“This isn’t new,” Walker reminded her as her teeth grazed his collarbone. “This is how I work, Quinn. You’ve known this for years.”
It was why there was always a secondhand couch and a mini fridge in his studio space. A place to sleep and a place to keep the chopped salads that Quinn made for him cold. Walker refused to drink alcohol when he was working, but he was rather addicted to a carbonated kombucha that he had to order in by the case. His studio was his own makeshift apartment, complete with a Bluetooth speaker and, if he was lucky, a bathroom where he kept several essential toiletries: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant. The boathouse was equipped with a toilet and an old rusty sink, but no shower. Walker made do.
“I know,” Quinn said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but you weren’t answering my texts.”
“Sorry, my phone is dead.”
“Have you been working nonstop?”
“I napped for a while early this morning. I got in a few hours.” Walker rubbed her back, pushing the heels of his strong hands into the tight muscles beside the ridges and valleys of her spine. Quinn moaned, and she could feel the pleasure rippling off her husband in waves. “Feel good?”
“You know it does.”
“Good.”
They stood like that for a moment. Quiet. Holding each other. But Quinn couldn’t stop herself from breaking the silence. There was so much to say, she didn’t know where to begin. Lucy, her eerie detachment, the man she was afraid of. And a thank-you for the clothes, the art supplies, the little acts of kindness that made it possible for her to begin to scratch the surface of the child who was living with them.
The baby.
“I think I’m pregnant,” Quinn blurted out.
“What?”
Tears burned hot and sudden and she blinked them back furiously. “I’m not. I mean, it’s only been a couple hours, right? I’m just . . .”
“It’s a lot.” Walker took her by the shoulders and pushed her back so he could study her face. “There’s a lot going on right now. But I need you to just let this go for now, okay? We have to focus on Lucy and—”
“Let this go?” The anger she felt was a bolt of lightning, a gunshot. Quinn was surprised by how quickly her attention shifted, but she was deep, drowning, and she couldn’t rationalize her way out. She shrugged off Walker’s arms and backed away, her blood boiling, sizzling and popping in her veins as if she were on fire. “I can’t just ‘let this go.’ We said this was our last chance. If it doesn’t work this time . . .”
“That’s not what we said,” he reminded her. “This isn’t our last chance; we just agreed to take a break if it doesn’t work. Step back. Regroup.”
“I don’t want to step back.”
“I know, but—”
“I don’t want to regroup.”
“Quinn—”
“I want a baby.”
There was an almost tangible pause, a beat of time so small and yet so significant that Quinn felt it as a tremor in her bones.
“Me too,” Walker said.
Too late. It was a lie or a half-truth or just something to say to placate his crazy wife. And Quinn could see that now: that she was acting crazy. Irrational and hormonal. This wasn’t her, not at all. Not the way her emotions could turn on a dime. Not the way she struggled to see the silver lining. Usually, Quinn was the queen of silver linings, the eternal advocate for the theory that when God closed a door he opened a window.
But she felt trapped inside a house with no windows at all.
“I want this, too, Quinn. I want a family with you. But the family we have right now is pretty messed up. Maybe the timing just isn’t right.”
Quinn drew a shaky breath, surprised that she wasn’t crying. But her eyes had dried up; her heart felt shriveled and empty in her chest. “Go back to work,” she told Walker. But when she glanced at his face, expectant and fearful of how he would receive her dismissal, she realized he was looking past her toward the house. His brow was furrowed, and as she watched, he pushed past her and began to jog up the hill toward the cabin.
Spinning around, Quinn saw Lucy coming toward them. She was barefoot and wild, her shock of hair tousled by the wind and clinging to her mouth, her eyes. She looked like an apparition in the wavy light of the humid afternoon, and she was holding something in her hands. The telephone?
Quinn raced up the incline, only a few steps behind Walker, and reached the two of them just as her husband sank to his knees in front of Lucy.
“Hey,” Walker said gently. “You’re supposed to stay inside, honey.”
Lucy shied away from him, backing up slowly even as her eyes found Quinn’s. There was a smattering of freckles across her nose that popped in the bright sunshine, but the set of her face was grim. She seemed so much older than her age.
“What is it?” Quinn asked, reaching for her.
“He called,” Lucy said, backing away from Quinn, too. She was holding the handset from the landline in the cabin, and she clutched it to her chest as if it were precious. Or terrifying. “My daddy said he’s coming for me.”
NORA
THE BAR WAS DIM after the glare of the bright summer sun and Nora blinked in the entryway as her eyes adjusted. The air smelled of popcorn and old fryer grease, but instead of turning Nora’s stomach, the scents reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything since Ethan’s omelette that morning. She made her way to the commercial popper in the corner of the bar and helped herself to a cardboard container and a generous amount of stale, buttery popcorn. Not exactly nourishing, but it would do.
The Cue was mostly empty at four thirty on a lazy August afternoon, but it was Friday and the sticky booths would soon fill up with workers from the window factory down the street. The day shift was over at five, and the crew usually celebrated with a cold one or two. Nora knew many of them by name, mostly because the majority of the men who frequented the Cue had tried at one time or another to buy her a drink. She always refused. Accepting a drink from a man was an open invitation for said man to flirt. Nora had no desire to chitchat with half-drunk perennial adolescents who were only interested in one-night stands and NASCAR. Okay, maybe they also liked football. Nora hadn’t really taken the time to find out.
She picked a booth near the front of the bar and directly across from the cash register. There would be lots of traffic, lots of people stopping by to say hi and shoot the breeze, if only for a moment or two. Nora wanted that sort of visibility.
“The usual, Nora Jeane?” Arlen had come out of the kitchen and spotted her. He called her Nora Jeane, not because her middle name was Jane but because he said she reminded him of Norma Jeane. Which was ridiculous. She looked nothing like Marilyn Monroe. Quinn, maybe, with her curves and full lips and periwinkle eyes. But not spare, angular Nora, whose razor-sharp jawline matched her personality. A guy in high school had once called her the Ice Queen. A far cry from the Blonde Bombshell.