“No, no, no, if he finds you in here, he’ll makeassumptions.”
“But won’t he—?”
“Father—no, dammit!Wallaceis not a reasonable man, James.” The color leaches from her cheeks.
James hears pure terror in her voice, so he risks peeking into the hallway. Photographs line the walls. Quill holding up a book, Quillstanding with a baby in a field of daises, Quill and a suntanned woman kissing on a striped towel.
“Down the hall. Through the living room. The door leads out back,” Nelle instructs him. “Go through there, and you can run to the woods.”
James, realizing that he is half a foot taller, kisses the top of her head. She blinks, flustered.
“Wish me luck.”
Each whimper of the hardwood floor makes James flinch. Before he enters the living room, he checks around the corner. The furniture is old and floral printed, facing a blocky TV. Curtains pulled shut. Maroon shaggy carpet. Space heater filmed by dust. Fifteen steps to the door, burst outside, get out.
Click.
James freezes, staring down the barrel of a pearl-handled derringer, Quill’s steady wrist at the other end.
“Hello, there.” A disconcerting smirk twitches Quill’s face. “I don’t remember scheduling a playdate.”
“You’re sick.”
“Really, Doc?” Quill doesn’t lower his gun as he steps closer. Closer, closer, until that cold metal is pressed against James’s forehead. Safety released. “But I feel fine.”
“Don’t hurt him!” Nelle yells from her bedroom.
Quill’s eyebrow cocks. “She fancies you, does she?”
“She’s my friend.” He contemplates throwing a punch. “You piece of shit.”
A growling laugh bubbles up in Quill’s throat.
James glares at him. “What’s funny?”
With that gun against his head, he’s strangely not scared anymore. If he dies, he dies, oh well. But if he fights back ...
“You’re more amusing than I thought you’d be.” Quill points his gun to a chair beside the fireplace. Within feet of the exit. “Sit down. It’s story time.”
He doesn’t move.
“I’ll make it quick,” Quill says. “Promise.”
With no other choice, James sits. Back straight, legs tense, ready to bolt at the first chance.
Quill crosses his legs on the couch, pistol resting on his thigh, pointed at James. He clears his throat and adjusts a framed photograph on the side table, a Polaroid of himself and Nelle when she was around twelve. She shows off a gap-toothed grin, her freckles pepper, her hair corn silk.
“I used to have a dream,” he says, “which I carried with me from the time I was a child. To be an author.”
James thinks back to his own childhood, mindlessly flipping through books and pretending he had written them. Signing sheets of notebook paper during math class until his signature was consistent enough.
Quill grins like the Cheshire cat. “You have a similar dream?”
James hates that he is that easy to read.
“I toiled throughout my teenage years, writing whiny, pretentious books. Then I wrote a tragic love story, as all are in the end, and my dream came true. Hallelujah, I had a book published! It was a hit. I was only twenty-five, and Bianca was pregnant with Eleanor—” Quill sinks into the couch cushions and sighs. “They were my world. It took only three months to know Bianca was the one, but I fell in love with Eleanor the second I knew about her. I read books to her,Moby-Dickand things like that, hoping she’d catch my wildfire for writing.”
Quill stares off for a moment, smiling to himself.
