Cruel World(6)

“That was your choice, not mine.”

“Damn it, Quinn!” James slapped the desk with his hand and a porcelain paperweight in the shape of a dragon jumped and toppled over. “You don’t understand. You haven’t been out there. What if they ostracize you, laugh at you, hurt you?”

“What if they don’t?”

James’s brow crinkled, and he leaned away from the desk, rubbing at his mouth with one hand. The rain tapped against the window as the day fell closer to night.

“I won’t take that risk.”

Quinn stood and righted the porcelain dragon. Its mouth snarled at him in a permanent roar, white teeth painted red at their tips.

“I love you, dad, but someday it won’t be your choice.”

Quinn turned away and let himself out of the office and only allowed the tears to cloud his vision when he was halfway to his room.





Chapter 3



Four Years Past



“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

The words were almost carried away by the wind and the sound of the pounding surf sixty feet below them. Quinn waited for Teresa to turn to him, but she kept her eyes focused on the shining sea. They sat with their legs dangling over the cliff’s edge, his feet extending almost a full twelve inches past his teacher’s.

“I know.”

“How?”

“You’ve been quiet the last two weeks, and I could hear it in your voice yesterday when you said goodbye to your dad.”

Quinn turned to the old woman, and she was old, there was no denying the fact anymore. Her hair had lost its life, and instead of wearing it in curls, she pinned it back with two tin combs etched with swirling, concentric designs in the metal. The lines in her face, merely suggestions of increasing age before, were fully embedded now, folded dark and heavy near the borders of her eyes and mouth.

“Do you think he knows?” Quinn asked.

“No, but he’s your father. No matter what he says, he’s known somewhere inside that you’d leave one day. Parents always know.”

He turned his focus back to the ocean. A fishing trawler bobbed among the waves over a mile offshore, a dark speck that glinted, catching the sun as it rose and fell heading out to deeper water.

“Did your son leave?”

Teresa leaned forward, letting her gaze fall to the breaking waves far below them.

“You’ll need to tell him when he gets home tonight; he’ll want to start setting something up for you,” she said, as if not hearing his question.

“Like what?”

“Like a house and a car, money, college if you want.”

“I’ve already completed a college education, you told me yourself last month.”

“There’s always more to learn, Quinn Michael.”

He kicked his feet and looked down at the big rocks, unchanged since he could remember. They were lucky, steadfast in their place, not unsure of anything. Not even the sea could move them if they became set somewhere.

“I wanted to leave when I turned eighteen, but there was always a reason not to. Now it’s two years later and I can feel myself wavering. One minute I’ll be so excited to walk through those gates, my stomach will flip on itself, and the next it’ll be a stone thinking about leaving dad and you. I know why I’ve stayed as long as I have, and it’s not because dad forbade it. I could’ve climbed the cliffs around the fences a long time ago. It’s fear. Fear of the unknown. And compared with how safe I am here, fear’s always won out and kept me from leaving.”

Quinn pointed out to where the trawler was barely visible.

“My future is like that ship. It’s dwindling with each minute I stay here, and soon it will be out of sight.”

Teresa smiled and patted his thigh once.

“Your future isn’t that ship. It’s the ocean.” She put one frail arm across his shoulders. “Come on, traveler, let’s get back to the house and get you packed.”

When they stepped inside, his father’s voice carried to them out of the living room where he sang in perfect harmony with Frank Sinatra, belting out I’ve got you under my skin. They came even with the doorway and Quinn stopped, glancing at Teresa who’s mouth turned up in a grin that mirrored his own.

His father had a can of beer in one hand and was doing a graceful, sliding dance across the hardwood floor in time to the beat. His eyes shut as he hit a high note, his voice not carrying the velvety timber of Sinatra’s but hanging alongside it in rough accompaniment. The song ended and on cue, Quinn and Teresa began to clap.