AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She looked at him like he had just stepped off a spaceship. “No, we shouldn’t. I’m sure I’ve heard it already: You don’t know what came over you. You wish things had turned out differently. You really loved me. You never meant to hurt me. Am I close?”
She didn’t wait for his answer. “Save your empty words, Jonathan.” She pronounced his namezhu-na-tonand, hearing it again, it felt like a punch to the solar plexus.
She was right; his words were worthless now. Thinking that talking about their breakup, about the affair, would give her the closure she hadn’t asked him for now suddenly seemed condescending and self-centered. He was the one seeking closure; he wanted her forgiveness, but it was probably not forthcoming.
“Will you come back?” he asked. “You loved it here.”
“I lovedyou. I loved New York because it made me think about life in a new country with you, about possibility. And now I’m closing my shop and going home. Alone. To sit by my father’s sick bed. Does that answer your question?”
The bell above the door jangled behind him. “I have a customer.” She looked past him dismissively. “Good bye,Zhu-na-ton.”
* * *
For the firsttime in a long time, she had slept through the night.
Drawing the curtain back from the open window, she looked out. Wind rustled the dune grasses and stretched the clouds into feathery wisps like slow-motion salt-water taffy. Sun warmed the morning air. Birds chirped in the tree just outside the window and the surf crashed against the shore in the distance.
Maybe she would take a walk by the water later. How long since she had done that?
But first she went into her study. At the desk, she pulled out the marbled black and white notebook from Hollinger that she had stashed in the bottom drawer once she had gotten back home—her life, their life, indelibly changed.
As a little girl, she had loved those black and white notebooks, and she continued using them throughout her career for capturing ideas, brainstorming and exploration, rough outlines and sketches, early manuscript drafts.
She opened the cover and barely recognized the words inside; they could easily have belonged to someone else.
In many ways, shewassomeone else when she wrote them—curious, observant, optimistic, quick to laugh, a prolific writer, a happy wife.
She leafed through the pages, scanned the lines, tried to conjure the story she had been imagining, tried to remember what it was like to inhabit that place of flow where the ideas came and the sentences grew layer by layer until she had a paragraph, a page, a chapter, eventually a book.
Harris would share feedback on what she had written, on the themes and the characters and the plot twists. She smiled now, recalling how he would tease her about why, if she wanted another bestseller, she wrote no robots, vampires, or Vikings into her stories.
She closed the notebook and ran her hand over the smooth cover before putting it back in the drawer.
Phone in hand, she tapped the number from her list of contacts.
“You must have been reading my mind,” Leigh said when she answered. “I’ve been wanting to call you, but,” she hesitated, “you seemed to need a break from me.”
“I’m sorry for running off and not being in touch. It’s been . . . Well, you know how it’s been.”
“I’m sorry if I was pushing you too hard.”
“That’s why you’re my friend, and why you get paid the big bucks,” Quinn joked, trying to lighten the mood. “Would you have lunch with me, or dinner, whatever works with your schedule the day after tomorrow?”
She was hoping by then more of the bruising would lighten, at least enough that she could conceal the rest with makeup.
“Love to. I’m supposed to head out east Friday afternoon to meet Becca and Charles for the weekend. I’ll leave early and we can have lunch near your neck of the woods.”
“Perfect.” It would be a hard conversation, but a necessary one. “Call me when you’re on the road and we can decide where to meet.”
“Will do. And I’ll have to bring you up to speed on Becca’s wedding plans—it’s getting close.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it. She must be so happy. I’m so happyforher.”
Leigh’s daughter was the real deal—independent, smart, kind, funny. While Leigh sometimes misread, or glossed over, emotional situations, Becca usually had an accurate read on things. In fact, the day of Leigh’s “small” dinner party, Becca had left Quinn a message saying she wouldn’t be there. “I know this isn’t your scene—I’ll come see you another time. Stay strong.”
Quinn heard the “My mom’s at it again” between the lines, and it had touched her. She couldn’t wait to meet the man Becca had been dating and now planned to share her life with.
Two days later, Quinn and Leigh agreed to meet at a cute little restaurant on the sleepy side street off the hamlet’s main downtown strip. The place was popular with locals, a refuge on busy summer weekends.
