the authorities tell us what they knew. The man the marshals were watching most carefully all these years died seven weeks ago from pancreatic cancer at age fifty-seven. The last known associate of the man who threatened Adam—Ted—or me is serving life in prison for an unrelated crime. He stabbed another inmate and now has no possibility of parole.”
Around the room, breath flowed out of lungs.
“If you’ll all excuse me for a moment,” Quinn said as he left the room.
“It was too much,” Sylvia said. “We should have kept our questions to ourselves.”
“He’s all right,” Scott said.
Dani cocked an ear and heard Quinn moving around in his den. She looked at Nicole. “Do you still have his computer?”
“Yes, but he knows the whole story.”
Quinn returned with a folded check in his hand and held it out to Liam. “This probably isn’t for nearly as much as you were hoping, but you’d do me a great service if you would invest it in the fund we talked about.”
Liam stared at the check, unmoving. Dani nudged his elbow, and he finally reached to take the thin paper from Quinn’s hand.
Dani rolled her eyes. If Liam was going to salvage his business, he would have to get over the notion that nobody wanted anything to do with him.
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