“Mom?” Quinn opened the door slowly, peering through a crack less than six inches wide. “What are you doing here?”
“Apologizing.” Liz thrust the flowers at her daughter so she had no choice but to swing the door wider. “I’m sorry I burst in on you today. Please forgive me. I brought wine.” Who could resist?
Quinn hemmed and hawed, pausing with one hand loose on the door. It was obvious she was torn between wanting to hold a grudge and struggling to resist the lure of the flowers, the wine. The unvarnished “I’m sorry.” How rare were those? She just needed a little push.
Liz took a confident step forward, handing Quinn the bouquet so that she had to accept it or let the gorgeous blossoms fall. As Quinn wrapped her arms around the flowers, the door swung wide and Liz eased herself in. She gave her daughter a soft, knowing smile. It’s okay, she said with her eyes. We can forgive each other. We can be close like this. Out loud she said, “The wine should be chilled, but if we stick it in the freezer for fifteen minutes or so it should be just perfect. What do you say? Shall we have a glass on the dock? It’s such a perfect night.”
“I don’t know, Mom.”
“We have lots to talk about.” Liz gave a little wiggle of excitement. “I’m having a party! A big Sanford party. Remember how much fun we used to have? It’s tomorrow night and you just have to come. In fact, I was hoping you could help me . . .”
Liz left the comment hang hopefully between them, but before Quinn could answer, there was the sound of a door opening and closing somewhere in the cabin. Then footsteps, fast as running, and suddenly, impossibly, there was a child standing in the hall. She was slight as a shadow and just as unassuming. A ghost, a whisper, a figment of Liz’s imagination.
“I have to use the bathroom,” the girl said. She kept her head down but stole one furtive, repentant glance at Quinn. Her lips were pursed, her eyes wide in apology as if she knew that heeding nature’s call would undoubtedly get her in trouble. Then she hurried off toward the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
“Mom,” Quinn started, the word sounding thick and uncooperative in her mouth, “that was my friend’s little girl . . .”
But Liz wasn’t listening. She felt chiseled from marble, lips parted in shock. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, but as she stared at the closed bathroom door she managed to whisper, “Who is that little girl, Quinn?”
“She’s—”
Liz interrupted her before she could utter another word. “Don’t you dare lie to me. God knows I can’t stand to hear another lie.”
QUINN
QUINN TRIED TO TALK her mother into a cup of coffee or tea, one of Walker’s scones, anything. When none of those suggestions elicited a response, she reached for the bottle in Liz’s hands and said, “Here, let me uncork the wine.” Quinn had to wrest it away; Liz had an iron grip on the smooth glass.
“I’m not thirsty,” Liz said. Her jaw was lifted, her eyes narrowed. Quinn knew the look well. It was power and authority, a call to obedience. When Quinn was a child, all Liz had to do was tilt her chin just so and her kids scrambled. But Quinn wasn’t a little girl anymore. She wasn’t sure how to respond to her mother like this.
But whether she wanted it to or not, the truth spilled out. “We think she’s Nora’s,” Quinn said quickly. There was no point in pretending. Liz was sharp and inquisitive. Unexpectedly bright. She often knew things she couldn’t possibly know: who Quinn had secretly loved in tenth grade, where she hid the pack of cigarettes she once bought to feel rebellious, when Quinn snuck out of the house to meet up with friends on the beach.
“Of course she is,” Liz said. “She’s the spitting image of your sister at that age. Minus the hair, of course. Who . . . ?” But she let the question hang heavy in the air between them. Who, indeed.
Quinn realized that she was holding a wine bottle in one hand and an armful of flowers in the other. “Come on,” she said, motioning that her mother should follow. “I’ll put these in water and we’ll sort this out.”
“I don’t think so.” Liz unzipped her purse and poked around inside for a few seconds before closing it without taking anything out. “I have to go.”
“But—”
“We’ll talk later,” Liz said decisively. And then she left without a backward glance.
Quinn faltered in the entryway for a moment, flowers sagging in her arms, and felt a surge of annoyance. No, she was more than just annoyed. She was angry. Wasn’t this just like her mother? Liz was tough and demanding, quick to fix whatever surface-level problem cropped up. Messes and arguments and skinned knees were all treated with the same quiet calm. She was judicious in her prudent administration of palliative care, but she was no heart surgeon. Anything deep or hurtful, truly difficult or dirty, was ignored.
“Fine,” Quinn muttered to herself. “I’ll handle it on my own.”
But she grabbed her phone off the counter and texted her mother a single cryptic message: Don’t you dare tell a soul. I mean it. She hesitated, wondering how much to say. Enough to ensure Liz’s silence but not enough to unnerve her. Quinn finally settled on one last word: Please.
There was no response.
Nora had made it clear that no one was to know about Lucy, but her secret hadn’t lasted a day. Quinn might as well call JJ and fill him in on the family news, too. “Nora has a secret daughter. JJ, you’re an uncle!” Just the thought made her queasy. In Quinn’s mind, JJ was still the disinterested and slightly menacing teenager that she remembered from her youth. He had been arrogant and moody, convinced of his own importance and appeal. Who could resist Jack Sanford Jr.? Who would want to?
JJ had always been a part of her personal landscape, but Quinn hadn’t given her older brother much thought until she had a sleepover her freshman year in high school. JJ had been a senior and would barely acknowledge her existence, but when he’d walked through the living room near midnight and found her curled up on the couch with a handful of girls, he had paused to lean in the doorway.
“You going to introduce me to your friends, Q?” One corner of his mouth twisted up in a half smile that Quinn all at once realized most girls would find sexy. She could feel the way her friends shifted on the couch, leaning toward JJ almost imperceptibly.
“No,” she said. “Go away.”
But somebody invited him to sit, and he did, right on the arm of their father’s favorite chair, where he distracted Quinn’s friends to the point of giddiness. She was so angry she could feel her blood begin to fizz.