There were two men in the picture. Or boys, it was hard to tell. They both had short hair and pants in contrast to the long hair and skirts of the girls. Lucy had drawn them on opposite corners of the page, as far apart as she could possibly space them. One looked like he was flying away. The other, grounded.
“Wait.” Quinn was struck with sudden inspiration. The grounded character had yellow hair, green eyes. “Is this Nora?” Why had Lucy drawn her mother so far away?
But Lucy clamped her lips shut tight and focused instead on rubbing her thumb and forefinger together. Her fingertips were coated in pastel dust and she smudged the whorls together until they were a dingy cardboard brown.
“What about this one. Who’s this?” Quinn tried again, tapping the only other female figure in the picture. This one had squiggly cocoa-colored hair and stood in the middle of the paper beside Lucy. Definitely closer to the girl than her own mother.
Quinn was eager to know more, to crack Lucy open like an egg so she could begin to understand what was inside. But Lucy persisted in ignoring her questions, so she gave up and started to collect and stack the papers.
“Want to watch a little TV?” Quinn offered, sighing inwardly. So much for her feeble attempt at art therapy.
Lucy slid off the chair and wandered toward the living room without a backward glance. From where Quinn was sitting, she could see the child locate the remote control on the end table and turn the TV on. Before she even sat down she began her methodical click-click-click through the stations.
It was unsettling how vacant she could be. How flat. Flat affect, Quinn thought, recalling the term from one of her developmental psychology classes in college. If she remembered correctly, flat affect was usually a symptom of schizophrenia. She highly doubted that her niece was schizophrenic, but her dulled expressions and lack of emotion were worrisome. Maybe she was in shock as the result of some unidentified trauma. Quinn wasn’t very familiar with the features of shock, but if crime dramas could be believed, Lucy certainly seemed to fit the bill.
Where were the tears? The anger? The indiscriminate rebellion that seemed the most logical reaction to the sort of reckless abandonment Lucy had recently experienced? Quinn tried to put herself in Lucy’s shoes and knew that if the roles had been reversed, her younger self would have ranted and railed, thrown things and bitten people. But even after Lucy shared her fear with Quinn in the field, she went on to nibble at her sandwich as if nothing had happened. It was starting to creep Quinn out.
What have you been through? She wanted to gather the girl in her arms and force attachment. To take back all the years that Nora had stolen from them. It made Quinn so mad she could’ve screamed. But instead of pitching a fit, she carefully stacked their artwork and pastels on the kitchen counter and went to stand near the arm of the couch. Lucy was perched on the edge, staring at the progression of daytime shows as they flicked past on the screen.
“I have to run out to the boathouse,” Quinn said. “You know, that building just down the hill? Near the water? I won’t be gone long.”
Lucy didn’t seem to care whether Quinn stayed or left.
“I need you to promise me that you won’t go anywhere.”
No answer. No acknowledgment that Quinn had spoken at all.
She moved in front of the TV. “Lucy,” Quinn said, “I need you to promise me that you won’t go anywhere while I’m gone. I’ll be right outside. But you have to stay here.”
“Okay.” Lucy’s eyes were trained on the narrow segments of screen that she could see around Quinn’s waist.
“Fine.” Quinn tossed up her arms and let them fall back to her sides, the sharp smack of skin on skin punctuating her frustration. “I’ll be right back.”
Quinn slipped on her flip-flops by the door and stepped out into a brilliant summer afternoon. It was hot and dry, the sun on the water so lovely she could feel the beauty like an ache in her chest. She complained about Key Lake, but there were moments like this—when it was clean and lovely and pure—that still took her by surprise.
Or maybe she was just sick of being cooped up with Lucy.
The boathouse was down a gentle slope and close to the water. In fact, there was a wide front porch and a short dock that arched out over the lake. It was shady and private, protected by a serviceberry tree that had grown askew but that no one wanted to cut down because of the way it shielded the porch. Quinn and Walker had made love on that porch when they first arrived. It was the middle of the night and even if Liz had been peeking through the lens of her telescope she wouldn’t have seen a thing. The memory gave Quinn a little thrill, and she felt her heart go warm and liquid, melting through her limbs like a drug.
I’m pregnant, she told herself, and the hope was so incandescent she was sure it smoldered in her cheeks. This was what she had always wanted. A happy family. A family filled with laughter and marked by openness. Forget the secrets and lies, the hiding and gritty scum of things that she could never quite put her finger on but that always lingered.
Quinn was so caught up in the moment that she grabbed the door to the boathouse and tried to wrench it open. But it was locked with a hook and latch from the inside, and her shoulder jerked painfully. It was a bit of a wake-up call.
Walker had never expressly forbidden her from entering his workspace when he was creating, but she knew that he needed privacy and time and room to dream out loud. His art was public and accessible—just not until the moment that he declared it done. His critics called him moody and temperamental, the sort of self-absorbed, self-proclaimed genius who expected the world to wait with bated breath for his next inspired offering. But Quinn knew that Walker was actually painfully insecure when it came to his art. Terrified that another person’s approval or disapproval might pop the fragile soap bubble of his artistic revelation.
She should have knocked.
Quinn was rubbing her shoulder and chastising herself when Walker lifted the hook from the latch and opened the boathouse door. “What are you doing here?” he asked, squinting in the sunlight and peering around Quinn.
“I came to see you,” she faltered.
“Where’s Lucy?”
“In the house.” Quinn crossed her arms over her chest. “She’s watching TV, Walker. She’s fine. It’s broad daylight.”
“I don’t think you should leave her alone.”
“What’s she going to do? Burn the house down?”
He gave her a hard look but then softened a little and held out his arms. “Sorry. Nora’s got me spooked, I guess.”
“I’ve missed you today,” Quinn said, stepping into his embrace. She lifted her face to kiss the curve beneath his sharp chin. He smelled of spice and peppercorns, wood and something industrial that she couldn’t identify. Steel? No matter. She suddenly wanted to lick his skin. To eat him up.