Cruel World

Cruel World by Joe Hart





Chapter 1



Across the Ocean



Before the plague took him, Quinn’s father would say, the world is a cruel place. Beautiful, but cruel.

He always looked directly at Quinn when he said this, his clear gaze unwavering. Diamond blue eyes unblinking, making sure he understood.

It’s like the sea, he would say, and gesture in the direction of the Atlantic that beat against the coastline, close enough to hear most days if the weather was good. Its movement is graceful and timeless, gorgeous and hypnotizing to watch, but if you’re not careful, if you don’t respect it enough, it will end you like that. And James Kelly would snap his fingers to punctuate his point each time. That brief sound would resonate within Quinn and bring pictures to mind of tomb doors being closed with a finite bang that echoed of forever.

Quinn would watch him, watch his father’s lips move like they did in each movie he’d starred in, the same way he would deliver his lines with perfect timing, sometimes with a roguish smile, or deadpan and a coldness in his eyes that was never there off-set. He watched how his long-fingered hands would move, gesturing at the air or steepled together if he were lost in thought. Sometimes Quinn would catch him this way and observe him for stretches of time. James would stare out his office window at the long yard, its manicured grass and the rough walls of pine that grew rampant on the property, to where the sea met the cliffs. His fingertips would touch and rest just beneath his chin, his eyes never leaving the window, and Quinn never leaving the door while he observed him. His father’s profile was perfection against the glare of daylight outside. Quinn would lock them away, these moments of silence, into boxes of memory saved for later when he would cross the path of a mirror. He would gather the courage to look at his own reflection, eventually comparing it to his father’s features. But there was no comparison. There could never be.

Invariably Teresa would find him standing there, tears clouding his vision, and guide him away with soft, papery hands that always smelled of rose petals. She would kneel before him, her curled white hair feathery and so light he always imagined it floating away like smoke on wind.

I always find you crying, Quinn Michael, and there is never a reason.

I’m not like daddy, he would reply, the conversation the same since he could remember, Teresa’s lined face before him, her words like balm.

You are more like your father than you know, and your tears should be reserved for true mourning, not because you want something to change. Beauty is here, she would say, and run her rose-scented fingers over his misshapen brow, down to the twisted bones beneath his cheeks. But that is fleeting and age steals it from us all. Do you know what true beauty is? She would ask. He would simply watch her, waiting for the words. True beauty is doing the right thing when you know no one is looking, and that comes from here. Her fingers would tap his chest, twice, softly. And you, Quinn Michael, have beauty in both places.

Then she would lead him to the kitchen, shooing the cook out so that they could have privacy while she made him cocoa or hot tea. They would sit there for an hour or more, sipping drinks while Teresa gradually drew him out of the cocoon of despair he’d spun for himself until he was ready to go outside.

The outdoors welcomed him in a way that the inside of the house never did. The large rooms, even with their vaulted ceilings, sprawling layouts, and sweeping views through massive windows couldn’t compare to the air and the trees and the architecture of the Earth.

Nature drew him. It called whenever he ran outside, flying from the wide steps into the breezy Maine mornings, the pines shushing and whispering to themselves. He would stand under them some days and listen to their language, trying to discern a pattern, some telltale sign that there was more than the wind at work in their branches. Sometimes needles would drop from far above and land in his hair and on his shoulders, resting there until he plucked them away, always smelling their fresh scent before letting them fall to the ground.

But the sea was where he would always end up. The cliffs that bordered their hundred acres was highland, surrounded by a wrought iron fence that stretched in a half circle beginning at the south cliff edge and ending at the north. The property ran out into a jutting peninsula like a tongue tasting the ocean and dropped away sixty feet or more in places before leveling to a coastal shore of great, flat boulders. Quinn learned to climb down the precarious cliffs when he was only seven, his father coaching him from below, placing his feet into holds that he couldn’t see until he knew the crevices by touch, finding them without effort and knowing in his heart that he could descend the bluffs in the darkness of midnight with ease.