Chapter 27
If You Should Lose Your Way…
Seth drives. I’m in the passenger seat beside him.
Bailey and Nicholas are sitting together in the back.
Bailey leans against the windowpane, taking in the scenery flashing by in the early morning light.
Nicholas sitting beside her, taking in Bailey.
He seems so happy, even now—even with where we are headed—just to be there beside her.
I’ve pulled out my laptop, and I’m working through all the charts I’ve made.
I’ve mapped out everyone in the organization—everyone in Frank’s inner circle, centering around the most important people in his orbit.
His family. All of them will be in attendance tonight.
Frank and all six of his children, all eighteen of his beloved grandchildren.
They’re each important to understand, in one way or another, but none more so than Frank’s successors: Teddy and Quinn.
Quinn, who I keep circling back to, even now.
Quinn, who to me, feels like the key to all this, should we need it. A different lock to turn.
I scroll through to my photographs of her.
She is six feet tall and blond and beautiful.
She was an all-American volleyball player, who could have gone to the Olympics.
But she is, instead, the heir apparent to a crime family.
It was a switch that came on quickly—after Owen’s testimony put her husband in prison.
Quinn and Wesley were still newly married when he started serving his sentence. Newly married with twin twenty-two-month-old boys. Boys who are close to Bailey’s age now. Boys who grew up without their father. Boys who—certainly in Quinn’s estimation—grew up without their father because of Owen.
This is the nexus of so much of Quinn’s anger—her husband taken from her, her children’s father taken from them, because Owen turned state’s evidence.
Of course, it was Wesley’s own decisions that ultimately landed him in prison—his decisions, his multitude of crimes.
But Quinn didn’t want to look at that. Why would she want to look at that part?
It would demand that she lean into empathy when anger was so much easier.
I turn around to face Nicholas. He is avoiding my eyes, trying to enjoy his time with Bailey.
“When is Quinn’s husband supposed to get out of prison?” I ask him.
“Wesley? No time soon.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it looked like he was going to be released after his last parole hearing,” Nicholas says.
“It was his first real shot at it, and Quinn made a big push. She activated everyone she could. They had a letter from the new warden about the good he’s been doing inside.
They had a letter from the governor. They made a hard push to get him out of there.
But the parole board voted against him all the same. Three to two.”
“How recently was this?”
“Two months ago. Next hearing is two years out.”
Two months ago, and now at least two more years to go.
That was a fresh bruise for Quinn. It would help explain why she moved so quickly to punish Owen the first moment she felt like she had an opportunity to do it.
It explained why she was so willing to punish anyone close to Owen.
Everyone close to Quinn’s husband had been punished—with no end to his absence in sight.
“We’ve considered it, Hannah,” he says. “Many times. We’ve considered the Quinn of it all.”
I nod. Because I know that he thinks he has. Owen and Nicholas both think they’ve considered the Quinn of it all, as he is saying. But this is why I keep coming back to Quinn. Because every time I look at Bailey in the rearview, I know what I would do. I know what I’m still doing for her.
And I know that Nicholas and Owen didn’t consider that part of this equation—because they can’t.
You can’t begin to properly consider it. It’s impossible to consider the lengths a woman will go if she thinks she’s protecting her family.
Shortly before 3 p.m., we pull off A8 at exit 44. The exit for Antibes.
We pull into the turnaround in Old Antibes—the historical district stretched out before us; the stores and restaurants busy with the afternoon crowds, the farmers’ market shutting down for the day; and a tall castle visible from its perch on the top of the hill.
A tall and quite beautiful old castle—hundreds of years old—that is now the home to Musée Picasso.
Bailey’s destination.
I turn around to face Bailey. I want to go over it with her again, everything that is going to happen now.
But Bailey is looking out the window and taking in the museum, readying herself.
She pulls her hair back, putting her messenger bag over her shoulder.
Seth is out of the car already. He is waiting for her.
She turns toward me. “Seth won’t get too close?” she asks.
“Not unless you need him to.”
“I won’t need him to.”
“I know you won’t,” I say. Because I feel sure of that. I feel entirely sure of that, or I wouldn’t be letting her out of the car.
And still to be apart. To be apart from her when everything in my body wants to keep her near.
“Do you have any other questions?” I ask.
“Since five minutes ago?” Bailey asks. “No. I think I’m good.”
But she says it with a smile, as if convincing me she’s got this.
She watches for my reaction, eager to leave the car—asking, in a way, for my permission to do so. But then I feel her energy shift as she turns toward her grandfather.
She leans in to hug Nicholas goodbye, moving herself into the crook beneath his shoulder. Maybe it’s the whiplash of thinking she had lost him for good. But she doesn’t let go of that embrace, breathing into it, breathing into him longer than she should, her eyes getting red and foggy.
“Please be careful,” she says.
“That’s my line for you, kid,” he says.
Then he pulls back. She holds on to him for so long that he’s the one who pulls back from her.
I watch as he does. And I can see the way he starts holding his hands against his thighs, grasping his palms together a little too tightly—as if to stop himself from reaching for her again.
Reaching for her and not letting go. He fights it though because he doesn’t want Bailey to see how much this goodbye is hurting him.
I get out of the car and Bailey follows suit. Her bag is on her shoulder, her eyes holding on mine. I force a smile and meet her gaze, so I can give her the reminder—so I can give us both the reminder—that it’s safer for her out of the car than in it.
It’s safer for her away from me and what I need to do here. For all of us.
I lean in to give her a quick hug—to give her that strength.
“You’ve got this…” I say.
I leave out the part I’m sure she hears. You’ve got this, even without me.
Then I let her go.