Chapter 73
SEVENTY-THREE
Quinn spent a restless night. Every time she drifted into sleep, her mind supplied horrific scenarios, each ending with Logan’s agonizing death.
She could see the outline of the earring container on her bedside table, but didn’t reach for it.
The past was a kind of drug, but she couldn’t escape into it tonight.
She didn’t want to. She needed to feel her fear and grief because everything would change tomorrow.
Everything depended on what Daisy saw, and if Logan was indeed gone, Quinn would have to adapt to a new reality—something she had already done too many times in the past few years.
After living vicariously through the people in her cases, she knew her own life was charmed.
For all her losses, she lived in the most advanced, enlightened era so far, with access to therapy, medication, and countless ways to ease emotional pain.
She wasn’t condemned by the conventions of her time to hide her grief.
She could talk about her feelings, dull the sharp edges, and eventually crawl out the other side—battered, perhaps, but not destroyed.
Still, despite the available resources, she had buried her emotions when Phoebe and Sylvia had died, focusing instead on guiding her family through an unprecedented crisis.
She had almost erased Brett and Jo from her heart; she’d known them for so short a time that she could pretend they’d never been truly hers.
But she couldn’t erase Logan. She loved him, depended on him, and adored Max.
And she knew exactly what losing a parent so suddenly and brutally could do to a five-year-old child.
Whatever tomorrow brought, she would face it head-on.
She would put Max first. He deserved that much from the family he had left, and they would see him through.
Quinn was giddy with exhaustion when the doorbell chimed at ten past eight.
Gabe and the children had only just left, Max was still picking at his breakfast, and Quinn was nursing her second cup of coffee and not yet dressed for the day.
She went to the door, but instead of opening it immediately—as she once might have—she peered through the window to make sure she recognized the visitor.
Jude stood on the step, looking as if he were running on pure adrenaline.