As You Turn Away (The Walker Boys) (5 page)

“Lanie,” Quinn said, smiling at her best friend.

Darren reached up, no doubt intending to tip his hat to Lanie before he realized he’d left it in the chair. Barely stumbling, he nodded instead, flashing Lanie the boyish grin Quinn had seen so many times.

“Ma’m.” He smiled at her a moment longer before he looked at Quinn again. “I’ll be with you, and so will Lanie,” he affirmed. “And you can do this, Quinn. I have no doubt of that, because you’re strong.” He stood. “You don’t need me to tell you that.”

Quinn nodded, almost reflexively. She took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly.

“Okay.” Quinn’s voice sounded thin, echoing in her ears, but she straightened her shoulders. Lanie pushed the wheelchair the hospital had insisted on closer, and Quinn, with Darren’s help, settled into it. “I can do this,” she said aloud, needing to hear the words, so that she would believe them.

Darren opened the door to the corridor, and Lanie pushed her wheelchair into the hallway. Darren came behind them, Quinn’s crutches in his hands. Quinn kept her head high, her gaze focused on the elevator that would take her into the outside world for the first time since the accident. As they rode to the ground floor, she heard Darren and Lanie talking quietly, but Quinn’s attention was fixed on her heartbeat; the incessant thundering filled her mind. While she went through the motions of checking herself out, which hardly made sense, considering how soon she would be back for therapy, sweat formed on her palms, and the pen she was using nearly slipped from her grasp.

Outside, Quinn’s stomach rolled into a series of somersaults when she saw a black limousine parked at the curb, idling. The longer she looked at the car, the louder the sounds in her head became: screeching tires, a scream, sirens. Darren and Lanie must have noticed her expression, because they stopped. Lanie knelt down in front of her.

“Quinn, I know…I know you’re scared. But it’s fine. You’ll be safe.” Lanie’s dark eyes held hers, and Quinn had never seen her look so serious.

Letting out a shaky breath, Quinn closed her eyes, frustrated with herself. She hated this. The anguish. The fear. The feeling she wasn’t in control.

“I know.” She gritted her teeth. “Logically, I mean. I know.” Opening her eyes, Quinn nodded at Lanie. “I have to do this. I can’t be afraid of riding, or driving forever.”

Lanie went ahead, opening the door to the limousine, and Darren pushed Quinn to the door. She went to stand, but before she could, he stepped in and lifted her into the backseat of the luxury car. She tensed, but then he was setting her on the seat. Quinn rested her head against the back of the seat for just a moment, steeling herself for the sound of the engine turning over. When it came, she met it with a mix of nerves, and relief. She didn’t have authority over today, or her mother’s death, or her situation, but she didn’t intend to become the sort of person who was afraid of everything because of a trauma.

The other backseat door opened, and Lanie, then Darren slid in. “There’s another limo that left a few minutes before us with your aunt, uncle, and grandparents,” Lanie offered, as the car eased away from the curb, and a moment later, onto the highway, merging into traffic. Quinn swallowed hard as scenery flew by outside, and the church she’d grown up in neared. As the limousine nestled into a parking space, Quinn stared out the tinted window. People—some familiar, some strangers—stood gathered in small clusters outside the church, Most wore somber expressions and huddled under black umbrellas that looked like personal storm clouds.

Darren opened her door, and settled her wheelchair just outside the car. Quinn could walk, but her doctor had stressed to her how serious her leg injury was, and so she let her cousin help her into the chair. He and Lanie flanked her as they walked toward the church, but Quinn’s skin prickled with the weight of everyone’s stares. When she left she cut every tie with her life here, and now she was an outsider to anyone who knew her. Shame and anxiety balled together in her stomach until she disappeared into the cool interior of the church, and into the auditorium for the memorial service.

Even Darren’s presence couldn’t calm her, especially when her aunt made a fuss of her broken leg, and other injuries. Quinn vaguely remembered Lila being in her room at some point after she first woke, but most of the visit was a haze of pain medication and anguish. Quinn knew that her aunt cared a great deal about her, and that going overboard was her way of showing it, but watching Aunt Lila’s brown eyes brim with tears wasn’t doing anything to calm Quinn.

Darren stepped in, pointing out a family friend and encouraging his mother to catch up with the other lady. Quinn smiled at him, and he rolled his eyes, but she saw the set to his shoulders. He was putting up a damn good front as always, but this wasn’t easy for him. He’d never been able to gain Moira’s approval either, and at some point he’d simply stopped trying. But even though Quinn was still mad as hell at her mom, and suspected Darren probably was too, her loss was still stunning.

“Remember we’re here for you.” Lanie’s murmur filtered through Quinn’s thoughts, and she nodded.

She felt nauseated as she scanned the room, purposefully avoiding anyone’s gaze. She couldn’t look at the room where the casket was either, so she stared at her hands, twisted together in her lap, as the minutes bled slowly into larger increments. She noticed Darren and the others all taking turns going into the room where her mother’s body was, but Quinn flinched at the thought of being wheeled in there to stare at the corpse.

“Quinn, do you…” Trailing off, Lanie touched her shoulder. “Don’t you think you should go in there? The service will be starting soon.”

Adrenaline soured in Quinn’s stomach and she swallowed. “I’ve never done well at funerals, around bodies. And this is my
mom
.”

Lanie sighed. “But these are your last moments with her before the service and burial.” Quinn wished she’d shouted, but the tenderness in her tone drove home the truth.

Quinn closed her eyes for a long moment, and when she opened them, she nodded. “Okay. But I have to do this alone.”

Lanie sank back into the pew, and Quinn wheeled herself the short distance into the viewing room. The casket was polished wood, beautiful, and there were lovely flower arrangements everywhere—sharp bursts of color that seemed out of place. When she gazed around the room, she realized she was alone with her mom’s body, and she stopped when she drew near. She could have reached out and touched her mother, if she wanted to. She got as far as stretching out a hand, and then froze, and let it drop to her side.

“Hi Mom,” she whispered. Quinn braced her hands on the arms of her chair, and stood on her good leg. Her mother was as proper as ever, which Quinn guessed would have made her happy—but this wasn’t the mom she remembered. The mother of her early childhood had a smudge of cookie dough on her cheek, or food coloring on her hands, or a mouth full of pins from whatever Halloween costume she was making for Quinn. That mom watched the Harry Potter movies with Quinn every time they were on television.

Until everything changed, including her mother.

Quinn’s fingers trembled as she brushed them across her mother’s cheek, and tried to ignore the coolness to her skin.

“I have so many things I want to say, but somehow all that comes to mind is ‘I’m sorry.’” Quinn sat again, inhaling. “I’m sorry my last words to you weren’t ‘I love you.’ I’m sorry we wasted so much time fighting. I guess I kept thinking something would change for the better between us, and maybe it would have if I’d come home, or you’d come to New York more often.” The sigh unraveled into the room, winding through it. “The truth is, I don’t know. I’m sad you’re gone, but I’m also so angry with you for how you treated me. You were horrible to me, and now we can’t fix anything. And I don’t know what to do about that.”

Quinn’s head hung, chin touching her chest. An arm slipped around her shoulders, and without even looking up, she knew who it was. Darren had worn the same cologne for years now, but beyond that, there was just something clean about his scent. She’d recognize him anywhere. She leaned against him, and Quinn finally wept.

~~~~~

The service itself seemed as if someone had pressed a giant fast-forward button. Quinn caught snippets. Preacher Alec’s comments on her mother, how she’d been generous, active in charities, a patron of the church. Her aunt’s eulogy, the hymns a trio from the congregation sang, the poem Darren read. She was aware of all of it, cataloging it all, but felt detached from the entire service, too—as if it was happening around her, but didn’t involve her.

And then everything flooded sharply into focus when she realized they were at the cemetery. Her throat felt like someone had clawed the skin there raw, and she knew she was crying. The preacher was saying another prayer, and the words should have been a balm, but they were empty. Someone pressed a rose from the pall into her hand, and Quinn closed her fingers around it. Then the coffin was being lowered into the ground. She smelled dirt and rain and roses.

And then it was over, and Quinn hunched her shoulders, trying to shrink into herself. The wind was howling as Darren pushed her chair down the cement path that wound through the graveyard. Quinn blinked away the rain as they stopped behind her aunt. Lila was talking to someone, but it wasn’t until the woman approached her that Quinn realized who she was, and how she knew her. She hadn’t seen her in years, but time hadn’t changed those expressive eyes or the wrinkles that webbed out from the corners when she smiled the way she was now.

“Quinn, I’m so sorry about your mother.” The older woman’s voice was soft, but it sent pain arrowing through Quinn’s mile-high defenses.

Jenny Walker. The woman who had been a mother to her when her own mother wanted nothing to do with her. Who held Quinn when she cried, who told her she was beautiful and special, when her mother ripped her apart. The woman who taught Quinn to drive a stick shift, how to bake lasagna, and cookies, and a hundred other things. Jenny Walker, whose son Quinn had loved, and abandoned when she fled to New York.

The years peeled away, falling away like summer-turned-autumn leaves.

Jonah
. Laughing in that messy, genuine, open-mouthed way others around him couldn’t help but echo. Jonah, tugging her hair out of her ballerina bun. Jonah, screaming at her to never come back.

Quinn opened her mouth, but nothing came out; swallowing, she let out a muffled wail. Then Darren was in front of her, blocking her view of Jenny. He said something, but Quinn couldn’t hear it over the sound of the jagged panting that filled her ears. She tried to slow her breathing into something normal, but she couldn’t. It was too much, too much, seeing Jenny today of all days—seeing her
ever
.

“Dare,” she rasped. “I need to get out of here.”

“We’re going, sweetheart.” He squeezed her hand quickly, and then pushed her on down the path, around her aunt, and away from her mother’s grave. Jenny was nowhere in sight, but even as they got into the limo, and Quinn sank down in her seat, she felt like Jonah’s mother’s eyes were following her, accusing her without words of ruining Jonah’s life.

And aloud or only imagined, Quinn couldn’t ignore the truth of the charge.

“I don’t think you mean that.” He came toward her, teeth showing in a bright smile.

His hair was darker than normal, plastered to his head, and somehow he still managed to look gorgeous. Quinn stood in the now-damp sand a moment too long, because Jonah swooped down and skimmed his hand across the water, flicking her with cold droplets. Quinn shrieked and glared at him. “Oh, you’re dead!”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Jonah smirked. “I’m so scared, Princess.” He quirked an eyebrow. “You want me? Come and get me.”

Quinn hesitated again, a shiver that had nothing to do with being cold rippling through her. She knew she was on a treacherous slope, being here alone with Jonah. This was their fifth date (or sixth, counting the bike ride that still made her flush when she thought about it), and she was so far over her head with this boy. Yet each time they were in the same room, Quinn felt everything in her leaning toward him, pulled flush against him as surely as if he was a magnet attracting her.

Jonah was nothing like any of the other boys she knew. He rode a motorcycle. He had tattoos. His hands were too hot to be considered merely warm, and she wanted them all over her. When he said her name, she felt like she was catching fire.

“Come on, Quinn,” he invited, flicking a hand at her in a “bring it” gesture. “Make your move.”

Quinn lunged at Jonah, and his laughter rang out, deep and was in no way the neat, polite laughter she was used to hearing. He caught her, and her feet skimmed the water as he lifted her into his arms. Before she realized what was happening, they were in water up to Jonah’s thighs.

“Don’t drop me,” she whispered. A small wave broke around them, the “ssssshhhhh” roaring in her ears. Quinn raised her arms and looped them around Jonah’s neck.

Somehow around him, her reservations felt thinner, and she was able to touch—and able to want to
be
touched. The life in which she was too afraid to come out of her shell felt far behind right now. She wasn’t the girl half-starved for attention, conditioned to expect harsh words instead of loving ones. She was the Quinn she’d always wanted to be—brave. Brave enough to let this beautiful boy hold her as long as he wanted.