Chapter 26
Q uinn and Delilah took the boys out for pizza at JJ’s to talk about what it meant that they were, in fact, a couple.
They couched it in all sorts of disclaimers, saying they were just dating, it might not work out, they were just getting to know each other, etc. But it felt to Delilah like a momentous occasion—because it was.
Jesse reacted with unbridled excitement, leaping out of his seat, bouncing up and down on his toes, and exclaiming with enthusiasm. Gavin silently inserted his thumb into his mouth—a sure sign that something was bothering him.
“Gavin? Sweetheart, what are you thinking?” Delilah asked.
Wide-eyed, he pulled out the thumb just long enough to ask, “Does this mean Dad isn’t our dad anymore?
Delilah’s heart ached, and her throat grew thick with emotion. She wondered if all of this was a mistake.
“No, honey. No, it doesn’t mean that. Your dad will always be your dad.”
“Listen, big guy,” Quinn said. “I don’t want to take anybody’s place, okay? I’m not trying to be your new dad—I know you already have one. I just want to get to know your mom better and maybe be your friend. Do you think you’d be okay with that?”
Gavin nodded, the thumb back in place.
“Does this mean you’re going to live with us?” Jesse asked. “Are you gonna come to Connecticut when we go back there? Are you and Mom gonna get married?”
Jesse and Gavin had asked similar questions when she’d first brought up the subject of her relationship with Quinn. That had been awkward enough, but having the questions asked again with Quinn in attendance was worse.
Delilah’s head swam with all of the questions, but she took them calmly, one by one.
“No, Quinn isn’t going to live with us, but he is going to visit a lot. We haven’t talked about what will happen when we move back to Connecticut. Yes, Quinn is my boyfriend. And it’s far too soon to talk or even think about getting married, Jesse. Does that answer all of your questions?”
“I guess,” he said. “Except, can we go hiking again?”
“Sure we can,” Quinn said. “If your mom says yes.”
“I’m sure we can make that happen,” Delilah said.
Later, when the boys were occupied with a board game in Jesse’s room, Delilah and Quinn sat on the back patio and assessed how the conversation had gone.
“Gavin seemed really excited about the idea of the two of us when I brought it up with him before. But now … God. When he asked if Mitch won’t be his father anymore? I almost lost it.”
“I think you handled it well, though.” Quinn took Delilah’s hand as they sat side by side in Adirondack chairs facing the ocean.
“You did, too. Still. Did you see how he stuck his thumb in his mouth as soon as we started talking about it? He does that when he’s anxious or upset. It started after Mitch left, and he’d been getting better about it. But then, there it was again.” She let out a ragged sigh.
“Are they going to see their father at all at Christmas?” Quinn asked.
“No!” Delilah threw her free arm into the air in frustration. “Before we came here, when I was figuring out what to do, I begged him to come and visit them. But he can’t be bothered. He’s too busy with Celine.” She said the name as though it belonged to a mythical beast that threatened to destroy humanity.
“Was the guy always an asshole, or is that a new development?”
Delilah considered the question. “You know, when he first told me he was leaving me, I’d have said it was a new development. But now, in retrospect … I guess he was always an asshole. I just didn’t see it until it was flashing in neon letters.”
“Yeah, I get that.” He sank deeper into his chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “We all tend to see what we want to see, especially when there’s so much at stake—your marriage, your kids’ well-being. Your whole way of life.”
“The way of life I can do without,” she said. “But the kids and the way they feel about their lives? The way their sense of security was taken away from them? That’s the hard part.”
“I imagine it’s all hard.”
“Yes. It is.”
Bringing a new man into the mix was probably going to make things even harder. But sitting here with Quinn, just talking with him, didn’t feel hard at all. It felt like the easiest thing she’d done in a very long time.
Shortly after that, Quinn started getting the phone calls.
The first one was from his younger brother, Jared.
“Why the hell are random people calling me asking about you?” He launched into it without the small talk that generally started a conversation.
“What random people?”
“How the hell should I know? That’s why I’m asking you.”
Quinn was at home, standing in his kitchen with his butt leaning against the countertop. It was early in the morning, and he hadn’t had his coffee yet.
Quinn scrubbed at his face with his free hand. “Look. Can I call you back in ten minutes? I haven’t had my coffee, and if you want me to know what the hell you’re talking about, I’m gonna have to do that.”
Talking with his asshole brother was unpleasant under the best of circumstances. Without caffeine, it would be unbearable.
When Quinn’s coffee had been brewed and one good-sized mug had been consumed, he braced himself and called Jared back.
“It took you long enough.” Jared inexplicably chose that as a greeting instead of the more traditional hello or hi or even hey there .
“Yeah, well. I’m here now.”
“Great. Now tell me why some random fuckhead is calling me asking about you.”
Quinn leaned against the kitchen counter and sighed. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t we pretend I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Because I don’t. Can we maybe take it from the beginning and get me caught up?”
Obviously irritated, Jared went through it: how he’d gotten a phone call from a man he’d never heard of who peppered him with questions about Quinn—his romantic history, his financial history, his work history, his personality traits. Jared had refused to answer any of them and hung up.
Then the guy had visited Jared’s office.
“I don’t need that shit,” he went on. “I don’t need people coming to my work. It’s not professional, and I don’t need to lose this job. So you can just tell him—”
“I can’t tell him anything. I don’t know who it is or what he wants any more than you do.”
“I need this job,” Jared went on as though Quinn hadn’t spoken. “I’m not like you, sitting on a big inheritance you didn’t earn. Or, I guess you were sitting on it. What the hell happened, Quinn? Did you lose it all gambling or just being a dickhead, or what?”
If Quinn had been confused before, he was even more so now. “Again, I have to ask, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m assuming the guy’s a debt collector.”
“A debt collector? Why would you assume that?”
“Because he said he’s a private investigator. Why else would a private investigator want to know about you? Unless you’re screwing someone’s wife.”
Quinn was struck silent by this piece of news. When he finally could form a response, he said, “You might have led with the part about the private investigator.”
“Yeah? And you might kiss my ass.”
Then Jared hung up on him.
That was just the beginning of the phone calls. He got more from his mother, his former employer, his former landlord, and Mrs. Foster. All of them were pretty much the same: Who was this guy who wanted to know about Quinn? And why did he want to know?
People who had a generally good impression of Quinn assumed it was some kind of security clearance for a job application. People who had a generally bad impression of him assumed he was in some kind of legal or financial trouble.
He wasn’t in any legal trouble that he knew of, he had a healthy savings account, and he hadn’t applied for a job. What the hell was this?
The whole thing was so unsettling, so strange. And so unexplainable.
Until he remembered one thing Jared had said to him: unless you’re screwing someone’s wife.
He wasn’t. But he did have a relationship with someone’s ex.
Delilah’s ex-husband, as a lawyer, almost certainly worked with private investigators and had access to any number of them.
Could that be it?
He thought to ask her, but he wasn’t ready to do that yet. Instead, he went to Mrs. Foster’s house one day when he saw her car in the driveway.
“Oh, Quinn. It’s lovely to see you. Come in, come in. I just bought some muffins at the Cookie Crock. They’re chocolate chip. Would you like one?”
He was about to decline, but then he realized he liked chocolate chip muffins and he’d skipped lunch, so he was starving.
“That sounds great, actually. Thanks.”
One muffin, one cup of tea, and a lot of chitchat later, Quinn left Mrs. Foster’s house with the phone number of the private investigator who’d been asking about him.
He went home, called the number, and got voice mail.
“This is Quinn Monroe,” he said. “I assume I don’t have to tell you what I want, because you already know more about me than either one of us is probably comfortable with. Call me.” He left his number and hung up.
The guy never called back—either because he didn’t want to tell Quinn who’d hired him or because he thought Quinn might hunt him down and kick his ass.
Or both.
When that didn’t work, Quinn Googled attorney Mitchell Ballard Paris . Within minutes, he had an e-mail address for Delilah’s ex.
Using it without talking to her first felt like a betrayal, so he didn’t do that. He just hung onto the address while he thought about what to do.
If Quinn confronted him and the guy really didn’t have anything to do with it, that would embarrass Delilah, and Quinn didn’t want that.
All he could do, he decided, was wait to see what happened.
For a while, nothing did.