AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She said, “I just miss her, you know? I miss that it was my birthday, and I was just …happy.And then it was so … so awful.”
He held her again. How could he do anything else? “Yeah,” he said. “It was.”
Which was when he heard the stairs creak. And realized he’d heard Bacon barking some time ago.
Quinn was back.
Time to shift gears and move forward. Nobody knew better how to do that, because he’d had practice. That part of his life was over. He might wish it wasn’t, but he’d never make it true. Time to take the life he’d been given and live it.
Easier said than done.
36
SITTING ON THE SOIL AMENDMENTS
She hadn’t meant to listen. She’d said hi to Troy, plugged in the waffle maker to preheat, started the oven for the elk sausage patties she’d pulled out of the freezer last night, and taken the batter out of the fridge and given it a stir. After that, she’d had a fast shower, her muscles pleasantly fatigued and the rest of her enjoying the idea that she was hurrying a little, because she had people to make breakfast for.
It was all just so … homey. Troy sitting on his knees in front of the racetrack he’d built in the corner of the living room, narrating one of his stories as he moved his cars around. Bacon lying beside him with his legs stretched out comically behind him and his black pop-eyes fixed on Troy’s hands like he was the most interesting boy in the world.
And Beckett and Janey upstairs finishing the attic.
When she went up there, it was to tell them that breakfast would be ready soon.
You don’t love Quinn, though,Janey was saying.So you don’t have to love somebody to have sex.
Quinn stopped. She told herself to go downstairs, and her feet didn’t listen.
Beckett, then. Not disagreeing a bit. Saying,Having sex when you’re a teenager is different from having it when you’re an adult and can manage your feelings better, so you can put it in more of a … different category..
It was true, so why did her veins feel like they were filled with ice? She wasn’t that stupidly romantic. She never had been, not even when shewasa teenager. She’d been focused, then, on her goals and her dreams. She’d beensure.How was it that the older she got, the less sure she felt?
Too much Mum everywhere, in the house we bought when she fell pregnant with Troy,Beckett was saying now. The first day we used our key and walked through the door and knew it was ours. All the plans we made there.With all that … bleakness in his voice.
You really loved her a lot.Janey.
Yeah. I did.
She told herself,Leave. This is a private conversation.And, finally, her feet listened.
Her fingers trembled a little on the phone when she texted him.Waffles in 10 minutes.
A few seconds, then,Thought I heard you. OK. Be down as soon as we clean up.
Which gave her about five minutes to control her face.
* * *
Quinn was odd again.He was sure of it. Back to what he was starting to think of as her professional self. Her briskly competent, efficient, controlled self, because if there was a queen of moving on, it was Quinn. She asked him about the progress in the attic, and asked Janey about what she’d helped with. Janey was being, for once, bubbly and cheerful, explaining about the third coat of mud, about how you had to prime before you painted, “Which I’ll help Dad with next weekend. I always help him.”
“I heard you helped him last night, too,” Quinn said. “I appreciate that.”
“I don’t mind,” Janey said. “Dad’s my family. That means you want to spend time with each other.”
“I could help paint, too,” Troy said.
Janey said, “You’re too little.”
“No,” Beckett decided he should put in—Quinn had jumped up and was making another waffle, but then, she’d barely sat down, and had taken about two bites—“Troy’s not too little. You were about his age when you helped me paint the first time. That was Troy’s bedroom, before he was born. Remember that?”
