The one thing that Quinn was not conflicted about was the overwhelming urge to flee. They didn’t belong here.
“Let’s go,” Quinn whispered to Walker. His hand was in the back pocket of her jean shorts and she was gripped by a need to be alone with him. To prove that though her body failed at what it was supposed to so naturally do, it never faltered when Walker trailed his mouth across her skin.
“Too late,” he whispered back.
Kelly had spotted them and there was a tepid facsimile of the warm welcome that Quinn had hoped for. One-armed hugs around toddlers, halfhearted hellos as infants screamed for attention. A picnic table was laid out with potato chips and pasta salad, and Theo was roasting hot dogs over a fire, six at a time on a two-pronged stick lined up in a perfect, nauseating row. No one touched Quinn’s tapenade, and when Walker offered wine the men looked affronted while the women assured him that they were breastfeeding. As if he should have known just by looking at them that they were ripe and life-giving and incapable of imbibing even a sip.
Quinn shuddered, remembering. She and Walker had left long before it was polite to do so, claiming exhaustion though they were anything but. They made it halfway back to the car before they fell against each other. Lips. Hands. Clothes damp and clinging. Fingers frantic on hot skin and the taste of salt mingled with expensive French wine. They had finished off most of the bottle by themselves and it made them weak. They surrendered to the ache that brought them together in the first place, that sustained them in those harsh, artificial years in LA, and that would carry them through the brilliant glare of a Minnesota summer. It was enough, Quinn told herself. She didn’t need diapers and the toothless grin of a little person who looked like Walker but had her periwinkle eyes.
But she did.
They did.
Quinn sighed as she pulled into the empty parking lot by the boat docks and turned off her car. When the engine went silent she could suddenly hear the hum of the waxing night through her open window, the forest coming alive as the first stars began to prick the sky above her. Frogs, and cicadas in the trees, water lapping hungrily at the shore. Maybe she should have been afraid. In LA, Walker had worked hard to convince her that a measure of fear was healthy, essential. He showed her how to splay her keys in between her fingers and made her promise to always be aware of her surroundings. Of people who might lurk in the shadows.
There was nothing ominous about Key Lake. Quinn left the key in the ignition and the car unlocked when she got out of it.
It was just like Nora to be late. Quinn walked to the nearest boat dock and wandered all the way to the end, forcing herself to leave her phone in the back pocket of her shorts instead of checking it yet again. It was set to ring and vibrate—she wouldn’t miss a call or a text. But that didn’t stop her from worrying, from nursing a familiar ache that started a slow, dull throb at the thought of her sister. No, it was more than that. Nora’s abandonment was a swath of scorched earth, black across the landscape of Quinn’s past. A tendril of smoke whispered from the ashes.
What now, Nora?
Quinn swallowed the hope that floated up and up in her chest. Tried to prepare herself for the worst.
NORA
IT WAS ALMOST ten thirty when Nora finally wound her way down the road to Redrock Bay. A sign near the ranger station at the entrance to the park admonished her to pay for admittance utilizing a wooden drop box and the honor system, but she drove right past it. She didn’t plan on staying long.
The small parking lot near the marina was empty save for a purple hatchback with California plates. Quinn was standing beside it, her legs and arms bare and golden in the glow of the headlights as Nora swung the car around. She hadn’t expected to feel much of anything, but the enormity of seeing her sister after so long hit Nora square in the chest. She struggled to breathe.
Quinn looked warm and wholesome, her skin tanned and her dirty blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail that put Nora in mind of her sister’s cheerleading days. At twenty-five, she still shimmered like a teen, her limbs smooth as pulled taffy, her expression so earnest, even at a distance, it was easy to tell that she still longed for approval. Love me, everything about her seemed to whisper. And it was impossible not to love Quinn. But sometimes, it was hard to like her.
Nora squeezed the steering wheel until her knuckles glowed white in the dashboard lights. A part of her wanted to put the car in reverse and speed away, leaving Quinn in a cloud of dust. But it was too late for that.
“I’ll be back in just a minute,” Nora finally said, clicking off her seat belt and swiveling around to consider the blanketed girl. The child had tugged the fabric below the line of her sea-glass eyes and was regarding Nora with an indecipherable gaze. “What do you think?” Nora attempted a smile but it felt fake and fragile on her lips. “Amy? Should we call you Amy?”
Nothing.
Nora sighed and stepped out of the car, leaving the door ajar so that the girl didn’t feel completely abandoned. What to do? Wave? Smile? The gravity of the situation made Nora’s feet feel weighted. She was halfway to Quinn and had no idea what to say to her sister.
But Quinn didn’t hesitate.
“Nora!” Quinn flung herself across the remaining distance between them and crushed her sister in a hug. “I didn’t think you were going to come!” Then she backed away and held Nora at arm’s length, a frown cutting a perfect line between her eyebrows. The wrinkle reminded Nora of their mother. But she would never say so to Quinn.
“Hey, Q.”
“I should hit you.”
“Maybe,” Nora agreed. She didn’t bother to apologize.
So Quinn wound up and smacked her in the arm, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to leave a bruise. It was a sisterly science, an exact measurement of force and velocity divided by the profound desire not to get on the wrong side of Jack Sr. He wasn’t a fan of fistfights between girls, even if JJ—the perfect child—had been the one to institute the mild sibling abuse that marked their home.
“I deserved that,” Nora said as her baby sister worried her lip.
“You cut your hair.”