Chapter Twenty-Six
QUINN
When I got to work, my phone had several missed calls. I made the mistake of waiting until I’d gotten into my office to check the messages and found that they were all cancellations. I hadn’t realized that the local college was having an event that day, and all of my patients that day were attending it. I found myself with nothing to do for the rest of the day and a lot of late fees to file.
I thought about what I’d talked about with Sawyer regarding his father. He seemed insistent that he didn’t want to talk to him. I thought of the times I’d interacted with him. I hadn’t talked to him much, and never alone, but I didn’t remember him as a cold, mean person. It sounded like Sawyer’s father was just a person who had experienced something rough and didn’t know how to heal from it.
In any case, I was irritated with my own inability to do anything. I wanted to be proactive, and I knew what I needed to do to help Sawyer. I made sure I didn’t have any meetings for the rest of the day and got back in my car and headed for Eugene’s place of work; if I had my facts right, he worked at an accounting firm just outside of town. I didn’t know exactly what he did, but I didn’t need to. I just needed the address.
Sure enough, his name was listed on the list of offices painted on the building’s door. I marched myself in and walked up to the front desk. The building was painfully quiet, and I felt like an elephant barging in and disrupting the peace. Across the hall, someone clacked on a computer. Downwards, someone coughed and then blew their nose.
“Hello,” I said, voice lowered to the woman at the front desk.
She looked up at me with an almost nauseatingly sweet smile. “Hi, welcome to Halloway Accounting. Do you have an appointment with one of our accountants?”
“No, no—”
“Would you like to set an appointment up?”
“No, I’m just looking—”
“We also offer walk-ins from three to five on Wednesdays, Thursdays—”
“I’m looking for Eugene Gains,” I cut in. I didn’t want to be rude to this woman, but she seemed like an automated phone sequence brought to life. Something must have clicked because she nodded eagerly and pointed with a manicured finger down the hall.
“He’s going to be in two forty-eight, just down the hall and to the left. He leaves for break in about an hour if you want to wait until then,” she said.
“No, that’s alright,” I said. I didn’t want to give him the chance to bolt. This was horribly strange of me, walking into someone’s office and demanding to talk to them. But then, I was hardly demanding, and I would certainly leave if Eugene told me to.
I was just worried about Sawyer, and it seemed that my worry about Sawyer led me to do enormously strange things. I stepped down the hallway carefully, even though I wasn’t wearing heels, until I reached two forty-eight, and then I wasn’t sure whether to knock or open the slightly open door.
I decided to be safe and tap gently on it.
“Come in,” said Eugene.
I stepped into the office carefully. It was a small space, certainly not a cubicle but not as big as my own office. He was sitting behind a desk, slouched comfortably in the desk chair, pushing back slightly from his computer. Fluorescent lights overhead cast an eerie glow on the place. He took his glasses off his nose and set them on the desk.
“Quinn, I wasn’t expecting you. What exactly brings you by? Did you have an appointment?” Eugene was quick to express his confusion at my presence and even quicker to diffuse any idea that he wanted me gone. “Please, please, take a seat.”
“Sorry, I should have called ahead.” I’d gotten so caught up in my own rescue narrative that I’d forgotten to consider that he had a full day of work to do, and might not have time to see me.
“It’s alright. I’m not busy. But what brings you by?” Eugene leaned back slightly. It was hard for me not to draw similarities in his face with his son’s. They had the same jawline, the same straight nose, the same heavy brow. Eugene had significantly less hair, though for his age it was just as dark.
“I wanted to talk to you about Sawyer,” I said.
Eugene’s expression faltered. The smile disappeared from his face, and he cleared his throat. “Oh,” he said. “I’m not sure I have anything I can tell you about him.”
“Well, I think you might,” I corrected carefully. “See, I know some of what happened. I know Sawyer really, really messed up before he went overseas. And… well, I can’t tell you a lot of it, because it’s confidential.” Even if we’d been talking at a restaurant and not in therapy, it would be horrible of me to divulge specifics. “But I think that improving your relationship with him could really go a long way in helping him.”
Eugene stared at me for a few moments before pushing his glasses back on his nose. “Do you know what he did?” he asked me. “He disgraced the family name. He nearly got me fired; I got demoted two positions.”
I stayed quiet, prepared to do what I did best: listen.
“I wanted to think that it was all his girlfriend’s fault,” Eugene said. “But they weren’t even together at some point. He stole from us, he lied to us, he treated us like… wel, his mother, Quinn, he broke her heart. I couldn’t just forgive and forget on the spot like nothing ever happened. And then he tore off to the military.”
I frowned. “I think he went to the military to recover,” I said. “I think in his mind, going to the military was going to teach him discipline and self-respect. He’s certainly shaped up from what I’ve heard.”
Eugene frowned, too. “I hadn’t considered that. I suppose the military would teach a fair amount about discipline and the like. But he didn’t talk to us much when he was overseas. It was like he could tell that it was going to be difficult, and so he didn’t want to bother.”
“So you never got to talk about it,” I paraphrased.
“Exactly. And so he came home, and what, I’m supposed to pretend it never happened?” Eugene shook his head. “I want to. I want to pretend it never happened. But it did happen, and we can’t brush it under the rug.”
“Bottling things is never healthy.”
“Right. But I don’t know how to talk to him about it without sounding like I’m ungrateful for what he did to get back on his feet. And God knows he can’t stand the sight of me anymore. He sees me, and he takes off. We’re never in the same room more than a few moments at a time.”
I shook my head. That was strange, considering the narrative I’d gotten from Sawyer was considerably different in nature. He’d claimed that his father avoided him and didn’t want anything to do with him.
“I mean, I tried to talk to him about his new house about a week ago,” Eugene continued. “I was so surprised that he was willing to stop and listen to me that I just said the wrong thing. Told him I was happy he was leaving, and he stormed out. I only get one strike, and I’m not the person that did something wrong in the first place! It should be me unwilling to forgive him, but I’m so tired of fighting.”
I could understand. Weariness worked wonders in relationships where people wanted something better, but what they really wanted was for the fighting to stop. It was a common cause for toxic relationships to go on so much longer than they needed to. People preferred not to fight, for the most part, or to deal with difficult things.
“I think that he wants a relationship with you,” I said. “Even if he acts prickly or like he hates you, I don’t think that’s the truth. I think he wants things right.”
“Well, I certainly want things right,” Eugene said. “But I have to say, Quinn, it’s easier said than done.”
“Of course.” I had no illusions about the nature of the upcoming conversation that they would need to have. Doubtlessly it would be horribly awkward and not quite as picturesque as so many sitcoms made family feuds out to be. There was a chance that talking about it could make it worse, too—it was a gamble that we were taking here.
He had a client coming in soon, so I took my leave and walked out of the building. I sat in my car, staring blankly for a moment, unable to believe that I’d just done what I’d done. It wasn’t like me to be so bold. I fumbled for my phone in my purse for a moment, thinking of calling Babs to express my surprise with myself.
Instead, I needed to flesh out this plan that I was formulating. I dialed Sawyer’s number and sat back in my seat, running a hand through my hair. Today wasn’t even over, and I’d already gone and set up something I couldn’t control.
“Hey, Quinn.”
“Hey.” I tapped my steering wheel. “Listen, um, I won’t be able to get up to your house tonight.”
“Is everything alright?”
I could practically hear his facial expression over the phone. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a busier day at work than I’d planned, and I’m going to be pretty exhausted after.”
“I don’t mind making dinner.”
Damn it; he was way too sweet. “That’s really sweet of you. I just need a day to sleep, I think. I’ll meet up with you tomorrow sometime,” I said.
“Tomorrow?”
“Does that work?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Sawyer didn’t sound irritated in the slightest, even though I’d changed plans on him at the last second.
I smiled and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Are you going to go out tonight?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Why?”
“Just curious.” I was giving away too much! He was going to get suspicious. “Say hi to Pete for me, if you run into him.”
“Are you planning something?”
“Nope.” I lied, but I had the benefit of him not being able to see my face. In person, I was a terrible liar. Over the phone, I could put more effort into my voice and not worry about my fidgetiness giving it away. “Just asking. I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”
“Alright.” He hung up, and I sat there for a few more seconds.
It was highly likely that he would be angry with me for what I’d done. I knew that. He could probably justifiably get angry that I would intervene with his life and poke my nose where it didn’t belong. But I didn’t know that I cared. I could deal with him getting angry at me. I had a hunch about this entire situation, and I was rarely wrong when I got a hunch.
Still, he was going to be angry at first when his father showed up at his door to talk about the thing that neither of them wanted to talk about. They were going to have to have a real conversation and not bullshit one another.
I smiled and put my car in gear. This was extremely off-book for a therapist, but I felt somehow like I’d never done something more right in all my years of practice.