“Is she coming here?” Liz asked, turning back to the soapy water, the final sticky dish.
“I think so. I don’t know.” Quinn put her phone down on the counter and reached for a towel. “She has to, right? I mean, I haven’t even told her about the fire.”
“Or the strange man who stopped by my house last night,” Liz added.
“What?” Quinn spun on her, shocked.
But Liz just reached for the towel in Quinn’s iron grip and dried off her hands. “It’s him, right? It has to be.” But the thought didn’t make her scared, it made her angry. Gone was the woman who teared up about things she couldn’t control anyway. Liz could do something about this, and heaven help her, she would. “Now tell me everything you know.”
“Nothing.” Quinn shook her head almost furiously. Liz wanted to grab her by the chin and tell her to knock it off. “I swear, absolutely nothing. Nora brought Lucy to me a couple of days ago and asked me to look after her. No, she told me to. She didn’t give me a choice.”
Liz peered over her shoulder at the closed bathroom door. Quinn had drawn Lucy a bath and brought her an old ice-cream bucket filled with cups and plastic containers, an old spray bottle and some sponges. Hopefully that would keep the girl occupied for a while. Breakfast had been abandoned. Even Liz couldn’t stomach the blueberry pancakes anymore.
“Okay,” Liz said, all business. “Clearly we know who she is, we just need to figure out why Nora is trying so hard to keep her a secret.”
“You said we need to talk.” Quinn crossed her arms over her chest, regarding her mother with a skeptical look. “Do you know something about this?”
Liz sighed. “No,” she said. “Not about this. Not about why Lucy is here now and seems to be in some kind of danger.” She thought about the missing child poster and stifled a little shiver.
“But . . .”
“But I think I know why Nora ran. Why she never told us about Lucy.” Liz came here for this exact reason, to share this knowledge with Quinn, but at the moment of revelation she found herself wavering. Really? Did Quinn need to know? What good would it do now? But the set of her daughter’s jaw told Liz that it was too late. She sighed. “Let’s sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
“Fine.” Liz put her hands on her hips. Took a deep breath. “Years ago I overheard your father having a conversation with someone.”
“Go on.”
“He was in his office, on the phone. And I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but he was obviously very upset. I was going to step in, but then I heard what he was saying.”
“Mom?”
Liz pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes for just a moment. Gathered enough courage to say: “He was telling someone to ‘take care of it.’ He said: ‘If you don’t get rid of it now, I’ll ruin you.’?”
“What was ‘it,’ Mom?”
“Lucy. I mean, I think.” Liz was overcome with the need to explain, to wipe away the look of horror on her daughter’s face. Of course Quinn looked like she was going to be sick! What did she know of the things Liz had worked so hard to keep hidden? Nothing at all. And now, for it all to come out like this. It was almost too much. “The conversation could have been anything, right?”
“But you think Dad knew Nora was pregnant and he was threatening her. Telling her to get an abortion. Why?”
“Because he was afraid.”
“And ashamed,” Quinn said bitterly. “You hide things you’re ashamed of.”
Liz didn’t argue. Especially because she intended to hide her own shame—at least for a while yet. Right now, Quinn didn’t need to know about her father’s multiple affairs, about the way that he stopped pretending when his kids were older because the ruse was too complicated to maintain. “I have needs,” he had told Liz. Blithely. As if he were confessing to a craving for brownies when she had instituted a weeklong sugar fast. What was she supposed to say? Do? She had two choices: endure or leave. And leaving wasn’t really an option at all.
“It makes sense,” Quinn said finally. Fatally. But then she looked up, her eyes flaming with fury. “He stole her from us. He did this.”
“Quinn, there’s obviously much more to the story than just this. I think—”
They were interrupted by the squeal of the bathroom door. Lucy stood in the opening, wearing a pale green sundress. Her hair had been toweled dry but not combed, and as Liz watched, Quinn walked over and straightened the girl’s dress where it was bunched on one shoulder.
“You look lovely,” Quinn told her. “Let me get the comb and we’ll go through your hair, okay?”
While Quinn was gone, Liz studied the child. It hurt to admit, but she didn’t feel anything, not really. Even though she knew that she should—even though she wanted to. This little girl was her granddaughter. Of course, she had been hoping for exactly this with JJ and Amelia’s firstborn—a little girl, a daughter once removed. But the sudden arrival of Lucy—of this half-grown child who had unexpectedly been thrust into their world already living and breathing and embodying her own memories and personality and a life that was completely separate from Liz—was unsettling. Granddaughter. The word felt complicated and heavy on her tongue, overripe with consonants. I’d like to buy a vowel, she thought. Something to make this word—this reality—more palatable.
She wondered what would have happened if she had walked into the office that night so many years ago. If she would have confronted her husband. Thrown things. Yelled. What would their lives look like now?
“Who are you?” Lucy asked after a few moments. She didn’t seem scared, just hesitant, curious. And oh, but she was adorable. Slight and wispy, big familiar eyes, thin shoulders, sweet mop of hair that, though unnatural, suited her remarkably well. She would have fit in perfectly with the childhood version of Nora. And JJ. They took after their father—and Liz’s stomach coiled at the thought. It was Quinn who favored her mom.
“I’m Quinn’s mother,” Liz said, taking the safest route possible. “Remember? And Nora’s, too. My name is Liz.”
If she expected some bolt of recognition to flash across Lucy’s face, it didn’t come.
“I own this house,” Liz said. It was a foolish thing to say. What did Lucy care? But Liz wasn’t sure how to relate to a six-year-old anymore, and she had grasped at the first thought that flitted through her mind. “I did all the decorating.”
Lucy looked around as if taking it in for the first time. “I like the pillow on the couch,” she said eventually.
It was a bold print, one Liz had created with oil paint and an old canvas that she’d had to scrape. The texture had created strange shadows on the strike-offs that the mill had sent her, but instead of correcting the tones, Liz had decided to print the fabric as is. She loved it more than one should love an inanimate object. “Thank you,” she said, pleased. “I designed it myself.”
“The pillow?”
“The fabric.”