Jacked - The Complete Series Box Set (A Lumberjack Neighbor Romance)
Page 71
Still, they were a beautiful family with a beautiful house in beautiful Summerlin, and Sienna loved them. I could not imagine facing them without her.
What if they knew what had happened?
I stopped again at the foot of the driveway. It was a safe bet Sienna's family would not care if I did not make an appearance. Her father would probably prefer it. I was about to turn around when I saw Quinn.
She was carrying a huge spray of flowers towards the back entrance. Despite her removal from the front door crowd, a couple still stopped her to express their condolences. As she sank under the weight of the flowers, they unloaded their guilt at being more fortunate than her and her family. I could have punched the man for dabbing at his appropriately wet eyes instead of taking the heavy vase from her.
As much as I wanted to turn around and never see these people again, I could not leave. If Quinn was handling it, so could I.
I strode up and took the flowers from her without a word.
"That's the boyfriend," the man's wife whispered as I headed for the back entrance.
I pulled open the door and held it for Quinn. When I looked back to see if she was coming, I felt as if everyone from the driveway was staring at me. Somehow, they all knew what I had done. They knew it was my fault. Sienna was dead, they needed someone to blame, and I was the guy.
"Thank you," Quinn said. She led the way into the back door and to the formal dining room. The long table was covered in tasteful flower arrangements.
The scent of lilies made me sick, but we were the only ones in the room. I would have stayed amongst that sickly sweet stench all night if it was just the two of us. "Quinn, I'm so sorry."
She waved a delicate hand. "We said all of that on the phone. I'm just glad you're here." She gave me a quick hug and retreated into the full front parlor.
I took a deep breath and followed her into the crowd. Quinn slipped like a stranger through the people gathered there. She was right there in the family portrait on the wall, but all anyone could ever see was Sienna. Even when she was gone, she stole the limelight.
"Is there anything else I can help with?" I asked.
Quinn blinked up at me with her chocolate brown eyes. She glanced around to make sure I was speaking to her. "Not really. Not now."
"Have you gone in to view the body?" I asked. It was a shit question, but I could not take it back.
Quinn shook her head, so I held out my arm. Her cheeks blushed as she looked nervously from side to side. Sienna's little sister was clearly not used to being noticed. "Don't worry. They're staring at me. If I'm not falling apart just right or keeping it together well enough, they'll dock my score," I said.
She pulled her lips in to stop a smile. "Or they're thinking how nasty I am putting the moves on my sister's boyfriend." Her cheeks burned brighter.
"They don't know how long we've known each other. They don't know I've seen Pretty Pony sheets on your bed," I said.
"They don't know that you made me pick out Sienna's Valentine’s gifts every year since you two started dating."
"I gave you boxes of chocolates every year," I reminded her.
"M&Ms wrapped in Post-It notes."
"With passcodes and Easter eggs."
"My favorite," she admitted.
We stopped in the viewing line. I knew I should let go of her, but I kept her arm tucked tightly against me. She leaned on my arm in the crush of people and did not try to pull it free.
"Speaking of Easter eggs," I said, "remember that time Sienna got mad at me for dying eggs wrong?"
"You mixed the colors until it was dark brown and told her you were making rabbit turds," Quinn said. She chewed her lip to hide another smile.
"She kicked us both out of the kitchen for laughing. We ended up eating jelly beans and playing Vice City until 1 in the morning."
Quinn gave a ragged sigh. "Sienna dyed the most perfect Easter eggs. She blew the yokes out and everything. I always tried to save the prettiest until the next year. Until she pointed out I could just take pictures. I think I still have some stashed away."
"What? Pictures of eggs?"
Quinn shook her head and said nothing. Only Quinn would carefully preserve something as delicate as a hollow egg. To her, they were treasures to be saved. I loved how she treasured things. Sienna always treated everything like a prototype to be tossed away in the hopes the next one would be better.
"Owen, we're so glad you came. Have you signed the guestbook yet?" Mr. Thomas asked. He took my elbow and guided me out of line.
Quinn slipped her arm out and opened her mouth to stop her father.
He shook his head at her. "It would mean so much to us if you'd put down a few words about Sienna. You knew her so well."
Once we were out of Quinn's hearing, he hissed in my ear. "Nice of you to come, but you're upsetting my wife. Sign the guestbook and go."
Mr. Thomas dropped my arm and went to greet better guests. I rubbed my elbow and realized he had shoved me towards the door. There was no guestbook that I could see.
Instead, there were large collages of Sienna. Her photogenic life had been carefully curated and mounted to best highlight her successes. Other guests gushed over the beauty and the achievements, but I could not see it.
A proud picture of her with a glistening show horse and a trophy looked perfect. I cringed as I remembered Sienna telling me how she hated her first horse. She lied and told the trainer it had bitten her so she could ride a better one. The trainer had taken her at her word and sold the horse to a trail ride farm up north.
Her prize science fair display looked like the perfection of a curious and intelligent mind. To me, it signified being stood up two times in one week. Then, Sienna had accused me of trying to sabotage her work by guilting her.
Then, there was the bake sale photograph and accompanying newspaper article. I knew Quinn had baked those cookies. Hours after the fundraiser was over, Sienna refused to get out of her bed. She was so depressed at being outdone by someone else that she did not speak to Quinn for days.
Not only had Quinn let her older sister take the credit, she had spent days trying to lift Sienna out of her selfish funk. I had one foot out of the door but stopped. The least I could do was stay and make sure Quinn was alright.
She was standing off to the side in her own living room. Her mother and father had given her seat away to a prominent neighbor. I was partially disgusted by her parents' heartlessness. The other part was delighted that she was within reach.
"This seat taken?" I asked.
Quinn shifted along the wall and almost smiled. It faded as the hired priest moved to stand in front of the fireplace. The packed room grew quiet.
"A great light amongst us has gone out. And we may feel as empty and cold as this unlit fireplace," the priest gestured behind him awkwardly, "but together we will stay warm."
It’s 86 degrees out, I thought.
"Sienna Thomas was a caring, thoughtful, and ambitious woman. She had her sights set on becoming a surgeon so she could help those among us that needed to be healed," the priest said.
Quinn shifted from one foot to the other. She refused to look at me, but I knew the greeting card version of Sienna's life bothered her. Within days, her sister had skyrocketed into sugarcoated memories and ideal assumptions. Her real sister was fading away.
"When her life was tragically struck down by a drunk driver on her college campus, we all felt a deep and abiding loss," the priest droned on.
Quinn stood up, her pale face covered in shock. I took her hand and squeezed. If she said something now, it would only ruin her. Sienna's memory was perfect, unmarred by the truth. There was no way Quinn could change that without destroying herself.
"It’s not right," she whispered to me.
"It’s easier for your parents, for everyone," I told her.
"I was there. I saw. Nothing's going to make that easier for me, especially not some lie that blames someone else for her death," Quinn hissed.
I had no idea what bothered me the most about Quinn seeing Sienna like that. The crowd of mourners finally moved on through the dining room and into the backyard for refreshments. I found myself alone with a few stranglers ringed around the edge of the living room. I walked up to Sienna's open casket.
She looked perfect – her makeup a little too thick and her lips a little too red, but perfect.
"Hey, beautiful. Remember how a long time ago you asked me to tell you when you were behaving rotten? I gotta call you out one last time. You knew someone was going to find you. Either your roommate or your sister. What an awful thing to put on someone else. You didn't think of that, did you? You probably had this whole damned funeral planned down to the photographs and flowers. But you didn't think for one second what you'd be doing to other people. She saw you, Sienna. Like that. Makes me glad you're gone. You can't hurt me or Quinn anymore."
I stepped back and swiped away the angry tears. Across the room, closer than she should have been, Quinn stared at me wide-eyed. I swallowed hard and hoped she did not hear what I had said.
#
It was time to go. I turned to make a break for the front door only to bump into a wall of former classmates.
"Weird high school reunion, huh?" Ben said. He had been the captain of the football team. The same irritated estimation from our teenage years was in his eyes as he looked me over. He still could not understand why Sienna chose me over him.
Ben was my height with buzzed brown hair. His square jaw and cleft chin could have put him in those mail order sweater catalogs. He'd gone on to college with a football scholarship and had not changed one bit.
"What are you up to these days?" he asked. "Is there a market for being too cool for school?"
His cronies, a trio of Ben knockoffs at various heights, laughed.
"I heard you're still hanging out at arcades or something, right?" the first crony asked.
"Something like that," I said. I tried to step past them.
"You were still with Sienna, weren't you?" Ben asked. "That is rough, man, just rough. You doing okay?"
The actual sincerity of his statement set me back a step. "I think I'm still in shock."
"No kidding. I could have imagined a dozen other people from our graduating class offing themselves, but not her." Ben scrubbed his cleft chin. "I keep thinking maybe it’s a joke. Like that time you swapped out the science dummies’ insides with lunch meat. Remember? You used food coloring to make the white rats have bloody mouths so it looked like they'd turned zombie or something?"
"Yeah," I said. "Sienna would never go for a fake-your-death-then-zombie-attack-your-own-funeral kind of joke."
"See, that's what I'm saying. I could never figure you two out," Ben said. He clapped an arm around my shoulder and forced me to join him on the back porch.
The yard was full of cliques I remembered from high school. I looked around and could not find one knot of people with a gravitational pull. It was the same when I was actually in high school. I drifted, had plenty of friends, but no one close, and people either thought that was really cool or really weird.
I played it off then like I was a rebel, but looking at the funeral reception, I did not have the energy. The truth was I did not care. Small talk, schmoozing, and keeping up appearances – that was all Sienna. She made me hit my limit and I could not go back.
"Shit, this looks miserable. Count me out," I said.
"So, what? That's it. Sienna dies and you head back to whatever basement you make your money from?" Ben asked. "Yeah, I know all about the gaming thing. Nice gig."
"Yeah, guess I have a talent for it."
"You're for real? No wonder Sienna was getting sick of you. She was heading off to be a surgeon and you're playing video games," he said. He unwrapped his arm and gave my shoulder a punch. "This your wake-up call or what?"
"Wake up to what?" I asked. "Learning to tie a tie and take Daddy's place behind a useless desk at the shipping company?"
"That's legit, man. A real job. Something my honey is proud of," Ben said. He nodded across the yard to a stick-thin bottle blonde. She waved like a terrier wags its tail. "I don't mean to hit you when you're down, man, but think about it. Maybe now's the time to do something with your life."
"Funerals bring out the philosophers," I said. "Good luck with all that." I waved to his girlfriend. She gave me a once-over and a bright smile. I could hear Ben's teeth grinding.
"I don't get you, man. I just know you're going nowhere," he said. "Good luck with that." He clapped me on the shoulder one more time and led his trio off the patio into the grass.
Their next stop was Sienna's father. I snorted, remembering the last conversation I had with him before today. It had been remarkably similar to Ben's topic of choice: my lack of career. They just did not understand that my world was not theirs. That was what made people uncomfortable. Succeeding on the screens and high scores of the gaming world was not obvious to the rest of the world, especially to non-gamers, so they assumed I was floundering.
It drove Sienna insane that my source of income sounded so childish. At parties, she avoided talking about what I did as long as possible. I was not a tested, accepted, and career-tracked college student. In her circles of high achievers, that was impossible to understand. Throw in the whole making money playing video games bit and they looked at Sienna as if she was joking.
Still, she wanted to be the perfect pre-med package, and that included the high school sweetheart. I kept her from having to deal with flirtations and distractions. But after the third campus mixer, she realized I was more a blight on her image than a help. While she made up stories about me traveling or finding consulting work, or whatever other vague label she could slap over me, I became a success.
I glanced around the funeral reception and shook my head. Even if Sienna and I had stayed together, she would not have cheered my success. The gamer world was prone to mockery, outsiders did not understand it, and Sienna wanted something that was obvious. I always thought she'd end up with a luxury car salesman. Or maybe a real estate agent. Someone subservient to her career but dependable, upstanding, and normal.
Disgusting.
I could not help but see an overlay of Dark Flag. Ben would try to gather a clan and it would work, but they would die within days, routed by underlings, cleaned out by thieves, or razed by a ruthless leader that did not care about appearances. It was the kind of world where small talk had burned away in the apocalypse. All that mattered was finding your inborn talents and using them to survive.
I could not take on any desk job or career track that forced me to mimic rote skills. I could not pretend to be content with a day job. I wanted to use my talents, not store them in bins in the garage for the occasional hobby.
Maybe if I had explained it better to Sienna, maybe if I'd given her a rundown of my success, she could have come around. Did it matter that we'd end up in the same place, only together? We'd still be at some backyard party with me on my own and nothing to say. Except she might still be alive.
The thought burned down my throat and into my stomach like a shot of whiskey. I turned to see if there was anything to drink, anything to kill the feeling of guilt. A hired bartender in a crisp white shirt stood behind the counter of the outdoor kitchen.
He looked bored, mostly pouring iced tea, and I startled him. "Please say you have whiskey."
"Irish wakes are my specialty," he said. He poured the shot and left the bottle on the counter for me.
"Can I have a, um, another?" Quinn said. She glanced away from me.
I watched as the bartender poured her a diet soda, swept the whiskey bottle out of sight to add a splash, then gave her a lime twist. He handed me back the bottle and Quinn watched as I poured myself another shot. I toasted her before I t
ipped it back neat.
"Lots of people from high school," I said.
"At least they remember you," Quinn said. "Sienna always hated that I could not make a better impression at social gatherings." She stood up straight and took a step before her shoulders slumped and she turned back to the bar for support. "She always gave me the best advice and I never took it."
"And now you think if you had, things might have been different?" I asked. "You can't do that. It doesn't work that way."
"What doesn't?"
"Life."
"So, it's not worth thinking about?" Quinn asked. Her chocolate brown eyes took on a hard edge.
"No, it’s just there are too many answers to 'what if,' and none of them can change what happened," I said.
"Why are people always so wise and philosophical at funerals?" She gulped her drink and held out the glass for another. "This is why I'm done talking with people. I'm not searching for answers or trying to see the silver lining. I'm just trying to survive."
Quinn thanked the bartender, took her refill, and disappeared into the house. I took two steps to follow her before Mrs. Thomas appeared and blocked my way.
"Owen Redd, we weren't sure you were coming," she said.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Thomas. I should have stopped by sooner." I looked longingly at the whiskey bottle, but knew it was not a good idea to drink in front of Sienna's mother.
Mrs. Thomas had a tendency to overdo everything. She threw herself wholeheartedly into any activity, from chronicling Sienna's successes to redecorating the house to having a few drinks to celebrate her daughter's accomplishments. A few always turned into too many. Or sometimes, it took no drinking at all for her to shift from high speed to sinking ship. Her mood could swing to dire melancholy, and I worried the gentle smile on her lips was a thin facade.
"You probably knew our daughter best of all, and yet no one understands why you two were together." She stared over my shoulder at the bartender until he brought her a glass of white wine. "I used to think of you like the moon, just drifting around her and catching her light. She was the sun, Owen, the bright golden sun." Her breath hitched. "No. A shooting star, I guess."