“Nelle ... I ...” Penelope’s mouth falls open. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Why are you still seeing Quill after he tried to kill James?she thinks, but first, she has to face her fear. She turns to Wallace Quill. Technically a father, but never to her.
His beetle-black eyes blink once. “Hi, Nellie.”
“Don’t call me that,” she seethes, her anger fermenting into bitterness. Suddenly she feels the weight of exhaustion like a thick rope draped across her shoulders. The last thing she wants tonight is an emotionally draining confrontation.
Nelle drops down beside Penelope and thanks Terry as he brings her a cup of tea. To her amusement, he gives his old classmate Wallace a withering glare with his coffee.
“I had a dream,” Nelle sighs. “Both of you were in it, and you were screaming out for me. It was too real to ignore.”
Penelope and Quill flash identical expressions at each other.
“What was that?” Nelle says. “That look.”
Penelope starts to inch out of the booth. “We should have this conversation somewhere more private.”
“I want to have it here,” Nelle says. “What is happening? Why are you two meeting in the middle of the night?”
Quill locks fingers around his mug. “Because I want to end my life.”
Nelle stares at him like he struck her. She searches his aging face for an inkling of a joke, but every line reads dead serious.
“Why?” she asks.
“I shot you, Nellie.”
That wretched nickname jumps off his tongue and crawls spiderlike down her spine.
“And?” She retreats to her tea for some comfort. “Neither of us can die. We both know that, so what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I was aiming for James,” Quill says, and though his eyelid twitches on James’s name—Nelle has the same reaction for different reasons—he goes on, his voice even. “I was so enraged, blinded, that Iwantedto kill him. When the shot went off, and I saw you standing there, that bullet hole in you ...”
He tries to hide his tears. Nelle is glad. She doesn’t want to see him cry for a single fucking second. Not after the years of abuse and trauma she carries like a disease, the flashes of panic and deep-rooted self-hatred that gnaw at her soul. The constantfear. The numbness to pain. The need to run.
“I was relieved that it was you,” Quill admits. “I regretted it as soon as the shot went off. I left thanking the heavens that I hadn’t killed him, though I can’t deny I still want him dead on a level I can’t tame.”
“And you think you should end your life because of it?” Nelle doesn’t really give a shit what happens to him, as long as he never bothers her again, but she does care about her own future, and suddenly this conversation with Quill seems more like an argument with Penelope. Nelle defending her right to live, despite the debris amassing in her shadow.
“I know I should,” Quill says. “It’s what my mother did, when her time came.”
“And you’re fine with him doing this?” Nelle asks Penelope, accusatorily.
Penelope crosses her arms and shrugs. “I know the kind of person Wallace is. If he doesn’t do this, he will only cause more harm to innocent people. And one of those people, eventually, will be James.”
Nelle’s chest pulls tighter with each word, until she snaps and says, “Stop it. Stop speaking so coldly. You did it that morning you came to the cottage. When you told me I should end my life.”
“You misunderstood me,” Penelope says. “I only meant to warn you that, if you find destruction trailing you like it does Wallace, like it did Lily, then you may have to alter your plan.”
Nelle desperately wants to share her experiences, the horrible events she inadvertently caused across the world. People died because she couldn’t control herself, couldn’t keep them out of harm’s way. Out ofherway.
Pain will follow me wherever I go.The thought intrudes in her head, and she can’t shake it out.
Quill sets his coffee on its saucer. “So, are we ready?”
“What, you want to end it in here?” Nelle stammers, a little too loudly. She glances over her shoulder, but Terry is preoccupied with a shelf of mugs behind the bar.
“Of course not.” He drops a folded ten on the table. “But I wanted a cup of coffee before I go.”
