“What are you doing?”
Quinn was startled by the sound of Lucy’s voice and she whirled around, expecting to see her flattened hair and T-shirt. But there was a towel wrapped turban-style around her head and she was wearing the outfit that Walker had bought. The clothes were a bit too big and the boat collar of the shirt hung off her delicate collarbones. But she looked clean and bright. Really rather adorable. Quinn just couldn’t understand how she had done it all so fast.
“You look lovely!” Quinn smiled, a fierce and sudden pride sweeping through her. Remarkable girl. “How was your bath?”
“Fine.”
Her niece wasn’t much of a talker, but Quinn was getting used to it. She tried to read more in the tilt of her head, the way she stood with her feet firmly planted in new flip-flops (also a tad too big). She was a strong one, this Miss Lucy. Brave and shrewd and hard as a little nut. Maybe that was a good thing. Necessary. “Were there enough bubbles?”
Lucy nodded, her eyes still on the picnic basket.
“Oh! You asked me a question and I didn’t answer. We’re going on a picnic.” Quinn figured that if she didn’t give Lucy a choice in the matter she just might go along with it. The tactic had clearly worked well with the bath and new clothes. “Do you like picnics?”
Lucy shrugged, but something in the rise of her small chin told Quinn that the child’s interest was piqued.
“Well, I love them. How do you feel about peanut butter and jelly?” Quinn was rambling, fastening the clips on the picnic basket as she tried to keep the tone in the kitchen happy and light.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s not far,” Quinn assured her, adding: “Can I help you with your hair? I have a comb in my bathroom . . .”
Lucy paused for a moment, considering. Then she nodded slowly. It was all the encouragement Quinn needed. She rushed to her bedroom and found her wide-toothed comb in the en suite. She wished she had detangler, something that would ensure the process was painless. But she didn’t have anything like that. She’d just have to take it slow.
Back in the kitchen, Quinn carefully removed the towel from Lucy’s head. Where had a little girl learned to wrap a turban like that? To bathe herself so thoroughly? Quinn was close enough to catch a whiff of the sweet scent of Lucy’s skin: strawberry bubbles mingled with oatmeal and shea butter and something that was simply the essence of a little girl. She breathed in deeply, her fingers working through the red strands of Lucy’s cropped hair.
But as she pulled her hands away, she saw that there was blood on her palms.
Quinn gasped, a shiver racing down her spine. Had Lucy hit her head? Where was the wound? But before she could truly panic, Quinn realized two things: the red streaks on her hands weren’t blood, and someone had dyed Lucy’s hair. Recently.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy asked, her slight shoulders lifting toward her ears. She was retreating, preparing to protect herself.
“Nothing!” Quinn swallowed hard and reached for the towel that she had just discarded. Yes, there, on the perfect white terry cloth were rust-colored stains. She hadn’t noticed the evidence before because she had been so intoxicated by the prospect of connecting in some small way with Lucy. But now her heart lurched painfully. Quinn wished she could take it back, pretend she had never seen what so surely meant that Nora wasn’t being melodramatic at all. This wasn’t a game.
Who dyed a little girl’s hair? Why? The possibilities skittered across Quinn’s mind. Wild things. Rabid and dangerous.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy asked again, her voice barely a whisper.
“Nothing, honey, nothing at all.” Quinn forced herself to take the comb in her hand and start again. “You just have such pretty hair.” Taking a section at a time, she gently ran the comb from scalp to ends until the loose waves were smooth. Around her ears and at the nape of her neck Lucy’s hair was drying in corkscrew curls and Quinn had to repress the urge to kiss the spot where the ringlets brushed her skin. Poor child.
“All set,” Quinn said. She dared to lay her hands on Lucy’s shoulders for just a moment and the girl tolerated her touch. She wanted to ask her questions, to somehow show Lucy that she was safe, trustworthy. But Quinn also didn’t want to push her luck. Too much too soon could send Lucy scrambling. Moving away, she reached for the picnic basket as if nothing at all was wrong. “Ready?”
Quinn had decided that it would be better if she didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she headed toward the front door and hoped that Lucy would follow.
She did.
Quinn hesitated for just a moment with her hand on the door, but the summer sun was doing its sparkly best to lure her outside. It was warm and lovely and bright. What ill could befall them at eight o’clock on a gorgeous summer morning? What evil could lurk in Key Lake before breakfast? None at all, Quinn decided.
The front door of the cabin actually opened on the side that faced away from the lake. There was a small porch, a gravel driveway, and, best of all, no neighbors. Well, they were there, but the house on the south side was obscured by the boathouse, and the home to the north was a good quarter mile away. Directly in front of the cabin was a cornfield that stretched for acres. But just to the north stood a small grove of gnarled oak trees and a swath of prairie grass so tall it swept past Quinn’s waist. An abandoned shack stood sentinel on a small hill, but it was picturesque, not scary.
“Aren’t we . . . ?” Lucy trailed off, and when Quinn looked back she saw the girl pointing at her car.
“Nope. We’re going on an adventure close to home.”
When she hit the grass, Quinn kept going, parting the swishing blades like a scythe. She glanced at Lucy just once and bit back a smile at the sight of the child pushing away the stalks of big bluestem and silky wild rye and switchgrass. Most of them towered over her head, but Lucy didn’t seem to mind.
A good twenty to thirty feet into the heart of the field Quinn decided they had come far enough. Shuffling along slowly, she stomped down a clearing just big enough for the blanket she had brought. When she spread it out on the bent stalks, the haven it created was as thick and soft as a bed.
“When we were kids we used to make forts in the grass,” Quinn said as she sat down crisscross applesauce. Isn’t that what she and Nora used to say when they were kids? Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. But Nora had lost sight of home a long time ago. For a moment, it was all too much, and Quinn’s heart wrung in her chest. She and Nora should be here together, sitting side by side as they laughed and teased, as they taught Lucy all the things they had once loved as children. Instead, Nora had shut them out. And she had denied Lucy the right to family.