Keepsake

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Stilled life, he realized. Alison was dead. What did these keepsakes matter now? Tokens of love, proof of malfeasance—what did they matter?

  Quinn said wearily, "His feelings do seem straightforward. ''

  "Guys always are," said Myra, still with her cheek on her fist.

  She was watching Quinn for his reaction, and he was determined not to have one. He said without emotion, "He wanted to many her."

  "At first," said Myra.

  She made herself sit up straight again, like a witness at a trial. "But then suddenly he asked for the letter back. He said she could keep the ring, but she had to give him the letter back. They had a huge argument over it. It was on a Sunday afternoon, late. Alison and I were working on the homecoming float that Coach and a couple of teachers had rolled onto the athletic field behind the goalposts temporarily.

  "Alison's father was supposed to be picking her up any minute when suddenly Rand showed up on the field, I don't know from where. I saw him before Alison did. He looked grim. He didn't say boo to me, just marched right up to Alison and said, 'We have to talk.'

  "They walked way over to the far end of the field. You couldn't hear them, try as I might. It was getting dark, but I could see she was upset. She folded her hands across her jacket—body language, right?—while she watched him walk back and forth, back and forth, throwing his hands up every once in a while. He was more upset than she was, I think. Then Alison's father showed up and whistled her back and Rand cut across the field and disappeared. Her father was really pissed. He said, 'What did I tell you?' and gave her a kind of a shove on her shoulder. Not a shove shove, exactly, but a little less than a shove."

  Quinn listened intently to her precise recounting of the event. No question, Myra was the perfect witness, not calculating enough to put undue spin on events, just an alert, keen observer. Shit. Quinn dreaded where this was going.

  "I assume that Alison talked about it afterward with you?" he asked, hoping against hope that she had not.

  "She did. She didn't say very much, but I could see that something was going on inside her head. All she told me was, 'He wants the letter back ... how could he? ... I'm not giving it to him ... the only way he's going to get it is over my dead body. Or yours.'

  "Then she laughed—but she wasn't really amused, you know the kind of laugh I mean? She was hurt and angry. That's when she handed me the ring and the letter for safekeeping. I was supposed to hold on to them just until homecoming. She was going to tell both their parents about her and Rand that weekend—when they came to school for the big game. She didn't want the meeting to be in anyone's house. I thought that was really good thinking. It made a lot of sense, when you came right down to it."

  Quinn, still stunned, had absolutely no response to that.

  "That's the last thing Alison ever said to me; I never saw her again," Myra said, gliding to a halt on a glaze of new tears. "And that's all I know. I don't know who killed Alison. I hope it wasn't Rand. But I know who was the father of that baby." She sighed deeply; her long ordeal of silence was over.

  Just in time for the calamari. The waitress laid an oval platter between them with a careful-it's-hot warning, and then a smaller plate in front of each of them. Quinn stared at the deep-fried loops with revulsion. He might as well have been looking at his own intestines, breaded and served to him piping hot.

  Myra, meanwhile, was calling the waitress back with the apologetic courtesy that everyone in the service industry uses with everyone else in the service industry. "Miss? If it's not too much of a bother, could I possibly have some ketchup, please? Thank you."

  ****

  Olivia paced the living room of her townhouse in a state of wretched anxiety. It was now clear to her that everyone in her family—everyone in Keepsake!—knew more about Alison's death than she did.

  Maybe if she hadn't been so busy with school and then with her career ... maybe if she had taken the time to actually listen to gossip, instead of always nipping it in the bud ... if she had just sat back silently once in a while and watched, instead of always trying to run the show ...

  But she hadn't done that, and probably never would. Her brother was right. Her emotional IQ was down in the single digits. Could you raise your own IQ? Could you learn from your mistakes? She wasn't sure it was possible, but from now on, she was going to try.

  And meanwhile, no Quinn. She glanced at the brass carriage clock that sat on the mantel mocking the time she was wasting just ... pacing. She should be doing something! She had a million yards of fabric at Run of the Mill to mark down; she couldn't expect her young assistant, no matter how willing and enthusiastic, to make those decisions herself.

  Oh—right. The stickers.

  Before she forgot, she went straight to the closet in the second bedroom and fished out two rolls of bright orange circles from among her extra supplies, then tossed them in her leather carryall. There. Something accomplished. As soon as Quinn got in—if he ever got in—she'd grab a bite to eat with him and then race down to the outlet. It was going to be a long, long night there.

  Couldn't the man have the simple decency to carry a cell phone? It was making her crazy not to be able to contact him. They might just as well be living in the Stone Age. Smoke signals, Morse code, carrier pigeons—anything was better than this. Inconsiderate man! She should just leave him a memo the way any business person would do. Yes. A curt note, damn it. If he wasn't going to call her, then that's all that he deserved.

  She began scribbling an explanation to leave under her door knocker, but almost at once she tore it up. Quinn would have called if he could. Surely he would have called. Something must have happened to him. Oh, God, surely something awful. The ratslayer, the bonelayer, the twisted, evil sicko that had nearly killed Mrs. Dewsbury, had now come after Quinn. Of course he had! For whatever reason, it was Quinn that he wanted, not anyone else. Everyone else was incidental.

  Olivia felt a surge of fear for Quinn. What if he were lying in a ditch somewhere, stabbed or shot and bleeding to death? What if he'd been in an accident? He could have been in an accident The roads were dark, winding, the intersections unmarked in a lot of places. What if he were dead? How could she go on living without him?

  Don't let him be dead. Please, please don't let him be dead.

  She felt hot tears spring up; her body began to shake. What could she do? There must be something. Call the hospital. She ran to the phone book to look up the number. The entire time, she was aware that she wasn't being rational, that Quinn wasn't dead and he wasn't injured. What were the odds, after all?

  I'm going out of my mind. This aimless, free-floating anxiety is taking its toll ... I'm losing my grip ....

  She heard a truck pull up and ran to the window, her heart lifting to the sound of the engine she knew by now. Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Alive and well and all in one piece and she was going to kill the man the minute he walked through the door. She ran to open it before he had a chance to ring the bell; she wanted him to know how worried she was before she actually went and strangled him.

  She opened the door to see Quinn dragging himself up the six steps that led straight to her. He was acting like a man climbing a gallows. It was a shock to her to hear the strain in his voice as he glanced up and forced out a greeting.

  She stepped aside to let him in; he walked past without meeting her baffled gaze. Uppermost in her mind was her fierce resolve to be the new, the improved, the emotionally intelligent Olivia Deborah Bennett.

  "Where the hell have you been? I've been worried sick."

  "Yeah."

  "Yeah? That's your explanation? I thought we agreed to meet at the hospital," she said, closing the door after him.

  She watched him stop in his tracks as his head dropped back in realization. "Jesus," he muttered. "I forgot all about it. How is she doing?" he asked without turning around.

  He took out a wood hanger from the hall closet and hung his jacket over it with care, squaring the shoulders before he looped the
hanger back on the rod. Olivia took the gesture to be symbolic. She had the sense that he was stalling—again, as if he'd rather be facing some hangman than her.

  A queasiness rolled over her, but she shrugged it off and said, "Mrs. D. is fine. As antsy as can be, of course; she wants to go home. The nurses are all threatening to roll her out into the parking lot and let her go anywhere she wants. You won't forget about her again, will you?" she added in an acid tone. "Or would you rather that I drove her home tomorrow?''

  "No, of course not," he murmured, turning around at last. He held out his arms to her and whispered in an agonized voice, "I'm so sorry, Livvy. Oh, God ... I'm so sorry."

  Surprised, she let herself be drawn into his embrace. With a smile of confusion, she said, "You don't have to be that sorry, Quinn. I forgive you." She snuggled as close as she could to him and sighed deeply. "I was in a panic about you, though," she confessed. "It came on me in such a rush. I began to be terrified that I might be psychic or something awful like that. And I realized—you know what I realized?"

  She pulled a little away from him so that she could look up at his face. "I realized how much I love you," she said simply. "I had been imagining all kinds of horrible ends—if you only knew!—and I'm just so happy ... so happy ... that you're here, and safe, and with your arms around me," she said, fitting herself almost shyly back in his arms. "I love you."

  Olivia had been planning to make that confession for a while now, but she was probably more surprised than he was that she had chosen that exact moment in which to do it.

  So! Wouldn't it be nice if Quinn felt the same urge?

  If he did, he was suppressing it. She waited in his arms with her cheek against his shirt for as long as she reasonably could and then, disappointed, said, "I was going to order a pizza for us. Are you in the mood for one?"

  "I'm not hungry," he murmured.

  "Actually," she said, sniffing his shirt, "you already smell like a pizza. Or something. That's definitely garlic." She looked up at him again, this time with eyes slanted in comical suspicion. "Hey, you're not cheating on me, are you?"

  He let out an incredulous snort, then held her so tightly it took her breath away. "Livvy, Livvy," he said suddenly, "let's make love. Now. Please .. right now."

  He caught her chin in the cup of his hand and brought his mouth down on hers in a fierce, deep kiss that sent her nerve ends humming, her brain cells spinning, and her knees and ankles crumbling beneath her. The suddenness of his desire rocked her; but she righted quickly, matching his kiss and meeting his hunger.

  "Quinn, Quinn, let's agree never ... ever ... to argue," she said between kisses. "Over anything ... ever..."

  "Don't talk, don't talk ...."

  Still locked in their embrace, they bumped against the wall as they fumbled and tore at buttons and zippers. She was wearing tights under her wool skirt—the warehouse was drafty, she had to dress warmly—and he muttered an oath as he struggled to find the waistband. He yanked one legging part of the way down; she stepped out of the rest of it, trailing it like a kite tail behind her as they half groped, half stumbled their way to the wrought-iron bed.

  They tumbled onto the down comforter—no more silk for them—with Olivia underneath him, overwhelmed and unresisting.

  He brought his hand up under her skirt, fanning his fingers, stroking her flesh, bringing down wetness. Electric, that's how it felt, electric to the point of pain. "Too much, too much," she cried, clamping her legs together. He hooked his hand on the inside of her thigh and pulled it away from her other one, exposing her again to his rough caress.

  She was hungry, but not like this. There was a desperation, an urgency in him that intimidated. "Quinn ... we have time," she said, gasping.

  "You're right ... I know ... time ... yes ...."

  He stopped and raised himself by his arms, staring down at her with a look she could only describe as demented.

  "What's wrong? Why are you looking at me that way? All I meant was for you to be more gentle," she said in confusion.

  He said nothing, only stared at her, his face twisted in contours of agony.

  "Why are you acting like this?" she cried.

  "I don't know, I don't know, God, I don't know." With a tormented look, he pushed her back down on the bed and said, "I hate this. I hate this!"

  It left her flabbergasted. "Then why did you start—?"

  He squelched the rest of her sentence with a kiss that was so brutal it hurt. She tried to push him away, a pointless exercise; he was so much more powerful than she. He caught her wrists. Her protests were muffled by his mouth bearing down on hers, drowned out by the anguished sounds coming from his throat. He sounded tormented, a beast in pain, and he was frightening her.

  She broke away from his hold and dug her nails into his ribs, using all of her strength to push him away. It seemed to snap him out of it. With a cry of frustration he rolled off and away from her in one fluid motion, ending up sitting on the side of the bed with his back to her.

  Olivia scrambled out of the bed and began tucking herself back in her bra and untwisting her skirt.

  "I have to go to work," she said, in a seething rage. "I have ... stickers to stick!"

  Quinn propped his elbows on his thighs and dropped his forehead to the palms of his hands.

  "Oh, God," he mumbled in misery. "Oh, God." He was a portrait of remorse.

  Olivia stared at him the way she would at a drunk coming off a bender. And then she turned on her heel and walked out.

  She spent the next two hours in a state of shock, stickering any bolt or remnant that displeased her. And they all displeased her. Suddenly the colors seemed too dull, too bright, too busy, too plain, too irrelevant to possibly matter. She stickered them all, a compulsive personality gone amuck, until her assistant came up timidly and said, "Is it all right if I go home now?"

  Olivia pulled out of her daze long enough to stare at her watch: ten o'clock. It was half an hour past closing time at Run of the Mill. She looked around and blinked, trying to clear the cotton from her head, trying to focus on the reality of her night so far.

  She was able to remember it perfectly well. After the debacle in her bedroom, she had actually got into her van and driven the two and a half miles to the row of shabby old warehouses, some of them empty, that lined the banks of the Connecticut River. She had marched into the outlet, greeted the help, taken out her stickers, and got to work. She was here, wasn't she? All in one piece? With her stickers mostly stuck? Obviously she was fine. Obviously time had passed.

  The fact that she couldn't remember the two hours that she had spent in this dreary hole—that, she could attribute to the numbing monotony of marking down merchandise. She scanned the cavernous room. Yes, there it was, all around her: merchandise. Mountains of it. More bolts and remnants than she could possibly sell, more than her customers could possibly sew, in a lifetime. In ten lifetimes.

  As for the customers themselves, she was fairly certain that there had been quite a few of them rummaging through the piles, but now they were nowhere to be seen.

  "You closed up?"

  "Um... you told me to?"

  "I did, didn't I. Okay. Thank you, Sharon. And I'm sorry for keeping you late," she added in a dull voice. "I guess I just got carried away."

  Energetic Sharon, Olivia's most valuable asset by far, giggled and said, "Oh, that's all right. My friends don't get off work until one-thirty. This way, I'll have one less drink to nurse while I wait for them."

  They left together, Olivia, reluctantly. Her world seemed to be collapsing around her; she was afraid to go out in it anymore.

  All the way home, anxiety gnawed at the pit of her stomach, making her sick. As she careened down the road under bright stars flung across a clear black sky, wave after wave of nausea washed over her. More than once she was tempted to pull over, open her door, and throw up. She was deathly ill, deathly tired.

  And unprepared for the sight of Quinn sitting on the bottom step in
front of her townhouse.

  Chapter 22

  It was eleven at night and twenty degrees out; what was he doing there?

  Olivia had the obvious option of driving right past him and entering her house through the garage that was built into the berm on the side. But he was Quinn, and he was there, and she couldn't quite make herself reach up to press the garage door opener on her visor. Instead, she parked alongside his truck. Better to get it over with.

  Quinn got to his feet as she approached; she could see that he was stiff from waiting in the cold. "Still here?" she asked unnecessarily. For once, she didn't know what to say.

  "I left," he said. "I drove around. I came back."

  His hands were in his pockets, his cap pulled down low, his collar flipped up against the sharp wind that hacked at them both. Huddled into himself, he said, "I have nowhere to go, Olivia; nowhere to be, except with you."

  Haloed in the haze of their frozen breath, they faced off for the second time that night. Olivia's mohair muffler lifted and fell in the wind, marking time as she searched his face, looking for answers to all of her questions. What did she know about him, really? Seventeen years apart: It was half a lifetime.

  "All right," she said at last, too exhausted and cold to stand there. "Come inside."

  She led the way, aware that he had a key to her place but had declined to use it. Why? Was it mere courtesy—or was there something deeper at play?

  "We have to talk," she said tiredly as she slipped out of her coat and draped it across the nearest chair. "Whatever is going on with you, it's scaring me, Quinn. We have to—"

  "I know... I know," he said. He sounded deep in melancholy.

  He threw his jacket over hers and surprised her by taking her into his arms.

  She was too tired to resist, too tired to respond, too tired to do anything but repeat dully, "We have to talk."

  "Shh," he said, holding her close and kissing her hair. "Shh. Just ... let me hold you."

  His body felt cold against hers. She wanted to bundle him, warm him, make him hot tea; she wanted to slap his face.