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“It’s okay, I’ll have it fixed tomorrow,” he offered quickly, trying to hold on to her hips and pull out of her gently as she struggled against him. “Here, let me take it and get it fix—”
She bolted upright to sit cross-legged on the bed, her back to him. “You need to go,” she said, her voice cracking between sobs.
“Hey, hey, calm down.” He sat on the bed and rubbed her back. “It was an accident. It can be fixed. I’ll bring it back to you tomorrow.”
He would take the morning off from work, find a jeweler who could fix it on the spot, and deliver it back to her straightaway. The city was big—he would find someone to take care of it.
She knocked his arm away. “Itcan’tbe fixed. You can’t fix it. You could have done what I asked, not . . . this.” She thrust her hand toward him, the slack chain draped over her palm, two of its delicate links stretched open and twisted.
“Go,” she repeated. Breaking the necklace was symbolic, a metaphor—he got that. But she was getting more upset, and his continued presence seemed only to make it worse.
“Okay, I am. I’m going,” he said, climbing off the bed, fumbling to pick up his clothes. “I’m sorry.”
But wait, what exactly was he apologizing for?
Anger rose in his throat. “I’m sorry I’m not some lowlife who gets off on hitting women; I’m sorry I won’t smack you around.”
He waited for her to say something more as slowly he walked out of the room and down the hall, but she was quiet except for the weeping.
His chest hurt hearing her. He wanted to go back and comfort her, hold her and rub her back until she stopped, but . . . This was Quinn, and that would not happen.
He threw on the rest of his clothes by the top of the stairs and went down, let himself out the heavy front door.
She was still quiet when he texted her later that night and the next morning and the next evening and he stopped trying when he lost track of how many days after that.
* * *
When he gotLeigh’s voice mail inviting him to dinner at her apartment in two weeks, he called back immediately to accept. He wasn’t in any mood for a party, but maybe by some miracle Leigh might convince Quinn to come.
He arrived in time for cocktails in her high-ceilinged living room. Stark white walls, enormous paintings, a dark wood floor—decor as unique in the city as a private school uniform.
Quinn was not there. No surprise. Although any time another guest walked in, he turned to look, pathetically hopeful.
After a while they moved into the dining room, and he found his place card between two writers whose names he vaguely recognized and across from Leigh. She was standing with her hands on the back of her chair, watching everyone as they took their seats before she retreated to the kitchen to bring out the food.
Once she sat, he waited what he hoped was an unremarkably short time before catching her eye amid all the chatter to ask how Quinn was; he didn’t want to sound as eager as he felt.
“She’s not answering my calls,” Leigh said, her frustration obvious from her face, her voice, her sigh as she spooned something green with quinoa onto a plate. “So I’m giving her space. I just wish she could . . . hoist herself above this.”
He waited to hear it:It’s been over a year. To her credit, if she was thinking it, at least she didn’t say it.
The two writers made sympathetic sounds and frowny it’s-just-so-sad faces. One shifted in her seat, cleared her throat, and shot a furtive glance that started in his direction and quickly continued around the table, as if she were checking to make sure others weren’t listening. “I heard she’s been, um . . . going to visit Octavia.”
The woman looked at the author next to her and then at Leigh. Her tone was funny, her look conspiratorial; he pictured her nudging their elbows, although she didn’t actually.
“What’s she doing at”—Leigh was interrupted by an unseen motion generated somewhere under the table. Water shimmied in unison in the glasses at their end of the table, and Leigh’s forehead contracted. “I mean”—cough—“I didn’t know QuinnknewOctavia.”
Octavia.
The name was familiar, and he thought about the mutual acquaintances in their slightly overlapping social circles, but he couldn’t come up with a last name. Nor could he conjure a face.
“Well, apparently they do”—ahem—“know each other. Someone mentioned it at my last writers’ group meeting. A friend of a friend said she’d seen theMarket Dayauthor at . . . I mean visiting . . . Octavia.”
“Hmm,” Leigh uttered. “Maybe they confused her with someone else.”
The conversation moved on, and he fielded questions about his show and travels. Leigh always gathered an interesting crowd, and he asked about the others’ latest projects and successes with genuine interest. Gallery exhibitions, book launches, a prestigious medical association award, a couple of needle-in-the-haystack stock picks.
There was more, but he didn’t catch the rest because after a while his mind got caught in a loop.
