QUINN
QUINN LEFT WITHOUT telling Walker where she was going.
Nora could do that to her. They weren’t close, hadn’t been for years. Or ever, for that matter. And yet, one word from her sister and Quinn was all too happy to go.
It made her irritable, and it wasn’t like Quinn to be moody. Even when Nora was going through her teenage activist stage and the Sanford house felt more like a war zone than a home, Quinn tried to keep everyone chummy and smiling with fresh-baked banana bread and a steady stream of heartwarming clichés.
“You shouldn’t provoke them like that,” Quinn once chided Nora. Her sister had come downstairs for school wearing a T-shirt with curlicued letters that read “Ask me about my radical feminist agenda.” Of course, it made Jack Sr. see spots. Their older brother, Jack Jr.—JJ—wasn’t buying it either, and a shouting match ensued that only ended when their father insisted Nora remove her T-shirt and she obliged. In the middle of the kitchen. Just a few inches of the pale skin of her slender midriff made Jack quickly retract his demand, and he and his son all but fled the room.
Nora scowled at their retreating backs.
“He loves you, you know,” Quinn said around a mouthful of Cheerios.
“Shut up, Quinn.” Nora straightened her shirt with a tug.
“What did I do?”
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
Quinn didn’t even know what the problem was, much less how to be part of the solution. And whenever she tried to share anything troublesome in her life, Nora assured Quinn whatever she was facing was a first-world problem and she should get over herself.
“First-world problems,” Quinn muttered as she flicked on the blinker and pulled down the long drive that led to Redrock Bay.
It was just before ten, but the surface of Key Lake was deep purple in the fading twilight. The single-lane gravel road forced Quinn to slow down as it curved through the trees, away from the water, but not before she sent a spray of dust and rocks pinging into the shallows.
She wished she had a friend. Someone to call as she hurtled through the night toward Nora and her cryptic decree: I have something for you. But the thought was so pathetic that Quinn was embarrassed for herself. As if she was so unlovable. So awkward and eccentric she was incapable of forming meaningful relationships. It wasn’t that and she knew it. Quinn was good with people, quick to make friends, and perennially popular. But Key Lake was an anomaly.
There were girls left over from high school, a handful of old friends who had married their childhood sweethearts and moved into cute little houses in the center of town just like their parents always hoped they would. Quinn had been like them once—idealistic and more than a touch naive—but these women were so different from the teenagers they had been that she hardly recognized them. Or maybe Quinn was the one who had changed.
The first weekend that Quinn and Walker were back in Key Lake, the old guard invited them to a barbecue at Redrock Bay. The man-made beach was in the heart of Key Lake State Park, a bit of an inconvenience if you didn’t have an annual pass and had to pay the six-dollar daily fee, but worth it for the fine sand and the view of the serpentine lake as it meandered around the peninsula. It was a place rife with fond memories, and Quinn found herself warming slightly to the idea of living in her hometown after swearing she’d never again be counted on the Key Lake census. But there they were, meeting friends on a hot summer night for a party on the beach. Boxes still littered the floor of their temporary home, they hadn’t even made a proper grocery run yet, but maybe lake life wouldn’t be as bad as she thought. Perhaps she and Walker could actually be happy here.
They bought an annual pass at the ranger station and affixed the sticker to the windshield of their rusty hatchback with an air of optimism. Walker had spent the better part of the afternoon looking for the case of wine they had shipped from LA, and when he finally found it in the closet under the stairs, he chose Quinn’s favorite: a bottle of Méthode Champenoise because it was sparkling and light, festive. He pulled it out of the back seat with a flourish as Quinn grabbed the fabric grocery bag that contained her homemade tapenade and a crusty baguette of Walker’s own creation. When he wasn’t working on a project, he put his hand to bread. Focaccia and boule and a brioche that was so buttery it tasted more like cake than bread. Quinn was suddenly, overwhelmingly proud. She couldn’t wait to introduce her wonder of a husband to the people who had once been the center of her universe.
They emerged from the trail that led from the parking lot to the beach, breathless and expectant, cheeks blushed with lust for each other. Walker and Quinn had married for longing, and as they cleared the trees Quinn was sure the passion of their relationship was written all over her face. She put a hand to her cheek and tried to steady herself as she waited for the inevitable shouts and clumsy embraces, the cheerful reunions made awkward by their stale familiarity.
No one noticed them.
Quinn glanced around the beach, cataloging people in her mind and noting differences as clinically as a psychologist. Kelly’s hair was short, shorn at her jawline in a cut that was stylish, but a poor choice for her round face. There was a baby on her hip, chubby and grasping, and he squealed as he reached for the blunt ends of her hair and missed. Kelly was deep in conversation with Ryan. Sarah’s husband? It was hard to remember. Sarah had ping-ponged between Ryan and Mark for years. Quinn could hardly believe they were all still friends.
There were twenty-some adults spread out across the beach, clustered in twos and threes like Kelly and Ryan or standing ankle-deep in water as they dipped the fat toes of their matching babies in the cool lake. Quinn’s friends were changed, all of them, older and softer, a few of the men sporting a little salt and pepper at their temples and the women wearing practical tankinis instead of the sexy two-pieces they favored back when Quinn had known them so well. She fingered the long string of her own black bikini where it looped out from beneath the collar of her T-shirt and felt almost indecent.
Part of her was jealous at the patent motherhood around her, of the life she was supposed to have. It had been within her grasp, all of it. The little house, the small-town simplicity, a spot firmly in the center of this tight-knit circle. Quinn had once been the queen bee, her kingdom complete with faithful subjects and a man (boy?) who she believed was the love of her life. But sometimes things are far more layered than they seem. More complicated, impenetrable. Quinn had hated this world and the sticky, menacing gospel of exclusivity and self-preservation it preached.
She still did. Even as she deflated a little, Quinn was filled with a sort of ferocious pride in the lavish curves of her own unblemished body. She felt like an ingénue in a crowd of worldly women. A child herself at twenty-five, but markedly different, younger somehow, than the women who were her peers. Just stepping foot on the beach had suddenly and irrevocably thrust her beyond the border of some inner sanctum. Quinn was not a woman who knew. Who had crossed the divide and bore the scars to prove it. She both loved and loathed herself for it.
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.