She looked at him then, and Bill wished she hadn’t. “You just watch me,” she said evenly. “You just watch me go.”
Bill stopped arguing. It was futile with Quinn in this irrational state. She’d calm down and then she’d see reason. He switched over to thinking about the weight room—who was slacking, who was going to have to add weight, who was bulking up too much for agility—and he was so caught in his own plans that he almost missed the turnoff to Animal Control.
Once inside, Quinn was worse, practically leaping over the counter to grab the poor woman in the brown uniform by the throat. She was a nice woman, too, a real Tiger fan, she’d told him when he’d brought the dog in. “You’re doing such a fine job, Coach,” she’d said, and he’d thanked her because community support was vital to a good athletic program. Her name was Betty, he remembered now. He felt a little embarrassed when she led them back to the pens and Quinn sank to her knees on the concrete and reached her hand through the bars and called “Katie” as if she’d been parted from the mutt for centuries instead of just hours. The dog came tiptoeing up to her, shaking all over. It was acting, Bill knew. Dogs were manipulative like that, always looking at you with those calculating eyes, especially this sneaky, sly little rat. The pen was huge and the place was warm and there was a bowl of food and a water dispenser right there; clearly this dog was not suffering.
“Get her out of here,” Quinn said without looking at him. She was stroking the dog through the bars, giving it all of her attention. “Get her out of here now.”
Something in her voice, something strange and a little frightening, made Bill decide this was not the time to argue. “I brought the dog in this morning,” he told Betty. “I’d like her back.”
“Sorry, Coach, but that’ll be thirty dollars plus the license fee.” Betty was clearly apologetic. “That’s the law.”
Bill wanted to protest that since he was the one who’d brought the dog in, surely he should be able to take it back for free, but it was easier to pay the money. No point in annoying a Tiger fan, and besides, the sooner he got Quinn out of there, the sooner he could talk some sense into her and get rid of the dog for good. He’d have to find it a home, though. Animal Control was obviously not going to satisfy Quinn.
It was unlike her to be this unreasonable. Maybe it was PMS.
Out in the car, Quinn cuddled the dog to her, not speaking, while it looked over her shoulder at Bill and smirked. Bill ignored it. He might be stuck with the damn thing for a while, but not for long. He and Quinn had a future, and it didn’t have a dog in it, no matter how mad she was right now.
“So what are your plans for this afternoon?” he said heartily, trying to get them back to normal.
“I’m moving out,” Quinn said in the same voice she might have used to say, “I’m having pizza with Darla.”
“Oh, come on, Quinn.” Bill took the turn to the road to the school a little too sharply in his annoyance. “Stop being childish. You are not moving out. We’ll talk about this when I get home.”
When she didn’t say anything, he knew he’d made his point, and he let his mind go back to the wrestlers. Some bad attitudes there, Corey Mossert’s among them. Too bad Corey wasn’t more like Jason Barnes. Corey and Jason were best friends, though. Maybe a word to Jason.
Beside him, Quinn rode in silence while the dog watched him over her shoulder.
“Okay, just for the hell of it, let’s try to be calm,” Nick said from the other side of a Blazer, wondering why it was his day to deal with weirded-out women.
Quinn glared across at him as if she knew what he was thinking. “This is not the time to be calm.”
She clutched Katie in her arms, and the dog rested its chin on Quinn’s arm and stared at him reproachfully. They made quite a picture, and Nick decided not to let himself get sucked into pictures. “I can’t help you till I know what’s going on, and I won’t know what’s going on until you tell me.”
Quinn took a deep breath. “I just need you to help me move my stuff out of the apartment and back to Mom’s while Bill is finishing up at school. That’s all.”
That’s all. Nick leaned against the car and wished he were someplace else. He liked Bill. He played poker with Bill. “Maybe if you talked to Bill—”
“He took my dog out to the pound and left her there in that cold cell all day. She could have died.” Quinn clutched Katie closer, looking ill as she spoke. “They kill the ones they think are sick, and she shakes all the time. They could have killed her.”
Nick shook his head. “Bill’s a good guy. Maybe—”
“Did you hear a word I just said?” Quinn demanded. “He took Katie to the pound.”
“Yeah, I know.” Nick tried to think of the right thing to say, the thing that would make Quinn calm down and get him out of the middle of this mess. “But he’s not a mean guy, Quinn. You know that. Before you do something you’ll regret, you have to calm down.”
“No.” Quinn began to pace up and down the garage bay, still clutching Katie in her arms. “I’m never going to calm down again. That’s been my problem all along. Zoë got to break rules, and my mother got to pretend everything was fine, and my dad got to watch TV until the mess was over, and Darla got to insult people, and you got to be uninvolved, but I was always the calm one, the one who fixed things.”
“Well, you’re good at that,” Nick said, wishing she’d stop pacing.
“But I’m not calm. It’s all a lie.” Quinn held Katie closer, breathing faster. “It’s just that when everybody else is screaming, somebody has to be mature and unemotional, so I have these brain-dead moments where I don’t react the way any sane human being would. I stay completely calm and ignore my feelings and compromise and make everything work again. And I’m not going to do that anymore. From now on, I’m going to be Zoë. Screw calm. Somebody else is going to have to do mature because I’m going to be selfish and get what I want.”
Nick watched her while she talked, making no sense, scaring him a little because of the look in her eye. Quinn saying she wasn’t going to be calm anymore was like Quinn saying she was going to stop breathing. When her mother had missed the turn down by the root beer stand and hit the big oak, Quinn had been the one who’d used her gym sock to stop Meggy’s bleeding while Zoë yelled her head off. When Zoë had freaked halfway down the aisle at their wedding, Quinn had been the one who talked her into going back into the church. When Max had screwed up his history final, Quinn was the one who’d coached him through the retake she’d talked the teacher into giving him so he could graduate. Nick had known Quinn for twenty years, and in all that time, she’d been the one who fixed things, who never got upset, who made everything all right.
Now that he thought about it, that had to be getting old.
All she wanted was a dog.
And Quinn deserved to have anything she wanted.
Quinn stopped her harangue to take a breath, and Nick said, “Okay.”
She blinked. “That’s it? Okay?”
“What are we moving?”
“You’re going to do it?”
The disbelief in her voice ticked him off. “When have I ever not done what you needed?”
“Never.” She answered so promptly he wasn’t mad anymore.
“I just wanted to make sure this was what you really wanted.”
Quinn nodded. “It’s what I really want.”
“I don’t mean the dog. I mean leaving Bill.”
“It’s what I really want,” Quinn repeated, and her voice was firm.
“Okay.” Nick moved around the car to the coatrack. “You want to tell me why we have to do this while Bill is at school?”
“I don’t want to see him again,” Quinn said. “I told him in the car I was leaving, and he just smiled.”
Nick stopped as he reached for his coat. “He what?”
“He just smiled.” Quinn shook her head. “He wants to talk about it when he gets home, but he won’t listen, and I don’t want to talk to
a brick wall anymore.”
“He just smiled? Are you sure you told him?”
“I said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I said, ‘You just watch me leave.’”
“And he smiled.” Nick took down his coat. “You have a problem.”
“Which is why I’m moving out.” Quinn shifted on her feet, impatient, like a little kid. “Could you hurry? He’s going to be late tonight because there’s a baseball meeting, but that won’t last forever.”
“I’m coming. What are we moving?”
Quinn stopped shifting to think. “The pie safe and Grandpa’s washstand and Grandma’s silverware. And my books and my quilts and my pictures and my clothes. This is really great of you, Nick.”
“You got boxes for the books?”
“No.” Quinn’s voice wavered.
“Okay, I’ll round up some boxes tomorrow.” Nick turned his back to get his gloves out of his pockets so he wouldn’t have to watch her chin quiver. “In the meantime, we can get the furniture and the rest of the stuff so you can feel you’ve moved out. And then later we’ll go back for the books and whatever else you’ve missed.”
“Thank you,” Quinn said from behind him.
“It’s no big deal.” He turned to see Quinn clutching that dog, her eyes huge and hazel and grateful and alive, more intense than he’d ever seen her before.
“It is a big deal,” she said. “I know what you’re doing, I know how hard it is for you to get involved with people. I know how much you hate it, and how you’re going to hate facing Bill.”
“It’s okay,” he said, and then to his horror, she came closer and hugged him, squashing the dog between them, her hair soft and smooth against his jaw. She was warm against him, and she smelled like soap, and his heart beat a lot faster, and he was suddenly conscious of every curve she had, of every breath she took, and he did not put his arms around her.
“It’s not just okay,” she whispered into his neck. “It’s what I really need and what you hate doing. You’re the best.” Then, after a couple thousand years at least, she let him go and went to the door.
He breathed again. “Good. Remember that.” He followed her out, a little confused from her heat, calling to Max to watch the pumps, determined not to do anything that would bring her that close again.
The short ride to Quinn’s apartment seemed longer than usual and the cab of the truck smaller. Nick felt lousy that she was so upset, and guilty about betraying Bill, but mostly he just felt tense in general. She sat next to him, cuddling that damn dog, and the insane need to be close to all her warmth again grew stronger. This was why it was better when Quinn was involved with somebody. As long as Quinn was off limits, she was just Quinn, and he didn’t think about her much. It was these times between her guys that made him uneasy, which didn’t happen often, thank God, because Quinn wasn’t flighty but—
“Why are you so quiet?” Quinn said. “It’s because you don’t want to do this, isn’t it?”
“I want you to be happy,” he said truthfully. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I won’t be alone.” Her voice sounded surprised, still a little shaky with emotion. “I’m never alone. I have a ton of people in my life.”
“I mean a guy.”
“I don’t need a guy.” Quinn turned away from him to look out the window. “Especially a guy who steals my dog.”
“Right.”
Nick pulled into the driveway to Quinn’s apartment. “The dog stays in the truck,” he said, and Quinn hugged the mutt one last time and then helped him lock it in the cab. Its eyes were accusing as they walked away. What about me? it seemed to say. Who’s taking care of me?
Nick ignored it.
When they got upstairs, he found that Quinn was right, there wasn’t much there that she wanted, and they loaded everything but her clothes into the truck in half an hour. “That’s it?” Nick asked her. “You’re not taking anything else?”
“I feel guilty enough about leaving him,” Quinn said. “I mean, he stole my dog, so I can’t stay, but I’m not going to leave him without furniture. This is the stuff that’s important to my family. The rest was just garage sale stuff or stuff he bought new that I hated anyway. I’ll put my clothes in garbage bags, and we’ll be done. Is she warm enough?”
Nick looked at Katie watching them anxiously through the back window of the truck, her paws pressed against the glass. For a rat, she was kind of cute. Kind of. “She’s fine. Let’s get your clothes.”
“I really appreciate this, Nick.”
Nick kept his focus on Katie. “Let’s get your clothes.”
He followed her upstairs to help, which was a mistake. Watching her fold dresses into garbage bags wasn’t a problem, but then she opened drawers and started tossing fistfuls of silky underwear into a bag, all of it in the weirdest colors like electric blue and hot pink and metallic gold, and in patterns like plaid and polka dots and leopard and zebra, and he couldn’t help but imagine what it must look like on her—all that color next to her pale honey skin, all that silk filled out round and warm the way she’d felt with her arms around him.
“I’ll carry this down,” he said, grabbing the two nearest bags when she started pulling out nightgowns. “Be right back.” He ran down the steps and threw the bags in the back of the truck, and then stood out in the cold trying to get his mind back so he could figure out what the hell was wrong with him while Katie stared at him reproachfully through the window.
Quinn was a friend, that’s all.
Okay, so she was the best friend he had next to Max and he loved her, a friendship kind of love, but that was all. He was not having hot thoughts about Quinn. That would be crazy.
It isn’t the first time, he told himself, and thought of nineteen years before, of the August he and Zoë had come home because things were going so wrong for them. In the three months since their wedding, they’d found out that all they had in common were bad tempers. But in the same three months, Quinn had changed. When he’d left, she’d been a perplexed sixteen-year-old drink of water in a blue chiffon bridesmaid dress, trying to put his wedding back together when her sister had balked halfway down the aisle. “I can fix this,” she’d told him, and she had, while he’d sat and fumed and wondered if he really wanted to marry Zoë after all. But when he’d come back three months later, Quinn had run out to the car in her cutoffs and tank top to hug her sister—Zoë grabbing onto Quinn with more emotion than she’d ever grabbed onto him—and he’d gaped in surprise and guilty lust as Quinn laughed and rocked Zoë back and forth, confident and round and happy and suddenly sexy. Shit, I got the wrong sister, he’d thought then, with all the depth of a nineteen-year-old.
And that was when Zoë had looked over and caught him and glared at him so that he’d turned back to the car to get their things before she could say anything out loud. Later that night, she’d backed him up against her mother’s white metal kitchen cabinet with a paring knife under his chin and said, “She’s sixteen, you sonofabitch.”
He winced at the memory now. Christ, sixteen and he’d been scoping her out. Of course, he’d only been nineteen, so it wasn’t as if he were doing it now.
He thought of Quinn in that gold leopard bra she’d thrown in one of the bags. Yeah, he’d matured.
“If you ever cheat on me, Nick Ziegler,” Zoë had said, “I’ll just leave you flat. But if you ever touch my sister, I’ll cut your liver out with my manicure scissors and then I’ll leave you flat.” Since Zoë never made idle threats, he’d pretty much stopped looking at Quinn entirely. His marriage had been in enough trouble at that point without Quinn and the manicure scissors. Zoë had bolted about three months later to his surprised but great relief, and he’d forgotten her and Quinn and all of Tibbett while he’d finished his four years with Uncle Sam and then used the GI Bill to collect a business degree with a minor in English poetry. The poetry was dynamite for seducing girls, the girls who had contributed to the ease with which he’d pushed the McKenzie sisters to th
e back of his mind. By the time he’d come back home, Quinn was teaching art and involved with Greg somebody, a good guy, and that was enough to make her safe again while he quoted Donne and Marvell to surprised but impressed Tibbett women, and the manicure scissors faded to a vague memory.
His mind went back to Quinn in that leopard bra. Somehow he didn’t think Bill was going to feel the same relief about Quinn bolting that he’d felt about Zoë’s leaving.
He sure wouldn’t.
Upstairs, Quinn took notepaper out of the desk and sat down at the stripped pine dining-room table.
Dear Bill, she wrote.
Now what? All right, she was furious with him about the dog, but he deserved a note. After two years, he really deserved a note.
I’m moving out.
Well, that was good. To the point.
It’s not just because of Katie
But a lot of it was. He’d just taken her dog, as if what she wanted didn’t matter. He thought she’d get over it. He didn’t know her at all.
but what happened with Katie has made me realize that we don’t know each other at all.
Of course, that was probably her fault. She’d never really made him look at her, never said, “I don’t agree,” never said, “I really want a dog,” while she was giving up all the ones she’d found. It really was her fault. She couldn’t stay with him, she absolutely couldn’t stay with him after the pound thing, but she didn’t need to be nasty about it, create hard feelings, make things difficult for everybody.
This is all my fault for not being honest with you, but I know now we’re too different and it would never have worked out for us.
That sounded good, reasonable. She really didn’t have much more to say, so she just scribbled the end to her letter—I’m moving in with Mom and Dad until I can find my own place. I’ll be back to pick up my books later, and I’ll leave the key then. She almost signed it Love, Quinn from habit, but she stopped. She didn’t love him. She’d never loved him. She’d liked him enough to stay with him because she hadn’t disliked him enough to leave. How sad.