“What do you mean?” she asked warily.
“Well, we know that Tiffany is Lucy’s mom. And that Lucy isn’t her real name.” Liz pinned a stare so cool, so direct on her eldest daughter that Quinn felt herself lean back into Walker. She could feel it coming, the coup de grace: “And we know that she’s a Sanford.”
For a moment, Nora’s face didn’t change at all. She peered at her mother, unblinking, like Liz had spoken in a foreign language and the words did not compute. But then she folded a little, her shoulders sagging and her mouth, too, the wind in her sails gone suddenly still. All the hope and ferocity that had held her taut fell slack.
Quinn was there to catch her.
It was an awkward embrace, made even more uncomfortable because Nora was still fighting it, still pushing away. Still angry. “What am I going to do?” she whispered over and over, pulling back from Quinn and then clutching her wrists so hard Quinn had to stifle a cry.
“Come on, Nora,” Liz said. She stepped forward and enveloped both of her daughters. They stood there stiffly for a moment, uneasy in the fragile affection that was second nature to so many. Not them. Not their family. But they were good at other things. “Sanfords get shit done,” Liz said with conviction, and Quinn gaped at her mother’s use of language. It was so out of character it was downright unsettling. But Liz went on: “Let’s fix this thing. Just tell us what’s going on so we can figure out what to do.”
And Nora did. The story was halting and spartan, and in some ways brought up more questions than it answered. But Walker supplied their motley crew with tall glasses of lemonade and thick sandwiches of his homemade bread slathered with unsalted butter and roasted red pepper hummus. They ate standing up, quickly, like they were fueling for whatever awaited them outside the walls of the cabin. And though it felt strange at first, Walker kept working, kept slicing bread and spreading it thick, pressing sandwiches and coffee and tall glasses of cold lemonade in their hands. They ate. They talked. They felt stronger.
“I did what I had to do,” Nora said, but it sounded more like a confession than an apology. “Tiffany said that JJ didn’t want anything to do with her—that he told her to abort the baby.” Nora stalled, reaching for words, for a way to explain everything that had happened and her role in it. She settled on: “It’s my fault. All of it. I talked her into keeping Everlee.”
“I’m glad that you did,” Quinn said quietly.
“I convinced her that we could bring up a child together.” Nora shook her head. “Without JJ. Without any Sanford family help at all.”
“I still don’t understand why you felt like you had to do it alone,” Quinn said.
“Because even if JJ didn’t want her, Dad would have taken control. He would have forced Tiff to take care of the problem if he didn’t want the scandal, or fought to have Tiffany labeled an unfit mother and removed Everlee from her custody if it suited his purposes.”
Quinn saw her mother start to say something, but she clamped her lips down tight. Nora was right and they all knew it.
“Why’d you call her Lucy?” Quinn asked. “If her name is Everlee, why didn’t you just say so?”
“I was afraid it would make you curious,” Nora admitted. “She’s named after the bridge. It happened at the Everly dance—only a couple days after our high school graduation. JJ was home from college, remember? And Tiff was masochistic enough to want that reminder every day of her life.” Nora drummed her fingers on the countertop, an indication of her growing impatience and the urgency of the situation. “I thought that if I showed up with a mysterious little girl and called her Everlee—an obvious connection to our community—you’d start wondering. You’d see hints in her mannerisms, her long legs, her eyes. She’s the spitting image of JJ—down to how she hums herself to sleep—but I thought if you weren’t looking for it, maybe you wouldn’t see it.”
“We saw it,” Quinn said. “Walker knew the second he laid eyes on her.”
“And now?” Walker said as he cleared away the glasses. “Who is this man? Why are you so afraid that Lucy”—he caught himself—“Everlee is with him?”
Nora shivered a little and Quinn felt a tremor pass through her own body. “He’s evil,” Nora said simply. “He’s going to hurt her. And Tiffany. Both of them. I don’t know.”
“Why’d he show up at Malcolm’s?” Quinn asked. “If Tiffany was with him, why’d he bother to track you down?”
“To let me know he won,” Nora said. “He has exactly what he wants. And Tiff isn’t strong enough to stop him.”
“Then we’ll have to.” The voice came from outside of their circle, from the hallway where Quinn suddenly realized the cabin door still stood wide open. The summer sun was careening down the hallway, bouncing off the walls and illuminating the place where Bennet stood haloed in the slanting afternoon light. He was dressed in street clothes, but there was a radio on his hip and as Quinn watched him it crackled to life, spilling static and indistinct phrases into the silence. It sounded very official. Very ominous.
It made everything feel stark, surreal—and filled Quinn with an indefinable fear.
NORA
THERE WAS AN AWKWARD beat of silence while the whole room watched Walker regard Bennet. His face was blank, impassive as he looked between his wife and the newcomer, this stranger with a slightly thickening middle and generic good looks. Bennet was neat and clean shaven, immaculate compared to Walker’s ripped jeans, wrinkled T-shirt, and five o’clock shadow. Walker’s rowdy hair was escaping the short, sloppy ponytail he had pulled it into at the back of his head, and the wiry curls were little exclamation marks around his smooth forehead. The two men couldn’t possibly be more different.
But in the second before things got downright uncomfortable, Quinn reached for Walker and slid two fingers through the belt loop of his sagging jeans. Her touch was possessive, unmistakable, and the strange hush in the room evaporated.
“What can I do to help?” Bennet asked.
“What do you know?” Nora spun on him, wary at the sudden appearance of a cop and yet grateful for the authority in his tone.
“Not much.” Bennet took a small step back and put his hands on his hips. “I take it we’ve got a missing girl.”
“She’s not exactly missing,” Walker reminded everyone. “She’s with her mother.”
“And a man,” Liz cut in. “But he’s not her father.”
Nora wasn’t ready to go there yet. “We think she’s in danger,” she said before her mother could proclaim JJ the father and complicate things further.