Chapter 4 A Mother Knows
A Mother Knows
Quinn Bollinger
(Married to Baby Bollinger; mother of Lincoln)
Quinn Bollinger watched her son from across the room.
Lincoln stood at the edge of the dessert table, little Marie’s sticky hand still clasped in his. The party swirled around them—kids screaming, adults laughing, someone arguing good-naturedly about whose turn it was to hold Derek and Becky’s newborn—but those two existed in their own bubble.
Marie chattered up at him, her free hand gesturing emphatically at something on the table, and Lincoln listened with that particular stillness that meant he was truly engaged. Not just tolerating. Not just waiting for his turn to speak. Actually listening.
Something warm bloomed in Quinn’s chest.
“You’re staring.”
Baby’s voice came from behind her, his hand sliding to rest at the small of her back. She leaned into him without thinking—thirty-three years of marriage had made the gesture automatic.
“I’m observing,” she corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“Uh-huh.” He followed her gaze to their son. “He’s good with her.”
“He’s good with everyone who gives him a chance to be.”
“Baby!” Gabriel Collingwood’s voice cut across the room. “Come settle this before Dorian and I end up in a fistfight.”
Baby pressed a kiss to Quinn’s temple. “Duty calls. You okay here?”
“Go before they start breaking furniture. I’m fine.”
She looked back over at Lincoln. For years, she had worried about her son. The specialists who couldn’t quite agree on a diagnosis: some said autism spectrum, others said gifted with social differences—occasionally whispering prodigious savant.
A few suggested he was simply wired differently than most people and perhaps that didn’t require a label at all. She’d always agreed most with those opinions.
Social struggles had left Lincoln isolated through a lot of his childhood, despite cousins who would go to the mat for him all day long.
Other kids didn’t understand him, didn’t know what to do with a boy who preferred data to small talk, who noticed patterns instead of feelings, who could hack into systems most adults couldn’t comprehend but couldn’t figure out how to join a conversation already in progress.
Baby had sat up late, night after night, reading every book he could find.
Learning alongside their son. Refusing to let anyone tell them what Lincoln couldn’t be.
“He’s not broken,” Baby had said once, his voice fierce in the dark of their bedroom.
“He’s just speaking a different language. Our job is to learn it.”
And they had. Imperfectly, stumbling, making mistakes—but they had learned.
Look at him now.
Surrounded by family. Trusted with responsibilities that mattered.
Maybe not comfortable in the conventional sense, but here.
Marie adored him. She saw something in Lincoln that the world often missed—the patience, the precision, the way he took her seriously when most adults dismissed her as too young to understand.
Quinn took a moment to let herself want something she rarely allowed.
She hoped Lincoln would find someone. A woman who would see him the way little Marie did right now—who would appreciate the way his mind worked instead of being frustrated by it. Someone patient enough to wait for him to find his words and wise enough to hear what he meant underneath them.
Maybe someday she would get to watch him with his own little girl. Teaching her the things he knew, listening to her the way he listened to Marie, building something together out of logic and love.
“Stop lurking and come help us pretend we’re useful.”
Quinn startled. Charlie had appeared at her other elbow with the particular stealth that came from decades of wrangling Bollinger men. Her sister-in-law’s eyes were bright with the particular energy of a woman who had been hosting chaos for hours and was running on fumes and determination.
“I wasn’t lurking.”
“You were absolutely lurking. You had the mom face on.” Charlie tugged at her arm. “Kitchen. Now. The other gals are in there—with wine—and we need reinforcements.”
The kitchen was warm and fragrant with the ghost of the evening’s earlier dishes—roasted meat and garlic, the sharp sweetness of cranberries, the yeasty undertone of fresh rolls.
Cluttered with the aftermath of feeding forty people.
Annie stood at the sink, washing the last of the serving platters.
Ray dried them with methodical efficiency.
Jordan leaned against the counter, a glass of wine in hand and a look of amused exhaustion on her face.
Someone pressed a glass into Quinn’s hand before she could fully orient herself. She accepted it gratefully.
“Finally,” Jordan said. “We needed another member of the cleanup crew who’s willing to stand around and supervise.”
“I resent that.” Charlie grabbed a dish towel and snapped it in Jordan’s direction. “I’ve been working.”
“You’ve been delegating,” Annie laughed. “There’s a difference.”
“Delegation is a form of work. It’s actually harder than just doing things yourself, because you have to trust other people not to mess it up.”
Ray made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. “How’s that working out for you?”
Charlie’s expression shifted to something pained. She picked up a cookie from a leftover plate—one of her own contributions—and tapped it against the counter.
The sound was closer to stone than baked goods.
“I don’t understand what went wrong.”
“Nothing went wrong.” Ray didn’t look up from the platter she was drying. “You made exactly what you always make.”
“Weapons,” Jordan supplied helpfully.
Quinn laughed, the wine warming her from the inside. “At least yours hold their shape. Mine looked like it had an existential crisis in the oven.”
“An existential crisis?” Annie glanced over her shoulder from the sink.
“It sort of... collapsed inward. Like it was questioning its purpose in life and decided the answer was ‘not this.’”
Charlie set down the cookie-rock with a thunk. “Annie. You’re being very silent over there.”
“I’m washing dishes.”
“You’re being diplomatic.”
Annie’s shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly. “I’m being occupied. There’s a difference.”
“She’s protecting our feelings,” Quinn said. “Which means we should be terrified.”
Jordan grinned. “Gabe ate three of Ray’s brownies out of loyalty. He’s going to be regretting that decision for the rest of the night.”
Ray shrugged, utterly unbothered. “Dorian knows better. He grabbed two of Joy’s tarts before anyone else could get to them.” She set the dried platter aside and reached for another. “Smart man.”
The conversation shifted the way it always did with them—dessert failures becoming springboards to older memories.
Christmases past, when Linear Tactical was just a handful of determined veterans pooling their resources.
When their kids were small enough to wrangle, before they grew into adults with their own lives and choices and families.
“Gabe still thinks the girls are twelve,” Jordan said, shaking her head. “Every time a man so much as glances at Lilah or Scarlett, he gets that look. You know the one. Like he’s calculating how quickly he could make a body disappear.”
Charlie snorted. “Finn’s the same. Calls them the kids like they’re not the ones running Linear Tactical now.”
“Dorian too.” Ray’s voice went softer. Something tender crept into it. “Theo towers over him, but Dorian still checks his room at night. Old habits. And don’t get me started of how protective he is of Savannah or Amari, even though both of them can totally handle themselves.”
Quinn thought about Baby doing the same thing with Lincoln. Even now, even though their son was a grown man who could hack into government databases in his sleep. Some instincts didn’t fade. Some worries never fully released their grip.
You could know your child was capable, competent, extraordinary—and still lie awake at night wondering if you’d done enough. Given them enough. Prepared them for a world that didn’t always know what to do with people who were different.
Annie moved from the sink to stand beside Quinn, their shoulders almost touching. The kitchen noise continued around them—Charlie and Jordan bickering about something, Ray offering dry commentary—but Annie’s attention was focused.
“You okay? You went somewhere else for a minute.”
“Just thinking.” Quinn watched the water drip from her hands into the sink. She reached for a towel. “Remembering when I found out I was pregnant with Lincoln.”
Annie’s expression softened. She had been there. She knew.
“Forty-one years old. High-risk. All those warnings about what could go wrong.” Quinn dried her hands slowly, the motions automatic. “You remember. The blood work. The protein levels. Everyone talking about the amniocentesis like Down Syndrome was inevitable.”
Her voice caught. She hadn’t meant to go this deep, but the memories were right there, as vivid as if they’d happened yesterday instead of three decades ago.
“I remember sitting on the shower floor, crying. Baby found me like that. Shaking. He thought I’d decided to have an abortion.
That the risk was too high.” She had to pause, breathe through the tightness in her throat.
“He climbed into that shower fully clothed. Sat down in the cold water like it was nothing. I knew he supported me no matter what.”
“And you decided not to have the test.” Annie smiled. “I can’t tell you how much I respected that.”
“I decided it didn’t matter.” Quinn’s voice steadied. “I wanted that baby. However he came to us. Whatever he needed. I wasn’t going to let a test tell me whether my child was worth having.”
“No matter what,” Annie said softly. “Together. That’s what you guys said in my office.”
“You remember.”
“I remember.” Annie squeezed her arm.
“Different challenges than we expected, in the end.” Quinn glanced toward the doorway, toward her son. “But we faced them the same way. Together.”
“Look at him now.”
Quinn did.
Through the kitchen doorway, she could see Lincoln still at the dessert table. Marie had finally wandered off and Lincoln stood alone, straightening something. A plate, probably. Two degrees off center, which would have bothered him until he fixed it.
He looked settled. At ease.
Not performing comfort the way he sometimes did in social situations, going through the motions of normalcy because he’d learned that was what people expected. Actually at home here. Actually himself.
“He’s going to find someone,” Annie said, following her gaze. “Someone who sees him.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.” Annie’s certainty was soft but absolute. The kind that came from decades of watching people, of understanding what they needed even when they couldn’t articulate it themselves. “The right person won’t need him to be different. They’ll just need him to be Lincoln.”
Quinn wanted to believe that. Wanted it so badly it ached.
She looked past Lincoln to the wider gathering. Their children, grown now. Grandchildren running around, Graham toddling after someone, Denise being passed between eager arms. The next generation finding their way, building lives of their own.
That was what mattered. Not the training or the skills or any of the things Lincoln could do with a computer. The fact that he had people who loved him exactly as he was.
The kitchen door swung open, and Baby stuck his head in. His eyes found Quinn immediately, the way they always did.
“Gabe and Dorian are arguing about truck engines again. He held out his hand to her. “Save me.”
Quinn laughed and crossed to him. “You love arguing about truck engines.”
“I love arguing about truck engines with people who know what they’re talking about.” His fingers closed around hers, warm and familiar. “You okay? You disappeared.”
“Just reminiscing with the girls.”
“Dangerous activity.”
“Yeah, but the best kind.”
They drifted back toward the main room together, and Quinn found her eyes seeking Lincoln again.
He was still at the dessert table, but Marie had returned, tugging at his sleeve, pointing at something.
Lincoln crouched down to her level, listening with that focused attention that most adults couldn’t manage.
Baby’s hand tightened around hers. He’d followed her gaze.
“He’s going to be okay,” Baby said quietly. “Better than okay.”
“I know.” And she did. For the first time in a long time, she really did. “He’s going to find someone.”
“Someone who deserves him.”
Quinn leaned into her husband’s side, watching their son explain something to a three-year-old with all the seriousness of a professor delivering a lecture. Marie was nodding solemnly, completely rapt.
Thirty years ago, she’d sat on a shower floor, terrified of what the future might hold. And Baby had climbed in beside her, fully clothed, and promised they’d face it together.
They had. Every unexpected challenge. Every small victory. Every moment that the experts hadn’t predicted.
Together.
She wouldn’t trade a single moment.
*
* Books from characters in this chapter:
Quinn & Baby Bollinger – BABY
Gabe & Jordan Collingwood – ANGEL
The book with Bear’s Kid Camp – HERO’S PRIZE
Bear & Joy – HERO MINE
Theo & Eva – HERO UNBOUND