“What?” Quinn said.
“Are you going to tell her?” Gabe repeated.
Ben glanced at her, a nervous, stricken look on his face.
“What?” Quinn said, apprehensive now. The baby kicked inside her.
“Dad misunderstood. I had nothing to do with it. The guys I work for, they wanted to do a . . . you know, a sort of TV thing—”
“A reality show,” Gabe said.
“More like a documentary series,” Ben said. “About you.”
That was all? Quinn let out her breath. Of course they’d wanted to do that. Who could blame them? “So what?” she said.
“Your brother,” Gabe continued, “was going to make money getting them access. Private information.”
“I wasn’t! They lied when they said I was on board with it.” Ben’s voice sounded to Quinn more like it did when he was younger, less like the older Ben who didn’t care what his father thought of him. “I just don’t get how you could believe them over me. How could you think I’d do that?”
“You haven’t quit, have you?” her father said. “You’re still working for them.”
“Dad—” Quinn started. She didn’t care about this or believe Ben would have betrayed her. But no one was listening to her.
“I can’t quit,” Ben said, maneuvering the car into the next lane. “It’s not that easy. I need the money. Seriously—how could you believe I’d do that?”
“Because you’ve never protected her like an older brother should,” Gabe said. “It probably did happen that weekend, while you were with her at the party. Who else was supposed to be watching her after your mother left?”
“But, Dad—” Quinn said. She was sixteen. She didn’t need watching.
“She almost died,” Gabe went on. “You were supposed to be watching her. You were old enough to keep an eye out for her. How the hell did she end up in the water? You were supposed to be watching her. We told you. Do you know what it’s like to think your child is dead?”
What? Quinn was so confused, and her father’s voice coming out of the phone was so loud and hard and what he was saying was so . . . so wrong and strange. She couldn’t tell if he was talking about that night last May . . . or what.
After several unbearably long seconds, Ben said, “I was eleven. I was only eleven.”
“She was only seven!”
“You’re talking about that?” Quinn said. “Dad—”
“You think I haven’t been trying to make up for it ever since then?” Ben said over her, and Quinn realized that they were having a conversation that had been waiting to happen, that she hadn’t even known was festering underneath the resentment. And she had a hazy memory of Ben—eleven-year-old Ben—crying and her father yelling. But she didn’t understand, because Ben had been the one who brought her in from the water. She remembered her panic when she realized she couldn’t touch, and the water in her mouth, and then the feeling of his arms pulling her in, as if the undertow had shifted, pulling her to safety.
“How have you made up for it?” Gabe said. “By letting one of those guys do this to her?”
“That’s why I’m trying to help her now,” Ben said. “Okay? I’m trying, Dad. I’m trying to make up for all the lousy shit I did as a brother, including almost letting her die. Okay? How much more can I do?”
“How much—”
“You’re the one who broke her fucking arm! What about that? You broke her fucking arm!”
“Stop it!” Quinn shouted, feeling like she was the sane one for a change, nervous about Ben driving while he was so worked up. “He didn’t break it. And none of this has anything to do with anything! I’m with Ben, I trust him, and I’m going to Maine.”
Now there was silence on her parents’ end. Eventually, Gabe said, “Quinn? I know you’re upset. Yesterday was . . . too much to handle, and you’re confused. But everything’s going to be okay. Just come home. Please? Maine is not a good place for you to be. You don’t remember everything . . . but it didn’t make you happy when you were little. You weren’t yourself there. It was dangerous.”
“I was happy there,” she said.
“No. You were confused. You imagined you were happy. You’ve made up a story about it. I don’t want you near that water, Quinn. Please come home. Please, Little.”
“I can’t,” she said, closing herself off to the neediness in his voice. “I have to do this. I won’t have to stay long. But I need to go now.”
She ended the call and turned off her phone.
The two of them sat for a moment, the conversation still pulsing in the space of the car.
“You’re the one who pulled me back that day,” Quinn said. “You saved me. Why is he blaming you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Ben said.
“I mean, I know Dad’s the one who did whatever—”
“I didn’t do anything, Quinn,” he said. “I saw you in the water, saw you not able to swim, and I just stood there until I ran and got Dad. I didn’t do anything. And he’s right. I was supposed to be watching you before that. We all knew that you were obsessed with that beach. But I figured . . . I don’t know. You knew how to swim. I was going to check on you.”
“Wait . . .” Quinn said. “So who carried me in?”
“No one. I saw you out too deep, struggling, and I froze . . . I froze like a fucking idiot, just stood there watching . . . and then you were swept in with a wave, like you were bodysurfing or whatever. I watched the whole thing happen instead of trying to help.”
“No. That’s not right.” Quinn didn’t understand. She had memories of that day, including the feeling of Ben’s arms carrying her. It wasn’t clear—just a choppy, emotion-centered memory. But, still . . . And her family had talked about that day plenty of times. Everyone knew Ben had helped save her.
“I remember you,” she said. “Your arms . . . And Mom and Dad said—”
“Mom and Dad told you that because you were freaking them out. I was supposed to go along with the story. Which, obviously, I did.”
“What do you mean, I was ‘freaking them out’?”
“Making things up,” he said. “You know, your imaginary friends and whatever.”
The Deeps. The Deeps all asleep . . .
Ben honked at a car that had cut them off.
“What do you mean?” Quinn said again.
“You know how you always pretended you had friends in the water you liked to swim with? Well, after I ran and got Dad, and he got you to spit up all the water you swallowed, you kept saying your friend pulled you back to shore because you’d gone out too far.”
The deps are my frends.
“I still don’t get why you all said it was you,” Quinn said. “It was someone. I remember someone carrying me in. Some friend of mine must have been down there.” She struggled to think of who that would have been.
Ben got a cigarette out of a pack in the glove compartment but didn’t light it. “You didn’t have any friends on Southaven, Quinn.”
“But . . . I played with kids. At the beach. Like Marco.”
“No, you didn’t. Marco and Foley . . . you were just my baby sister to them. You pretended you had friends. Like . . . you wouldn’t ever listen about not swimming alone, because you didn’t think you were alone. And, well . . . your conviction about it was kind of freaky. And as for the drowning thing—I was there. No one saved you. You really believed someone had, though. So we pretended it was me.”
“So . . .” Quinn ran her tongue over her dry lips. “You all lied to me? About you saving me?”
“I just said what they told me to,” Ben said, sounding a bit defensive now. “It didn’t seem like that big a deal. Your whole imaginary life thing was pretty weird, and . . . I don’t know. It wasn’t like I was going to go against them after you’d almost drowned because of me. I felt like shit.”
“The Deeps. That’s what I called them, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Because of that book.”
Quinn felt like a wa
ve had swept into the twists and turns of her brain and was jumbling everything together, nothing in its right place. She couldn’t believe that this seminal memory was fabricated. That she’d been told what to believe and had believed it all these years. It was one of those family stories, and a memory she returned to: her big brother’s arms around her. And what about the fact that he was saying she had no real friends? She had no idea what was the truth anymore, about anything. What were real memories, and what were just products of stories?
Quinn was lying to herself. Other people were lying to her. About things from back then and now. And it was all getting mixed up together. The lies, the truths, the then, the now . . . one confusing mess.
Start with what you know.
She knew that there was lost time that night in Maine last May, time when she thought she’d been swimming. She knew that it was likely something had happened to her. She knew that someone must have been there with her. And she knew that to trigger the memory, she had to do anything she could.
“Ben?” she said. “We need to stop somewhere else.”
Your brother’s a hero. She could hear her father saying it. Right? He’s a hero, saving you like that. Right, Quinn?
It was Ben. Ben carried you out. Don’t lie and pretend it was someone else, Quinn. No more lies.
The Deeps aren’t real, Quinn. Stop lying. There are no Deeps.
Do you want to end up like her and die in the ocean?
QUINN
It was still early morning when they arrived in New Haven. They parked in front of Marco’s dorm with no idea what time he’d be up and out for classes.
“I can’t believe you went for the stakeout cliché,” Ben said, taking a bite of the doughnut Quinn had just handed him, along with a cup of coffee. He’d stayed in the car keeping an eye out for Marco while she’d gone to get sustenance.
“They’re artisanal and gluten-free,” she said. “Does that make them less cliché?”
“Nope. Just changes which cliché we’re talking about.”
Quinn was halfway through her tea and long done with her doughnut by the time a guy walked out of the dorm and Ben said, “That’s him.”
“It is?” she said, leaning forward. The guy had on a wool hat, down vest over plaid shirt, and jeans; his hands were in his pockets, backpack on his shoulder, and he was looking down as he walked. Right size, right dark curls and prominent ears coming out from the hat.
“Yeah. Definitely,” Ben said. “You sure you want to do this? Alone?”
She sat up straighter. “Yeah.”
“Okay, well, go now, so I’ll be able to see you from here.”
Marco was following a path that would lead him away from where they were parked if he kept on it. She needed to go now. She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle.
“Hi,” she said, trotting up to him a moment later. “Um, Marco?”
He stopped walking, his expression showing no sign of recognition, like that morning on Southaven. Quinn would barely have known him, either, this time. Before, when she saw him standing in the water, she’d thought she was seeing an old friend. But now . . . he was just some guy.
“It’s Quinn,” she said, the same words she’d said back then.
His face registered a moment of shock. He glanced to both sides. “What the hell?” he said, quiet but hard. “What are you doing? You can’t be here.” His gaze went to her almost-six-months belly.
“Sorry,” Quinn said. “I just . . . I needed to talk to you in person, and I knew if I asked, you’d say no.”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I would have. You shouldn’t be here. You really shouldn’t be here. I already told Ben everything I know.” He started to walk away, and she grabbed him by the sleeve. Students passing them on the path gave them quick looks.
“I just need to talk to you,” Quinn said, her voice low. “Ben is sitting in that yellow car, watching us. You don’t want me, or him, to make a scene, do you?”
Marco looked over at Ben, then back at Quinn. “Okay,” he said. “But over there on the bench, not standing right here.” They walked over and sat on a wooden bench at the edge of a path.
“Talk fast,” he said. “I have class.”
“I think I accidentally took some kind of drug, probably Ecstasy, that night in Maine,” she began, “the night of the bonfire. That’s the night I got pregnant.” She figured the more confident and the less accusatory she sounded, the better. “So even though I know something happened, I don’t know what. Can you tell me anything?” She forced herself to look in his eyes, to judge his reaction, which was definitely freaked. Her own reaction to him was still completely flat—no new memory, no fear, no revulsion.
“Wait,” he said. “You don’t know how you got pregnant?”
“I just told you. It was that night. But I was on something, so I don’t remember.”
He glanced to either side. “Like I said, I already told Ben everything.”
“So when you saw me lying there later, it was low tide, right?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like I took a picture.”
“How did you know I was okay?”
He shrugged. “You weren’t crying. You were propped up on your arms, sort of. I don’t know.”
“Did you tell anyone I was there?”
He hesitated a bit. “No.”
“You did,” she said. “Didn’t you?”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
Quinn waited for a guy and a girl holding hands to walk by before continuing. “Since I know something happened that night,” she said, “I’d like to do a DNA test to make sure it wasn’t you. You were really fucked up that night. Maybe you don’t remember, either. Maybe there was something in that lemonade we drank. Do you know if anyone was doing E that night? I asked Ben, but he didn’t know.”
“No, I don’t know. And how do you know I was fucked up?”
“Ben told me,” she said, not about to admit she’d had someone hack into his accounts. “So, can I have a couple of hairs for a DNA test?”
“God, Quinn—”
“I’d like to ask Foley and the other guys you were with, too. Not just you. Anyone could have seen me down there.”
“Foley? Good luck with that,” he said with a dismissive laugh. “You realize I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t? If I don’t, it looks like it’s because I did something to you. And if I do, I risk getting caught up in all of this.”
“Not if you do and it’s negative.”
“You think that’s going to matter? How would I explain that you even wanted me to be tested?”
“No one would have to know. All I need to do is send the hair to this place. Your name won’t be on it or anything.”
He appeared to think about this for a minute. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re just going to have to believe that I’m telling the truth. I can, like, solemnly pledge, swear, whatever. But I won’t do the DNA test. I can’t get involved on paper like that. Stuff gets completely blown out of proportion. This isn’t exactly a private thing anymore.” He stood up. “And, if you remember, you kissed me, Quinn.”
He pulled his wool cap over his ears and started walking away. Quinn watched him go. What more could she do, after all? She stood, too, and began walking in the opposite direction.
But only for a few paces. What was she thinking? She came all this way just to give up like that? To be no better off than she was before?
She turned back around and hurried after him.
“I don’t want to be like this,” she said when she caught up. “But if you don’t give me a hair, I’m going to start screaming. I’m going to make a big scene. And . . . and like you say, it won’t even matter if you didn’t do anything. Because your name will be in all of this. And Ben saw us kissing, so it will totally be believable that something else happened. In other words, you’re already mixed up in this—but if you give me a hair and it’s negative, then no one will ever know unless you’re the on
e who tells them. If you don’t give me the hair . . .” She shrugged. “Not sure what will happen then.”
MARCO CAVANAUGH
Marco walked quickly across the green, head down, sweaty hands shoved in pockets, cursing himself for what he’d just done. But he hadn’t had a choice, had he?
And it wasn’t like the test was going to come out positive.
Although, what she’d said about the lemonade . . . Could that be true? Had he maybe been more fucked up than he’d even realized?
It would explain what he’d seen. Quinn, lying on that rock, moonlight glowing on her skin in this otherworldly way. The water lighting up with phosphorescence or something. It hadn’t seemed real. More like something out of one of the fantasy graphic novels he read. A black-and-white illustration where the blackest blacks were so dense it seemed like you could fall into the picture, and the whites glowing like they’d somehow made the page whiter than paper.
It had seemed like a hallucination, but at the same time, he didn’t think he was drunk enough that night to be so crazy. And he’d never hallucinated just from drinking. He didn’t usually pass out, though, either, like he did later on in the evening.
And he’d been wasted enough that he’d told those guys what he’d seen. Had told them she was down there. Had told them she was naked, glowing. Even though she was obviously a messed-up girl from a messed-up family, he’d feel absolutely disgusting if it turned out one of them had gone down there and found her.
He shivered and shoved his hands deeper in his pockets.
Fuck.
QUINN
They made it onto the late afternoon ferry to Southaven. Usually, they’d have needed a reservation to get on with a car, and even with the reservation would have had to wait in a line for hours, but delivery trucks came in the mornings, and it wasn’t prime tourist season anywhere in Maine, especially not the islands, so they had almost the whole boat to themselves.
Quinn stood at the railing; leaned forward over the silvery, rippled welcome mat that stretched as far as she could see; and breathed in the cold, wet, salty air. Hello, hello, hello! Gulls and wind and waves called out in greeting. The massive engine rumbled under her feet as the ferry left the dock. She felt everything inside her opening up as though she was emerging from a shell like one of the periwinkles in the tide pools at Holmes Cove when she’d hold it and hum softly, coaxing it out.
The Inconceivable Life of Quinn Page 26
