Page 32 of Intersect
He looks over at me for the first time since the conversation began. “I’ve had almost sixty years to get used to it. Sounds like you’re the one in need of sympathy. This girl of yours—there’s no other way to cure the tumor? Radiation?Chemo?”
I grit my teeth as I realize I’m going to lose her whether she time travels or not. “No,” I reply. “And maybe I’m fooling myself, thinking that if we can just talk to the right person, someone who knows what’s going on, we can solve it. But I have totry.”
“I wish I could help,” he says. “But your grandmother was the only person I ever knew who could doit.”
“She never mentioned anyone? A friend? A familymember?”
He shakes his head. “There are rules,” he says. “I don’t understand them, but there are rules about who you tell. She never even told me until she was pregnant—said we had to share a bloodrelative.”
I think about Rose and her initial refusal to help. “What would have happened if she’d told youbefore?”
He shakes his head. “I never knew a lot about it. Didn’t want to know. But she implied if you got caught it was bad for everyoneinvolved.”
I try to ignore the twist of guilt in my stomach. If any teenager was duplicitous enough to get away with breaking some time traveling code of ethics, it wasRose.
We sit in silence for a while longer. Nothing is biting, so eventually we turn toward home. It’s only as we’re climbing off the boat that my grandfather’s hand lands on my shoulder. “I hope you know what you’re doing. It’s a hardlife.”
“Timetraveling?”
He shakes his head, staring at the rope in his weathered hands. “No,” he says. “Being the one who has to staybehind.”
12
QUINN
It feels like days since I’ve seen Nick and it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. Caroline and Trevor took me out last night, but even they couldn’t cheer me up. He’ll be back tomorrow. It’s pathetic how badly I want to beg him to come home tonightinstead.
It will be an unpleasant day on so many fronts, I think, as I pull into the driveway of the house I shared with Jeff. It’s probably the last time I’ll ever come here, but what makes me unhappy right now is the fact that I wound up here in the first place. I never wanted this house. I never wanted the furniture we bought. I never wanted to live in the suburbs. The thrilling part of being in D.C., after my years on the farm, was how lively it was. I loved that I could walk to restaurants, that I never had to drive anywhere if I didn’t want to. It was Jeff who wanted what we had, and I gave up everything again and again, without a fight. It’s almost as if I was scared to ever want anything of my own toomuch.
I walk back into my former home, uncertain where to start. It would be frugal for me to take some of the furniture, but I really don’t want it. I go through the kitchen and find that I don’t really care about anything there either, even though I purchased most of it myself. They weresupposed to’s. Because you’re supposed to have a fancy cappuccino machine, even though I rarely drink cappuccinos. You’re supposed to have the panini press, the salad swiveler. They were things I chose in an attempt to fill the hole in my life, but it was like pouring water into a pit made of sand…far too soon the space it took up siphoned into nothing and left me emptyagain.
I move to the closet instead, carefully folding the clothes I wore to work, the T-shirts I bought on sale at the J Crew outlet or Ann Taylor Loft. After about ten minutes I dump them out of my suitcase and put them in a bag ofdonations.
I’m not taking anything into my new life with Nick that I don’t absolutelylove.
The suits go, as do the blouses, the heels I spent too much on but never wore because they killed my feet. I throw in the pantyhose, the slips, the worn, old bras I held onto for no reason other than frugality. Caroline was right when she said I’d spent my life cowering. From my career choices to my boyfriend to the clothes I wore, my whole life has been about shrinking myself, trying to become less than what I was because it felt like the safest course. With Nick it no longer seemsnecessary.
In the end it only takes two suitcases and a few boxes to hold every single thing I actually love: my favorite jeans, my softest sweaters, the dresses and shoes I can’t live without. A few books, a few photos. It’s astonishing, and depressing, that in a two-bedroom home crammed with stuff, I loved and wanted so little. All of it fits tidily in the trunk of my car. I think I had more stuff in the college dorm room I shared with Caroline than I have rightnow.
I arrange for the bags of clothes I’m giving away to be picked up, and I’m in the process of dragging the last one outside when Jeff turns into the driveway. I freeze, rooted to the spot as if I’ve been caught breaking in. I wasn’t really scared of him before, not the way Nick thought I should be. Now I realize how foolish that was. There’s no reason for him to be home today at all—and certainly not at this hour—unless he somehow knew I washere.
He climbs from the car, stalking toward me with narrowed eyes. “What the fuck do you think you’redoing?”
Inside, I quake, but I refuse to let him see it. “Why aren’t you in Harrisonburg?” Icounter.
“What’s the point?” he asks. “I was only at that job because of you. And you didn’t give ashit.”
The guilt trip he’s given me over the jobs he’s held here is getting a little old. It’s not like I pushed him, and in fact with his current job I lobbied against it because it was such a bad fit. “I never asked you to take thatjob.”
“Don’t try to act like it had nothing to do with you. You could have told me no at any point and you neverdid.”
I swallow and stare at the ground. He’s being an asshole, but he’s also right. I should have shut him down when he first came to D.C., but I was so desperate to keep the peace, to do what my father wanted and to feel safe, that I wound up doing something so much worse: I stayed with someone I was never meant to be with. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “And I know an apology makes up for nothing and can’t give you those years back, but I’m truly sorry I put you throughthis.”
He steps closer. I fight the urge to back away. “Tell me something. How much of this bullshit is about your tumor, and how much of it is about Nick fucking Reilly?” His arms cross over his chest, his legs spread wide as if he will actually block me from heading to my car. “I knew he was after you from the first fucking moment he looked at you. You weren’t evenconscious,and I knew. That’s what this is about, isn’tit?”
My heart beats faster. I’m shit at lying, and he’s right. If I’d never met Nick, I probably would have continued with my blinders on, marrying a man I didn’t deeply love, going through the motions of a life I never wanted. But the truth won’t work here, not with him as angry as he is. “No. It’s not.” Liars look up and to the left, as I recall, which is probably why my gaze desperately wants to veer away from his. “I just want this year, if it’s going to be my last, to beperfect.”
“Bullshit,” Jeff hisses. “You’re covering for him because you know how much trouble he could get into for this. You’re his patient. I’ll bet he’s not even allowed to date you, ishe?”