Ian and Arthur both got to their feet.
“We’ll walk you out. I have some work to do at home,” Ian said. Then he nodded politely to the sheriff. “Sheriff Henderson.”
Henderson grunted.
Once they were on the street, Ian turned to Quinn. “Look, I’m not happy that you’re back in town for the obvious reasons. I don’t like the situation we’re facing. But the thing with Charlie, that’s something I’m sure you’ll handle in the best way you know how.”
“Yes,” Arthur added. “And if there’s anything we can do to help with that situation, let us know. We have experience in that fatherhood thing.”
They both looked at him so warmly, smiling at him genuinely, that Quinn felt a bit choked up. He shook both of their hands and just nodded, before they all got into their vehicles.
When Quinn turned his head to see if he could back out of the parking spot, he saw Jimmy standing across the road with a woman Quinn assumed was his current girlfriend. Jimmy didn’t look happy at all.Well fuck.
Quinn lifted his hand to his cousin and got a tight nod in return. He wasn’t sure what Jimmy thought he’d just seen, but he had a pretty good idea. The problem was that if he’d stop and talk to his cousin, it would look more like a denial than the truth.
Sometimes Quinn hated his fucking family.
Chapter 8
The diner looked exactly like Aaron remembered, down to the duct tape holding some of the old vinyl cushions in the booths together. It smelled the same too: oil and bacon grease and salt. It made his stomach growl. He wondered if the kids from the high school still hung out here every afternoon because there was fuck all else to do in Spruce Creek, but it was the middle of the day, so he had no way of knowing.
He took a seat at a booth, catching Charlie’s eye as she worked the counter. She looked surprised to see him and, as soon as she was done ringing up some woman’s coffee, came walking over to him. She was wearing the same mint green dresses the waitresses had been wearing a decade ago, with a white apron tied around her waist.
She handed Aaron a menu. “You finally got out of the house, huh?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at the menu and then set it down on the cracked laminate tabletop. “Were you going to tell me you had a kid? With Quinn?”
“No, and no,” she said, lifting her chin. “Who the hell told you anyway? Did Sheriff Henderson—” And then she snorted suddenly. “It was Quinn, wasn’t it? He came by to see you?”
Aaron jerked his head in a nod.
Charlie narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, as though she was searching for something in his expression. Aaron tried to keep his face expressionless, but Charlie widened her eyes and gasped. “Holy shit! You fucked him, didn’t you?”
“Keep your voice down!” Aaron hissed, looking around the diner, but the place was practically empty and the only other customers, an elderly couple engaged in conversation, were seated on the other side of the dining area.
“You did!”
Aaron wanted to crawl under the table and die. “He said I was still hot.”
Charlie squawked out a laugh, and then slapped her hands over her mouth. “God. You two! Nothing’s changed, has it? Not when it comes to him.”
“If you mean I’m still a dumbass teenager who thinks with his dick when it comes to him, then, yeah.” Aaron rolled his eyes. “It was a mistake, and I’m a fucking idiot.”
“Well,” Charlie said, “at least your dumb mistake with Quinn isn’t likely to leave you with an entirely new human being you have to raise, is it?”
Aaron wondered at his sudden twinge of jealousy, as though Charlie had slept with Quinn yesterday and not a decade ago. “How the hell did that even happen?”
“Tequila, mostly,” Charlie said. She glanced around the diner and then slid into the seat across from his. “I was lonely and angry, he was lonely and angry, and I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. He was still hung up on you, and I was trying to figure out if I was really missing out on what all the other girls were talking about, and it was a disaster from start to finish. But in the famous words of Dr. Ian Malcolm fromJurassic Park, ‘life, uh, finds a way.’” She shrugged. “And then, a few weeks later, he and his mom left town as well. I didn’t even know I was pregnant until he was gone.”
Aaron shook his head. “Jesus, Charlie. You had to deal with that all on your own?”
She twisted her mouth. “My dad helped out at the start. He was actually pretty good when Lennox was born. It was the longest I’d seen him clean in years. So it was okay for a while, until he relapsed. But me and Lennox, we’re getting by.”
Aaron was suddenly struck by the tragedy of those simple words. Getting by. Charlie had dreamed of the world once. She’d dreamed of going to Hollywood and being a famous actress, and Aaron had never doubted she could do it. She’d told him that she’d have millions of dollars and a house by the ocean, and another one in Vermont for the holidays. He thought of the postcard she used to carry around as a bookmark, with some pretty landscape on it—a lake surrounded by trees in autumnal shades of red and gold. Some place she remembered visiting as a kid, back before her dad had totally checked out thanks to his drug habit. He couldn’t remember the name of the town now, but Charlie had talked about it like it was magical.
“Is he a good kid?” he asked.
She smiled, and her eyes lit up. “He’s the best. I mean, obviously I’m biased, but he’s a great kid. He’s smart as a whip, and he’s mostly well behaved, and he’skind, Aaron. He’s got the biggest heart, though God only knows who he inherited that from, right?”
