by Reid, Penny
Janie set down her fork, one hand going to her stomach, the other to the water glass, shaking.
I frowned at her, tried to catch her eye, especially since she was now turning green.
My mom also noticed, because she asked, “Are you okay, Dear?”
“Deer too?” Janie’s eyes grew wide and she’d firmed her chin. “Deer and moose? Any other woodland animals included in the sausage? Beavers maybe?”
“No,” my mother said, “just moose. I was calling you Dear. There are no deer in the sausage.”
“Oh….” Janie blinked. I could see her throat working; she was struggling to swallow.
“What’s wrong?” My concern was escalating to alarm. I’d never seen her this way before. She looked like she was going to be sick.
“It’s just….” She lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw she was panicked. She covered her mouth and shook her head.
“Janie,” I started to stand but she lifted her hand, staying my movements, keeping me in my seat. “Janie, what is wrong?”
She shook her head again, closing her eyes. “I don’t want to say.” Her words were muffled because her hand was still in front of her mouth.
My mother looked at me imploringly.
“Say it,” I said. My heart rate spiked, and I was pulling out my phone. I didn’t know who I was going to call—maybe Elizabeth. She was a doctor and Janie’s best friend. She’d be able to tell me if I should call an ambulance. Maybe she could talk her through this crisis.
“It’s just….” Janie buried her face in her hands, her elbows hitting the table. “It’s just that moose carry a strain of mad cow disease, but it’s not mad cow disease, it’s mad moose disease.”
“Mad moose disease?” my father asked, his fork halfway to his mouth with a piece of moose sausage speared on it. He glanced between Janie and the bite of moose meat.
“The moose go mad, break off their antlers, just crazy moose running around in the forest. They can weigh seven hundred pounds or more, so you can imagine the devastation. And there is no cure—not for the moose. And if you eat moose meat, you can get it—assuming the moose you eat has the disease—and you won’t know because it doesn’t present for ten years, or thereabouts, after you’ve consumed the moose meat. So we could all be infected and our brains could melt and we could all go mad…in about ten years.”
The end of her tirade was punctuated by deafening silence. Then, the silence was followed by a muffled burst of laughter from my mother. I looked at my mom, found her trying to contain her giggles with a napkin covering the bottom half of her face. But her eyes shone with mirth, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop laughing.
I looked to my father and found his shoulders shaking. He was doing a better job of hiding his amusement, fighting harder against it, because his eyes were closed and his hand was clamped over his mouth.
Even I was grinning and shaking my head.
Janie was peeking at us from between her fingers. Her face and neck were every shade of red, but a weary smile tugged at one side of her mouth as her eyes moved between my parents. Her hands fell away.
“So I guess….” She shrugged her shoulders, looked pained but also reluctantly pleased with herself, and took a deep breath. “We should just make the best of the time we still have left!”
Chapter Sixteen
*Janie*
Quinn and his father did the dishes.
As soon as dinner was over, Quinn stood, began collecting the dishes, and left the dining room with his father as if it was imprinted in his genetic code. I watched them come in and out, these two giant men, clearing the serving plates in silence while Katherine spoke to me about one of her favorite students.
I debated whether to stand, made up my mind to do so, but Quinn shook his head when I pushed my chair back and indicated through our developing means of silent communication that I should stay and chat with his mom.
When the last of the items was taken, I turned to her, leaned close, and whispered, “Does Desmond always do the dishes?”
She glanced at the doorway to the kitchen and nodded. “Yes, if I make dinner then he does the dishes. If he makes dinner then I do the dishes. It’s how we’ve always done it. It’s also nice because, since it’s tradition, we both know what’s expected of us, which leads to fewer dirty dishes and less nagging.”
“Oh.” I started to stand.
“Where are you going?”
“To help with the dishes.”
“No, no. Stay with me, you helped with dinner and, if you don’t mind, I appreciate your company.” Her smile was warm, affectionate and therefore felt maternal, which made me a little uncomfortable. But Katherine reached for my hand, squeezed it. “You know, you remind me of Shelly a little.”
“I do?” I grinned at the thought. Other than being tall, awkward, and loving Quinn, I didn’t think we had much in common.
“Yes. It’s the curiosity, I think. She was the most curious kid I’ve ever met, always taking things apart, wanting to know how they worked, putting them back together—but never in the way they were before. Always in a new way.”
“I am curious. It’s true. That’s a fact.”
“And also the goodness. She felt everything so deeply as a child and as a teenager. We once found a dog running around the neighborhood with three legs. She was only eleven, but she fashioned a prosthetic limb for the animal out of wood and old car parts Desmond had laying around. It rolled, had a wheel, so the dog could run with the others.”
I could imagine serious Shelly—because she was always serious—wanting to help as many strays as possible. She was still that way.
“But the two of you are different in important ways as well.” Katherine’s smile lost some of its luster as her eyes lost some of their focus. “She’s not…open to new things, and she never did well with change. She wasn’t ever very affectionate, didn’t respond to hugs, that sort of thing.”
“No, you’re right. I once tried to hug her and she put her hand on my face and pushed me away. Then she just kept talking like nothing had happened.”
Katherine gave me a sympathetic smile, then gave a bantam laugh. “She doesn’t like outward displays of affection. She told me when she was fourteen that she preferred sacrifice as a demonstration of love rather than hugs and kisses.”
I don’t know why I asked my next question, but I felt driven to it. “Was that hard for you? When she was growing up?”
Katherine’s gaze searched mine and she seemed to be considering the question. Finally she responded, “Yes and no. I always looked for and expected the best in my children. I learned to love everything about them, but I didn’t always like it. I didn’t like that Quinn worked for criminals when he was a teenager, but I loved that he was smart and enterprising. I didn’t like that I couldn’t hold my daughter without her pushing me away, but I loved her fierce independence and individualism.”
“And what about your oldest, Desmond Jr.?”
She smiled at me, but it was a smile that made my heart break. “I don’t know…I think when you lose a child you forget everything you didn’t like. When I think of Des, I think of him laughing all the time, his loyalty to his family, his sense of honor, his sweetness. But I’m sure, when he was with us, he drove me crazy too.”
I tried to return her smile but managed only a half mouth tilt. Her grip on my hand shifted and she fit my fingers between both of her palms.
“And now we have you,” she said.
“Me?” My eyebrows lifted then lowered. “What about me?”
“Now we have you to discover, to love, to like.”
“I’m weird. You should know that, if you don’t already.”
“I’m weird too. I like math jokes too much and have opinions about people who do crossword puzzles.”
This was surprising. “Studies show that they’re exceptionally good for keeping your brain active, retaining memories.”
“Those studies were probably conducted by people who d
o crossword puzzles.”
I lifted a single eyebrow, contemplating the possibility of investigator bias. “I honestly don’t know….”
She chuckled, shook her head. “I’m so glad you called me. I’m so glad I get to know you.”
I glanced at our entwined fingers. She was holding my hand and I was holding hers. Even though it might have been premature, it felt so strange, but also right and natural to have a woman with wisdom and experience who looked at me with trust and affection. I knew I lacked a mother in every way that mattered and was curious about the dynamic of mothers and daughters.
But I didn’t know until that moment, sitting at Katherine’s kitchen table, holding hands, how desperately I wanted this relationship. I think I’d already fallen in love with the idea of her. Rationally, this was concerning because I didn’t know her very well.
We both shifted our attention to Quinn and Desmond as they walked into the room. Quinn’s shirtsleeves were rolled up to his forearms and he was in the process of drying his hands with a towel. Desmond came in behind him holding a pie and plates.
Quinn’s gaze met mine, held for a beat, then shifted to where his mother and I were holding hands. His expression didn’t change. Except for two or three breaks in his façade, he’d been wearing basically the same expression the entire time we’d been there.
Impassive.
This didn’t worry or alarm me, especially now that I saw Quinn was a carbon copy of his father. Their eyes shone with intensity and were often the only outward sign of a shift in thoughts or feelings. Truly, it was fascinating to see them together.
But I saw glimpses of his mother in him as well, especially the goofy jokes and dry wit. As well, Katherine was a toucher: she showed a good deal of her affection through light caresses, squeezing of shoulders, brief embraces. She’d cupped my cheek, smiling into my eyes several times while we’d been making dinner, and I’d noted the way she was always looking for excuses to touch her husband, scratch his back, smooth her hand down his arm.
She did these things in a way that reminded me of her son, and it warmed my heart. I would have to thank her later for passing this personality trait to Quinn, as it was definitely one of my favorites.
“What’s going on?” Quinn’s gaze was still on our hands.
“We were just talking about whether or not investigator bias is present in memory trials involving crossword puzzles,” I said, which was mostly true.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed as they moved back to mine, assessing the truth of my statement.
I was struck with a sudden thought.
“Uh—Quinn, could you join me in the bathroom for a minute?”
He blinked at me once. “In the bathroom?”
“Yes. In the bathroom.”
I noted his parents exchanged a look before his mother said, “If you two need to talk, we can….”
“No, no. I prefer the bathroom. I do my best thinking in there.” I stood from the table, gave Katherine a nod of my head, and grabbed Quinn’s hand. “We’ll be right back.”
I led him blindly out of the dining room in no direction in particular—just out. He quickly took over and steered us through a hallway lined with family photographs to a small half bath under the staircase.
Once we were inside with the door closed but before the light could be switched on, I pressed him against the wall and kissed him. He liked this, because he immediately turned me so that my back was against the wall. At first, everything—every touch, grope, bite, lick—felt frantic, urgent, necessary.
Then, after maybe a full minute, his weight shifted against me and the movements of his mouth slowed, savored. He used his hands to tilt my head this way and that, angling me how he liked, and kissed me with an unhurried meticulousness until I was well and truly dizzy.
At length, he dipped his chin so that our foreheads connected and we inhaled each other.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” He said.
His response, so serious, made me smile. We were still surrounded by darkness, which made our softly spoken words sound louder and more intimate.
“Quinn…I want you to be happy,” I said, and my hands moved from where they gripped his arms to his waist.
“I am.”
“And I want to marry you as soon as possible.”
He nodded, moving his face to nip my jaw, nuzzle my neck. “Good.”
I gathered a deep breath of courage and—though it was nearly pitch black—I closed my eyes in preparation for the words I would speak next.
“And, I think that as soon as possible is still June 14, and here is why: I think we should have the wedding here, in Boston.” I felt him stiffen at this news, so I tried to speak faster. “I think we should let your mother plan it, or as much of it as she wants to plan. I think we should have a large family wedding. I think I should wear a white dress, and underneath I should wear the bridal lingerie you picked out in London. Because I think it would mean a lot to your parents—not the bridal lingerie, the family wedding—and we don’t really care about the details, and if it’s within your power to give another person great joy at little or no expense to yourself—or even at great expense—then you should, especially when you love that person. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I think I might be a little in love with your mother….”
“Okay,” he whispered against my ear, one of his hands caressing from my shoulder to my waist, then up to my breast.
I opened my eyes in the darkness. I could just barely discern the outlines of his form towering above me.
“…Okay?”
“Yes.”
My face was commandeered by a huge smile. Quinn moved against me in such a way that ignited sparks along my spine and made my lower stomach twist. My body instinctively reached out to his, to him.
“Thank you.” This time my words were a bit breathless.
“No, Kitten.” He lifted his head, brushed his lips against mine twice, then touched his nose to mine. “Thank you.”
Chapter Seventeen
*Quinn*
All hell broke loose on Wednesday.
After a long day of dealing with idiot assholes, all I wanted to do was make love to my girl. Then I wanted to listen to her voice as she described the best way to extract essential oils from peppermint leaves, or whatever the hell topic she decided was most interesting at that particular moment.
Instead, I came back to our suite at the hotel and found Dan, his asshat brother Seamus, Janie, and my mother sitting in the living room having tea.
Fucking hell.
We had seen my parents every day since dinner on Saturday.
We went to church with them Sunday morning then out to eat. My father and I talked about a fishing trip over the summer. Shocking both of us, I asked for his advice on two new properties, corporate client accounts that my company would be managing at the end of the summer. After the discussion, I decided to ask him later if he was interested in consulting.
Janie spent the rest of Sunday talking about wedding plans with my mother, conferencing in her friend Marie from Chicago.
The next days in Boston were filled with corporate client meetings. At night, we went back to my parents’ house for dinner. By Tuesday, being around them was finally easier, but I was ready to climb the walls. I think it helped that they didn’t try to apologize again. But every time we were together, I wanted to tell them I was sorry.
I didn’t, because the idea of apologizing felt inadequate. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to be forgiven. So I kept quiet and swallowed my guilt.
This morning, which was also the last morning of our last full day in Boston, Janie and I split after breakfast. I needed to tie up loose ends with former private clients. She said she needed to run some wedding errands with my mom, whatever that meant.
I hadn’t expected those errands to include tea with local thugs.
Seamus—Dan’s money-laundering no-good asshole of a brother and Jem’s ex-boyfrien
d, the same ex-boyfriend who’d tried to kidnap Janie several months ago—was on my list of top three sonsabitches I’d like to disappear.
Right now though, the first person I was going to murder was Dan. After that, Seamus. After that…maybe Janie. Probably not.
I did a quick scan of the room, surprised to find two of my local lieutenants, Carl and Stan, standing at either end of the perimeter. Their eyes met mine. One look told me they were less than pleased with the current situation.
Once I was certain that the room was secure, I shut the door with a little more force than necessary and waited for the occupants to notice me. They did, immediately and all at the same time, glancing up from their conversation in unison.
The room fell silent.
I glared at Dan. He glared back. I saw he was pissed, and I knew he was the one who had called Carl and Stan. Dan was the only one not drinking tea. He was on the edge of his seat looking tense and uncomfortable between Seamus and the ladies.
I shifted my glare to Seamus. He gave me a shit-eating grin. I decided that he was now number one on my list of people I’d like to make disappear.
“What are you doing here?” Instead of pistol-whipping him, I set my briefcase by the door, began pulling off my leather gloves.
“I heard you were in town, thought I’d stop by for a friendly chat.” His greasy smile widened, and he looked at Janie. The bastard winked at her.
Seamus shouldn’t breathe the same air as my mother or Janie, much less share teatime.
I tossed my gloves and overcoat to a nearby chair, my eyes never leaving Seamus. “What are you doing here?” I said it slower this time.
The smile dropped from his face as his eyes flickered to mine. He looked nervous.
My mother set her tea on the table and stood. “I invited him in.”
Before I looked at my mother, I let Seamus feel the threat behind my stare.
She seemed weary. “I had two choices, Quinn. Invite him in or turn him away. One way or the other, he wanted to talk to you. But more than that, he wants to make a statement.”
