He promised Alex when he left that he would try to come and see her after she had the baby. He could fly from wherever he was. He planned to be in Africa by then, enjoying the winter, and all the places he was planning to visit. He and the captain had spent hours talking about it, and Sean Mackenzie had had some excellent suggestions. Quinn was focused on that now, and a part of him had already left the life he had led recently in San Francisco.
Maggie felt it when he got back. Outwardly, he seemed to be the same as he had been when he left three weeks before, but he was already ever so subtly different. She couldn't put her finger on it, but even on her first night with him, she sensed that part of him had already escaped her. She didn't say anything about it to him, but when he held her, his embrace no longer had the passion it had had just a few weeks before. The eagle was already reaching for the skies, and preparing to leave her.
She was frantically busy at school, and trying to make time for him. They had moved onto the boat again, and she hated to do it, but she had to spend part of every evening correcting papers. She planned to give her students as few assignments as possible during his final weeks with her, but she still had to do some work.And Quinn had a lot of loose ends to tie up too. It was only when they went to bed at night that she felt they found each other again and truly connected. It was when she lay next to him with his arm around her that she felt all she had for him, and knew that he felt the same way about her. The rest of the time, Quinn seemed to have put his guard up. It was a sensible thing to do, given the fact that he was leaving her, and he hoped that would make it less painful for her. He was no longer the man he had been years before, who thought only of himself. This time he was determined not to hurt anyone more than he had to. And the last person on earth he wanted to hurt now was Maggie.
They went on easy sails over the weekend, and the weather was spectacular. It was sunny and warm, and the breeze was exactly what they wanted it to be for sailing. Jack came to dinner with them on Friday night, and he said he was loving school, and Michelle was busy planning their wedding. Quinn offered to charter a boat for their honeymoon, and Jack declined regretfully. Michelle would have hated it, since she got seasick, unlike Maggie, who would have loved it.
Their first week together on the boat was easy and comfortable, Quinn and Maggie managed to make time for each other, and they spent a lot of time talking at night, as though storing memories to save for the many years ahead when they would no longer be together. Waiting for him to leave was like planning a death, or a funeral. They knew it was coming, and even when. She felt as though he were going to pull the plug on her respirator, and even though she had always known it would come to this, she had never expected it to hurt quite so acutely.
By the second week, the anticipated end began to cause both friction and tension between them. It was impossible for it not to. Maggie began dreaming of Andrew every night, and she had a nightmare about Charles, and woke up screaming. And there was very little Quinn could do to help her. All he could have done was change his plans, and decide not to leave, and Maggie would never have expected that of him. But nonetheless, as the days rolled by, she felt as though the life and air were being sucked out of her. She could hardly breathe on their last weekend, and Quinn was feeling the full weight of what it was doing to her, although she never said anything about it. He knew he had to leave her, even though for a crazed instant he almost asked her to come along. But he owed more than that to Jane. And Maggie needed a real life again, with people and friends and work. He couldn't just abscond with her on a boat. And if he took her with him, however tempting that was, he would have broken his vow to Jane. He said as much to Maggie again as they sat on the aft deck under the sails. She was looking miserably unhappy, and could no longer conceal it, nor tried.
“I can't believe she'd have expected that of you,” Maggie said, looking out to sea, and feeling as though she were about to scatter her own ashes. “I read her poems to you. She loved you, Quinn. She wouldn't have wanted you to be unhappy.”