“What was Meryl like?” Quinn asked casually.
Katherine looked up. “Where did that come from?”
Quinn shrugged.
“Well, I only met her once. She was . . . odd. And sad. No, not sad. Depressed.”
“Because of her baby that died?” Quinn reflexively touched her stomach as she said it.
“I think she had clinical depression, and the death exacerbated it. She also had a lot of guilt about leaving your father, I think.”
“So, what was odd about her?”
Katherine stared off to the side for a moment. “The one time we visited, she asked to spend some time alone with me, and she . . . told me things. She said we had to leave Cincinnati, before you were born. That we should move into her house after she died.” She paused. “She seemed confused, mixing up her baby and our baby and saying Gabe would understand . . . She seemed to know that you’d have health problems in the city.”
“She knew I’d have my allergies?” An uneasiness came over Quinn. A sense that Meryl had known because of some link, some similarity between them.
“She couldn’t have, but it seemed like it, when I looked back after you were born.” Katherine shrugged. “Anyway, that wasn’t the only odd thing . . . While we were alone that day, before we talked at all, she asked if I wanted to swim with her.”
“What’s weird about that?”
“It was April. And I was really damn pregnant.”
“Was she kidding?” No one swam in the ocean off of Maine in April.
“No. Definitely not. And . . . I actually went in.”
“What?” Quinn said, shocked. “You only swim when it’s ninety degrees out!”
“I’m not sure what came over me,” Katherine said. “It was a sudden urge. I didn’t stay in long, but it felt great.” She seemed to lose herself in the memory for a moment before adding, “Don’t ever mention that to your dad, though. I’ve never seen him so livid. And it was pretty stupid to go swimming in frigid water being that pregnant.”
An image of her father dragging her mother from the water by her arm flashed in Quinn’s mind. She shivered.
“The whole visit really upset your father,” Katherine said. Her voice had become subdued. “I don’t know what Meryl said to him, but somehow he came away from it with even more anger than before.”
Hearing the change in her tone, and not even knowing what else to ask, Quinn turned back to Tender Is the Night. But she couldn’t concentrate, and a minute later she found herself saying, “Do you remember a book or poem from when I was little, something that began like: A still morning sea, deeply asleep . . .?”
A strange look passed across Katherine’s face. “It was a children’s book I read to you.”
“Do we still have it?”
“No.”
“Do you remember the title?”
“No. Why?” Katherine closed her laptop. “What’s with all these questions? First your grandmother, now this? Dr. Jacoby isn’t making you go into all this old stuff, is she? Because I don’t see how that would do any good. Your father and I have been wondering what approach she’s taking. And if she’s spending too much time—”
The ring of the doorbell interrupted her.
“Dammit,” Katherine said. “We’ve told them going past the gate is trespassing.” She hurried out of the room and upstairs to the parlor floor. Quinn was surprised to hear her call her name moments later.
Sadie stood in the front hall, book bag on her shoulder.
Katherine headed back toward the kitchen, saying, “When you want to leave, Sadie, I’ll take you out through the garden. I don’t want you going out the front.”
“Hey,” Quinn said when her mother was gone. “I’m so happy you’re here!”
“It’s crazy out there,” Sadie said, eyes wide. “I hadn’t seen it in person yet. It’s . . . creepy. People were, like, touching me. And this one guy begged me to bring out something you’d touched. I mean, ugh.”
“I keep telling my parents it’d be a great day to have a stoop sale,” Quinn said. She was expecting Sadie to smile at this. Instead, her expression seemed to sharpen from shock to something more pointed, as if she’d come out of a trance.
“What were you thinking,” Sadie asked, “attacking Brett Lewis at lunch? Everyone’s talking about it.”
Oh. That was why she was here. “I . . . I wasn’t thinking straight. I was just so pissed off. I wouldn’t really say I attacked him, though.”
“People are saying you totally lost it.” Sadie folded her arms. “I think you better tell me what’s going on, Quinn. I’ve been really patient with you and all your mysterious excuses. For weeks now. I need you to tell me the truth.”
Quinn scratched an itchy spot on her neck. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . everything is screwing with my head. And Brett was being a total jerk.”
“I don’t mean the truth about why you attacked Brett. I mean the truth about this pregnancy.” Sadie waited for a second, but Quinn didn’t respond. “And you still haven’t told me what’s going on with you and Jesse lately. It makes stuff pretty awkward for us, you know, having no idea.”
“I know. I just . . .”
“This is getting so old.” Sadie shook her head. “Forget it.” She turned to go.
“Wait.” Quinn grabbed her arm, motivated by a surge of fear—she couldn’t lose Sadie, too. And as her fingers wrapped around the cool nylon of Sadie’s puffy jacket, a thought lit up in Quinn’s mind.
It was a risk, but one that might pay off. She drew in a shaky breath and lowered her voice. “Will you come up to my room? Please?”
Once they were in her bedroom and the door was shut, Quinn said, “I’m going to tell you the whole story. But you need to promise not to tell anyone. Not Caroline or Isa or any of the guys. Not anyone. It’s really, really important. Like, life or death important.” That didn’t feel like an exaggeration, knowing how angry her father would be.
“I won’t tell anyone,” Sadie said. “I swear.”
Quinn told her as brief a version of the story as possible, pacing around the room as she did, trying to play down the weirdness and to emphasize that repression of trauma wasn’t uncommon. She didn’t leave any room for Sadie to think she’d ever even vaguely considered she might really be a virgin.
Sadie sat on the bed, looking stunned. “I don’t know what to say. That’s so . . . horrible. And weird. And . . . horrible. I don’t . . . I don’t know what to say, Quinn.”
“Now you can see why I haven’t been able to talk about it.”
“I’m so sorry we gave you a hard time. We all figured that because you kept the baby, it wasn’t a traumatic story. I thought you were in love with the guy, whoever it was. An older man or someone. I thought it was something romantic.”
“I wish,” Quinn said.
“And, I mean . . .” Sadie’s eyes were as round and glassy as marbles. “It’s not like we’d ever have guessed this.”
“I know,” Quinn said, wanting to direct the conversation away from how weird it was. “So, listen—obviously I’ve been doing everything I can to bring back the memory, but it’s really frustrating, because there aren’t that many concrete things to do. And, well, maybe you can help.”
When Quinn went to bed that night, she felt a spark of optimism—the satisfaction of having made a little progress. And of maybe having figured out a way to go back in time.
She’d had Sadie look at the calendar of those two weeks. Sadie had immediately remembered that the two of them had walked home from the music festival in the park with Adrian and Oliver. Another night crossed off. But more importantly . . .
Sadie had agreed to try to hack into Marco and Foley’s email accounts to look at old messages and to check around on social media to see if they’d said anything after the party last May, or after Ben’s visit to Marco. Or if they were saying anything about it now. It was a long shot, but if something did happen that night, any little clue could be the key Quin
n needed.
SADIE WESTON-HOYT
Sadie’s fingers sat motionless on the keyboard. She was supposed to be working on code for programming class. Yeah, right. No way was she focusing on anything tonight.
She kept reminding herself that Quinn had a therapist. That she, Sadie, wasn’t responsible for . . . for what? Telling her how unhinged she sounded? Letting Quinn’s parents know?
This wasn’t what Sadie had bargained for when she pressured Quinn to confide in her. She realized now that a small part of her had even been jealous, before. Jealous of all the attention on Quinn, but also the fact that she was having this monumental experience that Sadie had assumed was the result of a doomed love affair with an older man or whatever. Something grand and romantic. Because, to Sadie, Quinn had always seemed like the heroine of one of those classic novels in which the woman is all upstanding on the outside but is roiling with passion on the inside, and ends up living a torrid, romantic life with some married nobleman.
Quinn wasn’t the heroine of a romantic tragedy.
She was the heroine of . . . what? A horror story?
There was something scarily on the edge about her. The way she’d supposedly lost it in the lounge. And the way she was constantly scratching and rubbing her skin, as if she wanted to take it off. And the pacing, back and forth, back and forth.
But if she’d been raped, who could blame her for losing her shit? And if Sadie wanted to help, shouldn’t she do what Quinn asked? To help prove it was one of those guys—Marco or Foley—if it was? She was Quinn’s friend, not her therapist. And this whole time she’d been telling her she was willing to help.
Last year, this girl at school, Violet, had confided in Sadie that she was using serious drugs, and Sadie hadn’t told anyone, out of some weird loyalty or girlfriend code. But she’d been wrong not to. So now she made a resolution. She’d do this one thing—she’d told Quinn she would, and she’d keep her promise. But if she saw anything weirder or more worrisome, she was going to make sure someone else knew. Quinn’s parents, or her therapist . . . There were lots of rumors around that Quinn was completely losing it, and now . . . Sadie was worried they might be true.
QUINN
The dream was different this time.
Her mother was the one waiting for her underwater, and Quinn could see her, not like when it was Jesse and she just knew he was there. Her mother was holding a little girl, saying, “In the still morning sea, we’re asleep in the deep.” And then Quinn became aware that she—she, the one seeing this scene—was actually her grandmother, Meryl, and that she had told Katherine to go swimming, and that’s why they were underwater together. And the little girl in Katherine’s arms was Quinn.
“You’re home,” Katherine said, and released toddler Quinn into the water. But toddler Quinn couldn’t swim. Her small limbs flailed and she began to sink. Quinn/Meryl tried to move to save herself/her granddaughter, but she was paralyzed.
She began to panic. Her granddaughter was drowning and she couldn’t move to save her. I can’t get there! she called out. I told him I couldn’t get there! You have to swim!
And then lanternfish began to gather around them, more and more—they swirled around toddler Quinn in a frenzy of light. And toddler Quinn stopped struggling and the light held her up until she began to swim. And the lanterns glowed brighter and brighter and brighter until the whole ocean was made of light.
Quinn woke up, breathing heavily. But relieved. Everything was fine. She lay there for a moment, slowing her breaths, rubbing her belly. Everything is fine. Better than fine—it’s all made of light.
Then the details from the dream seeped back into her brain like poison.
She had dreamed she was her grandmother.
* * *
Taking a bath in the morning, she tried to wash off the dream’s guilty residue. It was as meaningless as the ones about Jesse, she told herself. She tried to focus on other things, like the anticipation of seeing Sadie at school. She was anxious about both possibilities: that Sadie had been able to get into Marco and Foley’s accounts and had found something, and that she hadn’t.
But just as Quinn and Lydia and Katherine were heading out the kitchen door to drive to school, her mother’s phone rang. “Hello?” she said. “Yes, hi Brian, it’s Katherine.” She left the room to talk, leaving Quinn and Lydia standing with their coats on and bags on their shoulders. After waiting a couple of minutes, they sat down. The table was a mess of breakfast dishes and a few days of the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. Quinn began carrying dishes over to the sink.
“I’m going to be late,” Lydia said angrily. “Everyone looks at you when you’re late.”
In the tense silence, it felt like forever before Katherine came back in. She’d taken her coat off and didn’t have her purse with her.
“Change of plans,” she said, sitting at the table.
She explained that school wanted Quinn to study at home until everything was less unsettled. The situation was too much of a distraction for the community, the head had said, and other parents were concerned. Apparently reporters had been hanging around outside the building, pressuring students to talk, following them down the street. School was going to arrange for Quinn to watch her classes on a live stream and conference with teachers on a message board—the system New Prospect used for students with extended illnesses.
“I’m not sure what we’re going to do about you,” Katherine said to Lydia. “I’m waiting for a call back from Ms. Dempsey.” She was head of the Lower School. “But for today, you’re not going in.”
“But I have a presentation to give in science,” Lydia said. “And what about my friends? I don’t want to stay here with the Jesus freaks. Daddy says they’re dangerous!”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Katherine said. “I’m doing the best I can. And as long as we keep our distance, those people won’t bother us. There’s a police car around all the time. I promise we’re safe.”
Quinn unzipped her coat, not knowing how she felt about this. On one hand, after yesterday’s scenes in English and at lunch, she was relieved not to be going back.
But how was she going to get in touch with Sadie? And was she just going to spend all day, every day, sequestered in the house mostly alone, with no way to contact people? Never talking to or seeing her friends? Even though seeing Jesse was painful, the idea of having no contact at all with him was worse. If she wasn’t going to school, her parents would have to be more relaxed about the rules. They’d have to let her call and text her friends. And if she was going to stream her classes, she’d have to be connected to the Internet.
They couldn’t expect her to be completely invisible.
Gabe was supposed to have been away from the house all day—the election was next week, the first Tuesday in November, and he was out campaigning and at meetings almost all the time. But he arrived home unexpectedly in the late morning, something about a mix-up with an event he was supposed to speak at. Quinn sat on the stairs outside the kitchen, listening to the clatter of dishes and his frustrated voice as he talked to her mother. She’d wanted to talk to them about getting her friends’ numbers programmed into her phone, but this didn’t seem like the right time.
“After all the crap I deal with out there, I have to come home to this mess?” her father said.
“You’re welcome to do any sort of cleaning you want,” Katherine said. “It’s not like I’ve spent the morning sitting around doing nothing.”
“All I’m asking is that it doesn’t look like everything has gone to hell in here all the time. I’ve got people coming in and out.”
“I can’t believe you’re complaining about this right now.”
“It just seems that instead of anything getting taken care of, it’s all exploding. We need to control what we can. Things like this matter.”
“Are you talking about the mess, Gabe? Or what’s going on out there? Because I have no idea what to do about that, and I’m just as upset as you
are, so yelling at me isn’t going to help.”
“I don’t think you could possibly be as upset as I am. Wait until you see Alicia’s new ad.” Alicia was his Republican opponent. Quinn wrapped her arms tight against her body.
There was a pause. Katherine’s voice was quieter when she spoke. “We both knew politics meant being under a microscope.”
“We’re not under a microscope,” he said. “We’re being fictionalized. You do realize the corner that’s been turned?”
Silence. What corner?
“There was no ‘mix-up’ today,” Gabe continued. “And two of my afternoon meetings canceled.”
Again, silence. Then Katherine, speaking softly, “Did you talk to Edward?”
At that point, they both lowered their voices to murmurs that Quinn couldn’t hear.
Edward was their lawyer. Quinn didn’t even want to know what her father needed to talk to him about. The Democrat always wins in this district. Her parents had told her a million times. The Democrat always wins.
She said it over to herself, like a prayer: The Democrat always wins. The Democrat always wins.
* * *
She uncurled herself and walked quietly upstairs. In the foyer, she noticed something bright pink under the bench. A flower, sticking out of the box that was used to collect the people’s offerings. Usually, her parents threw that stuff out right away. One of them must have gotten distracted after bringing it back inside.
She slid out the box and began sorting through objects: a plastic statue of the Virgin Mary, a popsicle-stick-and-yarn God’s eye, flowers (mostly artificial), candles, prayer cards, small stuffed animals, photographs—bent and stuck together with tape—and envelopes. Lots of envelopes. Everything was damp from another drizzly day.
She took out a white, greeting card–size envelope, and ran her finger around the edge, staring at the smudged writing on the front: Blessed Virgin. The moist flap ripped open easily. Quinn pulled out a card that pictured an old painting of Jesus on the cross, the kind you’d find at the Met. Inside, in bubbly handwriting, it said:
The Inconceivable Life of Quinn Page 18
