6. Quinn
6
QUINN
I tuck the last of the Tupperware containers that hold the remnants of the nice dinner I cooked for Smoke into the fridge.
The place settings have been put back in the cupboard, the cutlery returned to the drawer, and the pots and preparation dishes cleaned.
Who knows, maybe he hates Greek-style lemon chicken with orzo and salad, and somehow telepathically knew what was for dinner and so made a choice to not come home.
Not that he owes me any explanation.
But the sun has long since dipped below the horizon, and I’m pissed I put so much effort into it.
I had this idea that it might set us off on the right foot, to cook him a lovely dinner.
For him to come home to a living room that has been vacuumed to remove most of the dog hair and the scent of fresh and healthy food.
A million years ago, I watched a movie about a chef whose cooking always tasted like whatever emotion she felt when she was making it.
I think it was something to do with a mysterious and magical crab.
I can’t say I ever really wanted to be a cook, or a baker for that matter, but I’ve thought about that movie often.
I try not to prepare food when I’m angry, so food doesn’t taste bitter.
I try not to prepare food when I’m sad, so the food doesn’t taste unseasoned.
So, the food I just stuffed in the fridge will taste fine.
But if it can absorb flavor-feelings from the way it’s put into the fridge, it will likely poison Smoke and kill him.
I reach for my phone for the thousandth time today.
I was making individual carrot cakes this morning when another idea came to me.
I could leave here for a little while.
I could make plans for the bakery to open on part-time hours.
Maybe close for two quieter days of the week and reduce the hours.
That way, I could ask Kinsey to run it five days a week and go stay with my dad for a month to get away from this town.
I’d leave a sign in the window with contact details for Melody.
Part of the reason I’ve found vacation so hard is the worry over what happens if Melody comes by and I’m not there.
What if she doesn’t ask Kinsey where the old owners are?
Or knocks on the apartment door and doesn’t get an answer?
While with my father, I could talk to him about his share of the bakery, about ownership of the apartment.
I’m living in limbo where, for all intents and purposes, everything is mine to run and operate, and yet I own none of it.
But it means calling my dad.
I take a deep breath and dial his number, before setting my phone on the counter on speaker phone.
He’s weirdly old-school and doesn’t like text messaging.
“Ben Moran,” he says officiously.
“Hey, Dad. How are you?”
“Quinn?” he asks.
The single word goes up at the end in a question.
There’s only me and Silas left.
How many other people call him Dad ?
Or maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that question.
“Yes. I wondered if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”
There’s a rustle on the other end of the line and then a mumbled conversation I’m probably not meant to hear.
It’s my daughter. I’ll wrap it up quick.
Great. Nothing like knowing that after not speaking to him for a month, a month in which he missed my birthday, I’m not worth his time.
“What’s up, Quinn?” he asks.
“I was wondering how you would feel if I came to stay with you for a little while?”
There’s a long pause.
“For how long, and when?”
“Now, and for a month.”
“A whole month?”
That’s generally what a month means.
But as always, I backtrack quickly.
“Or a couple of weeks, maybe. There was a break-in at the bakery. I?—”
“Did you call the cops?”
“Of course. But they came back a second time, they?—”
“Why did you not shore up security after the first time?”
“It’s not that simple, I?—”
“Was anything stolen? Broken?”
I look down at a small chip in the marble island top.
“Dad. Can you stop interrupting and I’ll explain? It’s an extortion scam. It’s happening to a few businesses. I’m one of them. They tied me up, Dad. They assaulted me.”
“Jesus, Quinn. You need to take better care of yourself and the bakery.”
I want to rage.
Against him. Against the men who broke into my bakery.
For years after Melody went missing, I slept with a broom tucked behind my bedroom door handle as a makeshift lock.
Only my father could put me, a human being, and the bakery, an inanimate building, in the same sentence of care.
“I’m recovering okay, by the way,” I say passive-aggressively.
“There are still scars around my wrists that are healing every day.”
Dad takes a breath.
“I’m glad to hear that. But it sounds like, if there’s trouble, you’d be better off staying where you are to make sure the bakery is okay. Would hate for Melody to come back and?—”
“And what?” I snap, interrupting him, for once.
“That’s all I’m good for to you. I’m a mile marker you left in the ground here while you go off and do whatever the hell it is you want. Oh, and I had a great birthday, thanks for asking. Bye, Dad.”
Tears sting, threaten, then spill.
“I don’t know why I even care anymore,” I mutter, trying to suck in a sob.
“Your dad is even more of a cunt than I remember.” Smoke’s voice makes me jump.
It’s still deep and gravelly.
In my bare feet, he’s taller than I recalled, the difference made greater by the thick soles on his boots.
I was so wrapped up in speaking to my father, I didn’t hear him come in.
“Well, this is just perfect timing.” I sweep beneath my eyes, trying to stem the flow of tears.
Once they overtake me, I’ll fall straight into them, and that won’t help anyone.
“Didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Had shit to do at the clubhouse.” The look in his eyes tells me there wasn’t any shit to do, and he knows it.
“Your dinner is in the fridge. Good night.”
I march past him, and as I do, he reaches out for my wrist. His fingers wrap around me easily.
But he smells of cigarettes and someone else’s perfume.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I snatch my wrist from him.
“I don’t need anybody’s kindness. Not tonight.”
“Not sure I was offering any,” he admits.
“But you don’t need to rush off all upset.”
I force a smile.
“I’ve been fine on my own for a long time. I don’t need anyone else’s help now.”
I turn on my heel and hurry down the hall to the bedroom I’ve been staying in, and once there, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
The book I’m currently reading is out on the kitchen island, and Lord knows I am not going back out there to get it.
I suppose I could watch something on my phone, but that’s a sure-fire way to lose three hours of my life watching videos of cats doing the wild shit cats do and the entire third season of Grey’s Anatomy in fifteen-second video clips.
Sleep.
That feels like the safest option.
I have to be at the bakery at six in the morning to get the bread in the oven and to start setting up the counters.
I change out of my sundress and pull on a soft pair of shorts with a boxy T-shirt.
It’s mostly cream with tiny little pineapples on it.
The teeth of the comb catch on the knots as I vigorously yank it through my hair.
The sting is a welcome distraction from the shock of the call.
My father has no idea how to be a dad.
It’s like, the moment Melody went missing, his desire to parent went with it.
Silas was already out of the house and uncontactable most of the time.
And the truth that I wasn’t enough to remain a father for stings like a thousand paper cuts.
I used to think I was happy in my own company.
I used to think I enjoyed solitude.
But now, I realize I’m lonely.
Bone-deep, painfully lonely.
Bones is asleep in an undignified heap on his dog bed.
“Some guard dog you are,” I mutter.
“You didn’t even wake up when he came home.”
People think I’m sunshine, like the romance trope.
What I offer them confirms it: A friendly face in the coffee shop, learning their orders so I can ask if they want the usual.
Some commentary about the town and the weather.
Always service with a smile, because Lord knows it’s hard enough to keep a business afloat in a tough economic climate when you sell things people could easily make at home.
The door to Smoke’s room closes, and suddenly, I feel suffocated in this room.
Even this house.
I make my way to the rear of the house, unlock the door, and step out onto the back porch where there’s an old-fashioned swing seat.
Sucking in a few gulps of clean, fresh air, I sit on it.
Using my toes, I push off and let it swing back and forth.
I can’t see much in the darkness, but during the day, you get the most beautiful view of the mountains, all gray and craggy.
“You still hate me, don’t you?” Smoke says, stepping out onto the porch.
His voice cuts through the dark.
In the split second between my hearing a noise and realizing it was Smoke, my heart sky-rocketed, beating hard and fast in my chest. I swallow; my mouth suddenly drier than a bag of flour.
“Does it matter if I do?” I ask, but I’m unable to quell the shake in my voice.
“Considering you’re sleeping under my roof, it might. I thought you were going to bed, then I heard footsteps. Could be willing to kill me in my sleep for all I know.”
Smoke sits down next to me on the porch swing, so confident it will take both our weight.
It creaks and groans beneath him but doesn’t break.
He pulls a packet of cigarettes from his cut, taps one out, and then offers it to me.
“Wasn’t really tired.” I turn up my nose.
“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”
Smoke smiles at that, before popping the end of the cigarette into his mouth.
“What’s funny?” I ask as he lights it and then takes a long draw.
“I was smoking outside your house once as I waited for Melody to do whatever she was doing. And you came out with your hands on your hips and yelled at me for polluting the atmosphere and for ruining my lungs so close to your bedroom window. You pointed up above the bakery to the tiniest open window. Glad to see you stuck to it.”
The mention of Melody slides the divide solidly back between us.
“You don’t get to talk about her.” My words sound petulant.
“No?” He blows a stream of smoke into the air away from me.
“Figure you might be the only person on earth who’d want to talk with someone about her. You know, they say people die three times. When they die. When they’re buried. And the last time anyone speaks their name.”
“We don’t know she’s dead.”
Smoke nods.
“This is true. But I play the odds. The chances of her being gone fourteen years and nobody finding her are really fucking slim.”
“Maybe if you’d been more honest up front when—you know what, never mind. There’s no point in us going through all this again.”
“You were thirteen when it happened, Quinn. I was nearly twenty-one. Have you never thought for a millisecond that you saw the whole thing through a young girl’s eyes and that what you thought you understood is wrong? What you think about me might be wrong?”
I push to stand at the same time he does.
The swing wobbles. I do too.
So does he. We collide into each other.
His hand grips my arm firmly; my chest brushes against his.
I have to lean my head back to look up at him.
His presence both unnerves and arouses, and I hate it.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not talking about things isn’t healthy,” he says.
He squeezes my bicep, then runs his hand down my arm.
“How was the fire?” I ask cruelly.
And he drops my arm like I’m the one burning out of control.
I see the muscle twitch at the side of his jaw as he stubs the half-smoked cigarette out in an ashtray on the little table next to the swing.
“That’s unfair.”
“Is it? I’ve been through the file on Melody’s disappearance with Sheriff Radcliffe a thousand times. I know every single detail. As an adult and sibling. Freedom of information goes a long way. There isn’t anything I’ve misunderstood.”
Smoke huffs and crosses his arms in front of his chest. I hate that I notice how big and strong his biceps are, and how much I love the tattoos he has.
“You’re assuming a police record is accurate? Bold choice, Quinn.”
“Fuck you.” I go to march past him, but he reaches for my hand and takes it.
“We need a reckoning, you and me.”
I look up at him, knowing that I can’t trust anything this man offers.
“I’m going to bed,” I say.
“You said that once tonight.” His fingers circle my wrist. “But if you decide you want the truth, not the story you’ve been told, come find me.”
He looks down at where his finger and thumb overlap on my wrist, then back to my face as he lets go.
“You stay. I’ll go. Good night, Quinn.”
Then, I’m left alone with my recklessly beating heart.