by Lisa Harris
She glanced over at the counter and saw that one of Ian’s employees was working the register. Mild disappointment stung her, and she tried not to imagine the smug expression Lena would be wearing if she knew. She stepped back from the counter, craning her neck to scan the area in front of the stage. Maybe he’s just in another part of the—
“Looking for someone?”
The voice was rich and warm, came from the reading area behind her, and she knew before she looked that it was him. She hoped her face wasn’t as flushed as it felt. And if it was, that he wouldn’t notice.
She turned, an amused smile slipping onto his face as he cocked his head.
So much for him not noticing.
“Hey, stranger,” he said.
“Hey,” she answered. He had changed from that morning and now wore dark jeans and a grey button-down. The wet, white cloth he twisted in his hands suggested she had interrupted him while wiping down tables.
“So you’re back? Twice in one day,” he noted.
Lena’s teasing about Ian came back to her. “Guess I’m becoming a nuisance,” she said, and immediately regretted that she sounded a little defensive. Lena had really gotten into her head.
“No, it’s a good thing,” he spouted quickly, apparently picking up on the edge in her voice. “I’m glad. I mean, what would we do without repeat customers?”
“True,” she said, and favored him with a smile, hoping to brush away any awkwardness. “Anyway, I’m just grabbing something to take home.”
“Ahh. Still no groceries, huh?”
She chuckled, remembering that she shared that tidbit with him a couple of weeks ago. “Nope. The chore keeps getting pushed further down the to-do list.”
“Well, as much as I like having you in here all the time, we can’t risk you starving to death at home. Maybe we could—”
“Quinn?”
This time the voice came from the entryway, and Quinn turned to see Shane Cody walking toward her. “I saw your truck in the lot. The office said you came in today.”
“Yeah,” she answered, as Ian discreetly stepped a few yards away and started wiping down a table.
“I thought the least I could do was stop in and update you.” Shane ran a hand over his head and shifted his feet. He looked uncomfortable. “They said you didn’t have anything to report. That nothing was missing.”
“No. Nothing.”
“Well, that’s good.” His tone didn’t sound like he thought it was good, though.
“Is it? Because it makes it feel less like a robbery and more like an invasion. And it doesn’t explain the body on my floor.”
Maybe it was all in her head, but it seemed like a vacuum suddenly sucked the sound out of the immediate area. Though she didn’t turn to check, Quinn got the distinct impression that Ian had stopped working.
“There wasn’t a dead body,” Shane stated firmly, his face clouding. “We searched the whole area, Quinn. We didn’t find anything. And there were no reports this morning about anyone seeing anything strange in the vicinity last night.”
Quinn sighed. “I don’t want to do this again. I know what I saw.”
Shane put his hands on his hips. “You’re really not gonna let this go? Quinn, if you saw somebody on your floor—”
“If?” She could hear the jump in her pitch that matched the jump in her body tension, her neck and chest now noticeably tight.
“That’s not what I meant. I just meant that I still think whoever you saw was either playing like he was knocked out, or actually had been knocked out by an accomplice, then regained consciousness and left while you were gone. You’re making this into something more sinister than it is.”
“As in, I’m seeing things?” Her skin prickled, the hairs rising on her arms.
Shane sighed. “Noooo,” he said, drawing the ‘no’ out, aggravating Quinn even more. “Not seeing things. Just misconstruing them.”
Quinn swallowed hard, straining to keep her tone even despite the ire mounting within. “So what now?”
“We’ve increased patrols in the area for the next few nights, just in case.”
“And that’s it?” she asked, her words sharp.
“There’s nothing else to do.”
Anger flashed through her like wildfire, and Quinn bit her lip to keep from saying something she would regret.
“Just use your alarm, all right?” he asked.
She nodded, willing him to go. She had never wanted to see the back of anyone more in her entire life.
Quinn continued staring at the door after it closed behind Shane, the cowbell suspended above it cheerfully clanking as he exited.
“Um, did I hear you say ‘body’?”
Quinn turned back to Ian who was still standing near the table he had been cleaning, the cloth now balled up in his hands.
“Uh, yeah.” Her stomach curdled. She hated that he knew this now.
“You didn’t say anything about a body this morning.”
Quinn tried to wipe her face of emotion, feigning apathy. “Didn’t want to get into it.” Don’t want to get into it now, either.
“Why does it sound like he doesn’t believe you?”
Quinn huffed. “Because he doesn’t.” She hesitated, then wagged her head back and forth. “Well, not completely.”
“Why in the world wouldn’t he believe you?” Ian asked, his brow scrunched up.
Quinn glanced around the reading area. Only one other person occupied it, and she was curled up in a cushy chair on the opposite side at least fifteen feet away, with her nose in a thick book. The band was loud. Everybody else was either near the stage or working in other spaces. She was going to chance it.
“Because by the time the sheriff’s department got to the house, the body had disappeared,” she explained, keeping her voice low.
Ian’s head jutted forward as he splayed his hands and let loose an incredulous laugh. “So? What difference does that make?”
Quinn’s heart melted at his indignation over the notion that Shane hadn’t believed her, even though the facts—no body and no corroborating evidence it ever existed—all supported Shane. She knew that if Ian knew her history—specifically the experiences that birthed Shane’s enduring skepticism—he might rethink his reaction. But she didn’t care. It was just wonderful, for once, to have someone believe her without a second thought. She offered him a grin, her gaze locked into his deep, dark eyes.
“What is it?” he asked, the corner of his mouth turning up, apparently thrown by her somewhat disproportionate reaction to his display of annoyance. When she didn’t answer, he pressed her. “Quinn, why wouldn’t he believe you?”
I suppose there’s no way around it now, she thought and exhaled slowly, her breath hissing from her lungs as her eyebrows rose.
“How much time have you got?”
Chapter Ten
They sat at the table Ian had been cleaning, a narrow two-seater pressed against the window, empty but for the salt and pepper shakers. Quinn ran a hand along the buttery-smooth sanded top made of reclaimed wood, stalling. Ian leaned on it, his arms crossed in front of him, sending the scent of sandalwood floating in her direction. Finally, she looked up at him and started in.
“I was only twelve at the time,” Quinn said, dropping her hands into her lap. “We’d lived here my whole life. There were four of us who ran around together. Me, Jess, Gina and Annie. For the most part, we stayed out of trouble. But Jess had a mischievous side and liked to push it. So when I started going through a bit of a rebellious phase, she was more than happy to indulge me.”
Ian’s right eyebrow arched. “What kind of rebellious phase? How bad could it have been? I’ll bet you were just adorably precocious.”
“I wish that’s all it was. I’d always been the good one. Good grades. Good behavior. Good girl in church every Sunday. My dad was a deacon. But then I started getting teased about it in school. And I was a little awkward, this pale kid with wild red hair, six inches taller t
han most of the boys. Being good was the one thing I could change, so I started acting out.”
“Acting out how?”
Quinn’s gaze left Ian’s face and she looked off toward the stage, allowing the memories to surface from their shadows. “At first I just started taking things from stores. A pack of gum here, a candy bar there, lip gloss, whatever. I lied about how I got it whenever Mom would stumble across something. Then one day I got caught and they had to come down to the drugstore to get me. It was horrible.”
“I’ll bet.”
“This is a small town now, but it was even smaller back then. It didn’t take long for word to get out.”
His face wrinkled in sympathy. “That must’ve been awful.”
A wry smile creased Quinn’s lips. “Actually, I loved it because the kids at school thought it was awesome. My stock in the seventh grade skyrocketed.”
“Which only made you want to do it more.”
She nodded, her eyes squeezed shut in contrition. “I actually felt pretty guilty about hurting my parents, but I didn’t want to lose my notoriety. I was on the verge of being one of the ‘popular’ kids. So, on the rare occasions when I wasn’t already grounded, I’d find ways to make trouble—egging houses, mixing up people’s mail, cheating on tests so I didn’t have to work so hard. I would lie until I got caught, then beg forgiveness.”
“Let me see if I have this straight,” Ian said, an unmistakeable note of cynicism in his voice. “You’re telling me that this cop doesn’t believe you because you had a difficult streak when you were twelve?”
Quinn sighed and rubbed a hand over her mouth. She wasn’t going to be able to avoid this part, as much as she might want to. She leaned on her forearms, mirroring Ian. “One night, the four of us had a sleepover at Gina’s house. Or at least we were supposed to. We were watching this movie about some high school kids who followed through on a dare to get attention. I got the bright idea that we should do something like it and proposed we make a Ten Tree Island run.”
“As in the island the lighthouse sits on, right out there?” Ian asked, slinging a finger in the general direction of the coast.
Quinn nodded, feeling a familiar queasiness at the mention of the tiny island. It was small, but its memory packed a punch. One hundred yards at its widest point, it had only enough room for about ten long-leaf pines—hence its name—and the lighthouse built in 1891, which was no longer operational. It was positioned a mile off the coast of Seaglass Cove, separating the waters of the St. John Sound from the Gulf of Mexico.
Quinn breathed in through her nose, ignoring the threatening churn of her stomach and kept going. “There was this stupid ongoing challenge for teens to kayak over there in the dark, snap a photo next to the lighthouse and get back without being busted by the coastal patrol.”
“Sounds like a typical, idiotic high school stunt.”
“Yeah. Well, it was pretty dangerous. All kinds of boats cut through the sound even in the middle of the night. But while the boats have lights—”
“Kayaks don’t,” he finished for her.
“Exactly. The four of us didn’t have a way to get our kayaks to the shore, but Gina lived near the water so we could walk. There was a cove with this old rowboat that had been there forever. I don’t even know who it belonged to, but I suggested we row it to the island using our kayak paddles and then we’d have an awesome story with the photos to prove it.”
“So what happened?”
“We decided to go around midnight. But the closer it got, the more scared I was. I got cold feet. I said we should forget it and Jess started teasing me, calling me a baby. I left with my stuff and rode my bike home. I surprised my parents by showing up around ten. They fussed at me for riding so late by myself, but I told them I’d had a fight with the other girls and just wanted to be home. I went straight to bed. About two and half hours later they woke me up, telling me that my friends had disappeared from Gina’s place and that all the parents were scared to death.”
“Did you tell them what you knew?”
Quinn rubbed the back of her neck, the bony finger of shame poking her insides. “No. I didn’t want to be a snitch. I may not have gone through with the dare, but I wasn’t going to get my friends in trouble. I would have never lived that down. I was twelve and stupid and couldn’t imagine something actually going wrong. Tons of kids had been pulling the run off for years without a hitch.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Ian said as the band reached a crescendo, their slow jazz number swelling throughout the space.
“Well, at least we hadn’t heard about anyone getting hurt.”
“So what happened?”
“I lied and told my parents I had no idea where the girls were. Then around two in the morning we got the call. They’d been in a boating accident with a commercial fisherman. He collided with them. Didn’t even see their boat before he hit it. The thing split into pieces and capsized.”
Ian sucked in a soft gasp. “Oh, Quinn.”
“Yeah. They were all wearing life jackets, thank goodness, and Gina and Jess weren’t hurt, just waterlogged. But Annie got the worst of it. His boat hit theirs on her side. She ended up with a spinal injury. She recovered eventually, but it took five years of therapy to get her walking again.”
“Oh, wow. Quinn, that’s terrible.”
“Yeah. And it was my fault.”
He pushed up slightly on his forearms, leaning back a bit. “How do you figure that?”
“At the time my parents woke me, the girls would have just made it to the water, or at least just pushed in. If I had told the truth right away, they could have gotten to them in time. But because I lied, they were able to get halfway out into the sound, which is where they lost their paddles when a wave hit, and ended up stranded out there, just floating.”
“You were twelve. And you tried to change their minds.”
“Well, it was my idea and my lie that kept them out there. That’s how their parents saw it, anyway. And the town. I was an outcast for a long time. Eventually people calmed down but I’d been labeled. I was untrustworthy. A liar.”
“Quinn, I’m so sorry.”
She drew her lips into a taut line and bobbed her head once before quickly continuing, not wanting to linger in his pity. “After that, I straightened up. Tried to shake the label, but it never felt like I did, partly because I believed I deserved it.”
“What about Annie? Did she hold it against you?”
Quinn pursed her lips. “Oddly enough, she was one of the few people who forgave me. Insisted it wasn’t my fault. She was solid, Annie. Deep faith for a twelve-year-old.”
“And that story is the reason why Deputy Cody won’t believe you? Because you had a lying problem when you were twelve?”
Quinn dipped her head before looking back up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “Well, the thing is, Annie’s last name is Cody too. She’s his cousin.”
“Oh,” Ian said, understanding in his tone.
“Yeah. He wasn’t quite as forgiving as Annie, nor was the rest of her family. They eventually moved away. I haven’t seen her since. Couldn’t even bring myself to ask him about her the other night. I can’t stand the way he used to look at me when her name would come up. I didn’t want to see that again. I don’t want to see myself through his eyes. I already feel like enough of a failure.”
Ian watched her for a moment, then sniffed. “Gimme a minute,” he said, sliding out of his chair and heading into the kitchen.
Quinn watched him go, then let her eyes drift across the room. White string lights, suspended in a zig-zag pattern above the stage and wound around several potted trees, created a cozy atmosphere that complemented the jazz vibe. Laughter and a low buzz of voices mixed with the music made the place seem cheerful. Happy. People were having a good time. It was no wonder they came here. In just a few months, Ian had managed to turn The Shed into “the place” to be. It wasn’t surprising. He was warm and inviting and easy to talk to.
People seemed naturally drawn to him, so of course they would naturally be drawn to his place.
It also didn’t surprise her that he excused himself after she told him about the accident. Whenever she found herself in the position of having to recount it, she always sensed that people looked at her differently once they heard the story. She wasn’t sure if it was just in her head or not, but it felt true enough.
She always worried that, like Shane did, other people would hold her past against her. That it would shape their perception of her—be a lens they would look through in judging her and that it would ultimately diminish her value in their eyes. That it would, on some level, define for them who she was at her core. Once a liar, always a liar.
Is that what Ian’s thinking now?
And if not, would he be, once he heard the rest of her story?
Chapter Eleven
The sound of a plate clanking down in front of Quinn jerked her out of her reverie. She looked away from a couple dancing to “Fly Me to the Moon,” to see a plate of chicken salad, a croissant, greens with poppyseed dressing and pasta salad.
Ian set a glass of water beside the plate and slid into his seat again, clutching a wide-brimmed mug of tea. Notes of bergamot from what she suspected was Earl Grey wafted across the table.
“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the plate.
He looked at her like she was asking him why he was breathing. “You came in here for dinner. I figured you were getting hungry. Can’t have you confessing your life’s sins on an empty stomach, can we?”
She snorted softly. “Guess not.” She took a bite and like everything he served, it was delicious and unique. “What is that in the chicken salad—cayenne pepper?”
“Gives it that little kick.”
