Cruel World(18)

“Teresa’s dead.”

She paused for an instant and then backed the rest of the way out of the house.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and hurried to where Foster’s extended-cab Ford waited, the darker shadow of Foster himself in the driver’s seat. Quinn moved to the doorway and watched them reverse until the groundskeeper could turn the vehicle around. Mallory removed her mask and stared out at him, her face streaked with fresh tears. She didn’t wave as they accelerated away, their taillights flashing once before the truck rounded the first curve and disappeared.

He stood there for a long time, his hand resting on the doorjamb, eyes focused on the spot where the truck had vanished. The wind pushed its way through the trees and found his face, cool and still holding the last bite of winter. Silence, pure and unbroken.

After a while, he shut the door and stared at the kitchen counter, the partially open pantry, a muddy print from Foster’s shoe. He made his way to the fridge and took out a cold can of beer from the top shelf, gripping it tight. He wound his arm back to hurl it through one of the kitchen windows but stopped, breathing hard as he forced himself to swallow the jagged lump in his throat. He leaned against the nearby countertop and squeezed the can again, waiting for it to explode in a flurry of foam. His fingers ached and a pain began to pulse behind his eyes. Maybe this was how it started.

He trudged up the stairs, opening the beer as he went. The smell from Teresa’s room had crept into the hall and invaded his nostrils. Quinn closed his eyes and entered his father’s room.

James lay on his side facing the window, his legs drawn up beneath him. Quinn circled the bed, pausing to grab the straw from the water glass and stopped short.

The drawn guitar string inside him tightened and then snapped.

His father’s face was pale and slack, a melting wax likeness of who he had been. One arm hugged a pillow close to his still chest and his eyes were half lidded as if he were only drowsing.

A pressing hand Quinn couldn’t see forced him down, his legs folding beneath him until he sat. The beer fell from his grasp and spilled on the floor, a faint chugging coming from its mouth until it was gone and all was quiet in the house except for the sound of his weeping.





Chapter 6



Three Graves



He buried them side by side beneath the biggest pine on the north lawn.

Despite the shade the reaching branches provided, the ground was soft from the melting snow and came away in chunks with the shovel. He’d wrapped his father and Teresa in the bed sheets and carried them down once the graves were dug. As he placed them in the holes, he ignored the way the bodies felt beneath the wrappings, insubstantial and watery, as if they would pool out onto the ground at any moment and soak into the soil the way the snow had done.

He stood on the side of the holes looking down at their shapes, letting the time slip away and the breeze chill the sweat he’d worked up digging. His mouth tried to form words, something of meaning, but every time he began to speak his throat closed, cinching off any speech. When he started to shiver, he picked up the shovel again and filled in the graves, humming a song beneath his breath to drown out the sound the dirt made when it fell. It wasn’t until he finished that he realized it was the Sinatra tune his father had been singing the night he came home from his trip.

Quinn left the shovel beneath the tree, stuck in the ground at the head of what could be a third grave. The flickering pain behind his eyes was still there but dimmer than before and his skin was warm, not cold. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed. At the door to the house, he stopped and looked down the driveway, dead leaves skipping across its divide. Inside he poured the last of the broth into a Tupperware bowl and covered it before walking down the silent drive.

Graham’s house was the first on the left, tucked into the thick forest behind a short turn in the narrow road. His father had spared no expense on the employee homes, building each with its own character and style. Graham’s was a brick, cape cod style with two dormers and gray shutters. The chef had said his Nordic blood demanded a sauna, and James had complied upon hiring him, building a small addition onto the already completed house.

The smoke that almost always curled from the little chimney atop the sauna was absent as he approached and Quinn sighed, mounting the steps to the front porch. He knocked hard on the front door and waited only seconds before trying the knob. It turned and he stepped inside.

The house smelled much like the kitchen he’d just left. Garlic, cilantro, and the scent of homemade dinner rolls permeated the air, but beneath it there was something else. Quinn paused after closing the door and set the chicken broth down on the counter.