Final Girls(21)

“You should have called me.”

“You would have tried to talk me out of it,” I say.

Jeff ignores the remark, mostly because he knows it’s true.

“I just think it’s very strange that she suddenly showed up like this. That’s not normal, Quinn.”

“You’re sounding a bit too suspicious, Mr. Lawyer.”

“I’d just feel better knowing more about why she’s here.”

“I haven’t quite figured that out,” I say.

“Then why did you invite her to dinner?”

I want to tell him about that afternoon, how for a moment Sam was so much like Janelle that it took my breath away. But he wouldn’t understand. No one could.

“I just feel sorry for her,” I say. “After all that she’s been through, I think she just might need a friend.”

“Fine,” Jeff says. “If you’re cool with all this, then so am I.”

Yet the shadow of a scowl crossing his face tells me that he’s not entirely cool with it. Still, we go back to the dining room, where Sam politely pretends that we just weren’t talking about her. “Everything good?” she says.

I smile so wide my cheeks hurt. “Perfect. Let’s eat!”

During the meal, I play hostess, serving the food and pouring the wine, trying hard to ignore that Jeff is talking to Sam like she’s one of his clients—genial but probing. Jeff’s a conversational dentist that way. Extracting what needs to be removed.

“Quinn tells me you vanished for a few years,” he says.

“I like to think of it as laying low.”

“What was that like?”

“Peaceful. No one knowing who I was. No one knowing all the bad shit that happened to me.”

“Sounds more like being a fugitive,” Jeff says.

“I guess,” Sam replies. “Only I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“So why hide?”

“Why not?”

When Jeff can’t think of a good response, silence ensues, broken occasionally by the sound of cutlery scraping against plates. It makes me nervous, and before I know it, my wine glass is empty. I refill it before offering more to the others.

“Sam? Refill?”

She seems to intuit my nervousness and smiles to put me at ease. “Sure,” she says, gulping down the rest of the wine in her glass just so I can pour more into it.

I turn to Jeff. “More wine?”

“I’m good,” he tells me. To Sam, he says, “And where have you been living these days?”

“Here and there.”

The same answer she had given me. One that doesn’t satisfy Jeff. He lowers his fork to give Sam a cross-examination stare.

“Where, exactly?”

“No place you would have heard of,” Sam says.

“I’ve heard of all fifty states.” Jeff flashes a friendly smile. “I can even recite most of their capitals.”

“I think Sam wants to keep it a secret,” I say. “In case she wants to return there and live in anonymity.”

Across the table, Sam gives me a grateful nod. I’m looking out for her. Just like she said we should do. Even if, in this case at least, I’m just as curious as Jeff.

“I’m sure she’ll tell us eventually,” I add. “Right, Sam?”

“Maybe.” The hardness in Sam’s voice makes it clear there’ll be no maybe. Yet she tries to sandpaper her tone by adding a joke. “It depends on how good dessert is.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Jeff says. “What matters is that the two of you finally got the chance to connect. I know it means a lot to Quinn. She was really broken up about what happened with Lisa.”

“Me, too,” Sam says. “As soon as I heard about it, I decided to come here and finally talk to her.”

Jeff tilts his head. With his shaggy hair and big, brown eyes he looks like a spaniel faced with a bone. Hungry and alert.

“So you knew Quinn was in New York?”

“Over the years, I kept tabs on both her and Lisa.”

“Interesting. For what reason?”

“Curiosity, I suppose. I liked knowing they were doing OK. Or at least thinking they were.”

Jeff nods, looks down at his plate, pushes the linguini from one side to the other with his fork. Eventually, he says, “Is this your first time in Manhattan?”

“No. I’ve been here a few times before.”

“When was your last visit?”

“Years ago,” Sam says. “When I was a kid.”

“So before all that stuff happened at that hotel?”

“Yeah.” Sam gazes at him from across the table, eyes narrowed, on the razor’s edge of a glare. “Before all that stuff.”

Jeff pretends not to notice the sarcastic edge placed on that last word. “So it’s been a while, I guess.”

“It has.”

“And Quincy’s well-being is the only reason you came here?”

I reach out to pat Jeff’s hand. A silent signal that he’s out of bounds, taking things too far. He does the same thing to me when we’re visiting my mother and I get too argumentative about her views on, oh, everything.