Chapter 32
Q uinn strategically planned his visit to his brother’s house. Cheryl was a cashier at a local grocery store, and his mother had told him she worked the eight-to-five shift most days. So Quinn showed up midday, when Cheryl would be busy scanning six-packs of beer and Swanson’s frozen dinners.
He walked up to the front door of the little two-bedroom place they were renting, knocked, and huddled in the cold, pulling his coat around him as he waited.
Alex had worked construction—hard, physical labor that was unsafe for a man with heart problems. He hadn’t yet found a new, less taxing line of work, so he was still home, still unable to earn a paycheck, still seething, probably, with feelings of helplessness and the devastating blow to his pride that came from relying on his wife’s employment for their livelihood.
When Alex opened the door, he looked thinner and paler than Quinn remembered.
“Well, shit.” Alex looked at his brother through the screen door.
“Hi, Alex. Can I come in?”
Alex seemed to consider slamming the door in Quinn’s face. Instead, after a time that seemed far too long for comfort, he pushed open the screen door and stood back for Quinn to enter.
“If you’re here to apologize …” Alex began.
“I’m not. I don’t have shit to apologize for.”
“Goddamn it, Quinn—”
“I’m here to find out how you are. To see for myself that you’re up and around and doing okay. Since you never told me you had a goddamned heart attack, Alex.”
They stood just inside the front door, a coat rack to Quinn’s left and a side table holding a basket of keys, sunglasses, and other random items to his right. The fact that they hadn’t gone farther into the house indicated to Quinn that he wasn’t welcome here.
Alex looked at the floor and rubbed an eyebrow with his thumb—a gesture he’d used since his teen years whenever he was uncomfortable about something. “Yeah, well … it kind of seemed like you wouldn’t much care.”
“Ah, bullshit.”
“Yeah, okay. You can just fuck off, then.”
They both stood there seething, neither willing to back down. Finally, Quinn decided to be the bigger person. It was why he’d come, after all.
“Look. Can we just lower the temperature a bit? I didn’t come here to fight with you. I came to see how you’re doing. So can we maybe talk about that? And can I maybe come in instead of standing two steps inside your damned front door?”
Alex’s expression was hard, and he still wasn’t looking at Quinn. Then he shrugged, and his features relaxed. “Hell … I guess so. Sure. Come in. You want coffee?”
They sat at the kitchen table, mugs in front of them, and talked. They kept it polite and superficial at first. Alex told Quinn about his latest doctor visit and the fact that his recovery had gone well. They talked about the new house—a rental, and much smaller than the old one—which Cheryl had found for them. It was close to Cheryl’s job, close to Cheryl’s mother’s place, so that was good.
They talked about what a bitch it was to stop smoking. Cheryl wanted Alex to give up burgers and bacon, but he’d already given up alcohol and Marlboros. What was the point in recovering if life wasn’t worth living?
They talked about Christmas—who’d gone to whose house and who’d argued about what over the holiday dinner.
Through the archway into the living room, Quinn could see their tree still up. Past its prime and sparsely decorated, it reminded him a little of the tree in A Charlie Brown Christmas .
When all avenues of small talk had been exhausted, Quinn got to the point.
“You should have called me.”
Alex shrugged. “You wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”
“Yeah, well … that’s not what Cheryl’s been saying about me, is it?”
Alex tensed, then got up from the table and went to the sink to rinse his mug. He braced his hands against the counter and said, “What was that about, anyway? That detective? What did he want to know about you for?”
Quinn explained the situation: Delilah, her ex-husband, and his accusation that Quinn was a bad influence on Jesse and Gavin.
“She thinks she’s going to lose her kids over this, Alex. Actually, she’s already dumped me so she won’t. And why, because you two said I refused to help you in your time of need? Kind of hard for me to do that when nobody even told me you were having a time of need in the first place.”
“Quinn …”
“Cheryl lied about me.”
“No, she didn’t.” Alex rubbed his face with his hands, then sighed. “I’m the one who lied to her.”
Quinn opened his mouth to respond, found that he was speechless, then closed it again.
“She told me to call you when all of the shit with the money started going down. She kept telling me, ‘Call Quinn. Apologize. Do whatever you have to do. Just get him to loan us some money.’ So I told her I had and that you’d shut me down. That stuff she told the detective? She thought it was true.”
Quinn ran a hand through his hair. “But … why did you tell her that?”
“Because it was easier. Easier than swallowing my pride and telling you I was sorry. Easier than admitting I couldn’t provide for my family. Easier than putting all of my problems on you, Quinn.”
Quinn sat back in his chair and tried to absorb everything his brother was telling him. “You lied to get your wife off your back.”
“Yes.”
“And then the detective called.”
“Yes.”
“And she was pissed as hell because she thought I didn’t care.”
“That’s … yeah. That’s what happened.”
At least it was all clear now—who’d done what and why. And it was clear that Alex was okay, and those two things were all Quinn had come for. He got up and faced his brother.
“For the record, I do care. Also for the record, the money’s gone. Well, not gone, really, but I spent it on my house. I don’t have it to give you.”
“Quinn …”
“And finally. For the record. You hurt Nate. You all did. You treated him like shit, and that’s why he left me the money and not you. I don’t owe you an apology for that, and if Nate were here, he wouldn’t, either.”
Alex folded his arms over his chest. “Yeah. I guess.”
“Have you changed your mind? About Nate, I mean? Do you still think his sexual orientation made him less of a man?”
Alex looked at some point well beyond Quinn, his face tight, and he nodded. “I guess I do.”
“Then we’ve covered everything I came here to talk about. Take care of yourself, Alex.” Quinn walked out of the house, got into his van, and drove away.
Delilah hadn’t wanted to use the information she’d gotten about Celine. She’d thought that if she and Mitch could just have a rational conversation, the whole thing would go away.
She was wrong.
She called him the day after her conversation with Miles. She still didn’t know where she and the kids were going to live, and January first had come and gone, so they were in a two-bedroom Airbnb until she could figure out what was going to happen between herself and Quinn.
Delilah gave the boys lunch, got them settled in at the kitchen table with a board game, then went onto the front porch to call her ex.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“So talk.”
From the tone of his voice, he hadn’t backed down an inch on his stance.
“I’ve got a lawyer,” she said. “He thinks we could win if you really do sue me for custody. But, Mitch, please don’t do that.” She felt herself starting to tear up. “Please. You know you’re too busy to pay attention to the boys. Does Celine even want them to live with the two of you? Have you even talked about it?”
“Don’t worry about Celine. She’ll be fine. Are you still seeing the guy?”
“You’ve been talking to the boys. You should know I haven’t seen him lately.” She was hedging her answer. Just because she hadn’t seen Quinn lately didn’t mean she was resolved to never see him again.
She should have known Mitch would notice.
“You haven’t seen him lately ,” he said. “Carefully worded to avoid the issue of whether you plan to see him in the future.”
“Mitch …”
“Have you broken it off with him? Does he know that you are out of his life for good? If the answer to those questions is yes, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”
God, he was infuriating. During their marriage, she’d overlooked his controlling nature, telling herself that a man in a high-powered career had to be that way. It was what drove his success, his achievement. But now she saw that it was dysfunctional and wrong. And what would his need to dominate, to dictate, do to Jesse and Gavin if they had to live with their father?
“Why do you even care?” Delilah demanded. “You don’t want me anymore, but you don’t want anyone else to have me, either?”
“It’s not about that. It’s about who you’re bringing around my children.”
“And who would you be bringing around our children if you get custody?”
There it was. She was going there. It didn’t seem that she had any choice.
“What do you mean?”
“I know about Celine’s line of work. Is that how you met her? Did you pay for that first date?”
He was silent, and she could almost feel the rage radiating through the airwaves.
“You had to have known it would come out, Mitch.” Her voice was softer now. “It took my lawyer’s researcher less than a day. You smear Quinn, we smear Celine, and what’s the point? So you can control me? So you can micromanage my life from another continent?”
“Delilah, I swear to God—”
“Is it that important to you that I be unhappy?” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “Was all of this about seeing me suffer? Because it worked, Mitch. I’m suffering. How much pain is enough for you? How much misery is it going to take for you to feel like you’ve done your job?”
She hadn’t meant to go off on him like that, but now that she had, it felt good. It felt like something she’d been holding back for a long time.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Are you still going to see that guy?”
At first, Delilah had thought it was a choice between Quinn and her sons. But it wasn’t. It was a choice between standing up for her own freedom or letting her ex-husband dictate her life. If she didn’t take him on now, she’d never be free of him.
“I will see him or anyone else I choose, and you’ll have nothing to say about it. Because it’s none of your goddamned business.”
She hung up on him before he could say anything else.