I have something for you.
What was Quinn supposed to do with that? A single cryptic message was typical Nora, and Walker would tell her as much. He wouldn’t give it another thought, and his nonchalance would only make Quinn feel silly for wondering. For worrying. But she couldn’t help it. I have something for you implied a transaction of sorts. She hadn’t seen Nora in over a year and she longed for her older sister with an almost childish desperation. They had never been close, not really, but absence and an air of mystery had rendered Nora the stuff of dreams. Her random texts and even less frequent phone calls felt almost illicit, dangerous, though as far as Quinn knew the worst thing her sister had ever done was walk away from a full-ride scholarship to Northwestern and shrug off Sanford family expectations.
Quinn envied her sometimes.
Walker didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong, and he winked at Quinn as he walked away, his flip-flops slapping his heels in rhythm as he carried his find to the boathouse.
It wasn’t much, that tiny piece of glass. Walker’s installations were usually magnificent in size and stature, and Quinn had a hard time reconciling the artifacts he was digging up from the lake with the immense sculptures her husband was known for.
He had been almost spiritless since they moved from Los Angeles to Key Lake, Minnesota, at the beginning of the summer. At least, artistically speaking. Quinn had loved the undivided attention she’d received for the nearly two months of Walker’s creative dry spell, the way that he trained the intensity of his concentration on her. She was his outlet for the long, hot weeks of June and July, her body and the plane of her hips, the way that her back lowered to her narrow waist, the object of his obsession. Walker had always been a singular man, devoted and laser-focused since the moment she met him in an introductory art class in college. He had been the professor’s work study, but Walker ended up teaching most of the class. And Quinn had admired his obvious devotion from the start. She’d wished maybe she had more of whatever Walker possessed hidden somewhere in her own soul.
Quinn wasn’t nearly so exceptional. But she was determined. And as far as she was concerned, this humiliating homecoming, these months of living under the watchful, disapproving eye of her mother, were nothing more than a detour.
She shielded her eyes against the sunset and stared across the lake, daring Liz Sanford to stare back. All at once she was grateful for Walker’s boxers, for the unruly flip of his dark hair, for the way her life was on display. Even an enigmatic text message from her sister couldn’t get Quinn down. She knew what she wanted. And this time she wasn’t going to let anything stop her.
NORA
NORA GLANCED IN the rearview mirror and saw that the girl had buried herself in the dusty car blanket. It was wrapped completely around her, a plaid cocoon from which only the toe of one purple sneaker peeked out. She wasn’t even sitting up anymore. Instead, her seat belt was pulled taut over the soft mound of the blanket and her tightly curled body, the fabric twisted so that Nora wondered if the restraint was doing any good at all. Maybe this wasn’t safe. Maybe transporting a child required a special endorsement on her driver’s license. Nora remembered the complicated five-point harness of the little girl’s toddler days and wished she would have remembered to grab the booster seat.
The last few hours had been a fog. A grueling blur of tears and exhaustion. Of trying to comfort and failing miserably. Nora couldn’t help it—she was tense, scared, and the child had wilted beneath the strain of the stifling atmosphere in Nora’s apartment. She sat with her back tight in a corner and cried as though the world would end. Hot dogs didn’t help, though Nora drowned them in ketchup just the way the girl liked. Neither did cartoons, but the only kid-friendly TV shows were reruns of SpongeBob SquarePants. The child had seemed more afraid than entertained.
Nora had been there when the girl was born, a truly terrifying affair that disabused her of the notion of ever having children of her own. When it was all over and the doctor had cheerfully announced, “It’s a girl,” Nora had taken the nameless infant into her own arms. She felt all elbows and thumbs, awkward and angled, as she cradled the tiny bundle, a hesitant participant in what should have been a natural rite of new life. The baby wasn’t quite what she expected either. The skin on her newborn cheeks was white and peeling, her fingers so diminutive that Nora hardly dared to touch them for fear they would splinter. But the infant was wide-eyed and quiet, her lips parted as if she were about to say something.
“She’s amazing,” Nora said. And she was. But she was also strange and unnerving and miraculous. “What are you going to call her?”
“Her name is Everlee.”
“It’s pretty,” Nora forced herself to say. But she hated it. And in the years after, she used every excuse she could not to call the girl by her ill-chosen name. Sweetie or honey or bug. Anything but Everlee. She had a hard time even thinking the name.
“Honey?” Nora called, shifting her eyes to the rearview mirror again. The child was still balled up under the blanket. Maybe she was sleeping. She certainly needed it. “Sweetheart, can you hear me under there?”
No answer. But then, she wasn’t much for talking and never had been.
“We’re going to play a little game, okay? A pretend game.” Did this sound like fun? Nora hoped so. She wanted to make it as painless as possible. “It’ll be great. Like playing dress up, only we’re going to put on a different name. Just for a little while. You get to pick what you want to be called. Won’t that be fun?”
Silence. Nora could see the blanket shift a bit in the rearview mirror, but it seemed she was only pulling the swaddle tighter.
“What’s your favorite name? Should we call you Courtney? Or Piper? What about Olivia like in those books I bought you?”
Not even a flicker this time.
Nora sighed and adjusted her sunglasses as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. The sky was all vivid pastels, long sweeps of clouds like brushstrokes as she drove into the light. It was too cheery for her errand. So picture-perfect it was almost artificial. It reminded her of the place she was going, and not in a good way.
I have something for you, she wrote, and then couldn’t think of anything else to say.
What could she say? Get the guest room ready, I’m strapping you with a reticent six-year-old for I don’t know how long. Oh, and I don’t intend to tell you a thing about her.
Nora knew how that would go over.