"Worst crayon color?"
"Burnt sienna. What is up with that, anyway? They might as well call it Vomit." Adrienne grins, a flash of white in her face. "Best jeans?"
"Levi's 501s. Ugliest CO?"
"Oh, the one who comes on after midnight that needs to bleach her moustache. You ever see the size of her ass? Hello, honey, let me introduce you to Miss Jenny Craig."
Then we are both laughing, lying back on the cold ground and feeling winter seep into us by osmosis.
When we finally catch our breath, there is a hollow in my chest, a sinking feeling that here, of all places, I should not be capable of joy. "Best place to be?" Adrienne asks after a moment.
On the other side of this wall. In my bed, at home. Anywhere with Nathaniel.
"Before," I answer, because I know she'll understand.
In one of Biddeford's coffee shops, Quentin sits on a stool too small for a gnome. One sip from his mug, and hot chocolate burns the roof of his mouth. "Holy shit," he mutters, holding a napkin to his mouth, just as Tanya walks in the door in her nurse's outfit-scrubs, printed with tiny teddy bears.
"Just shut up, Quentin," she says, sliding onto the stool beside him. "I'm not in the mood to hear you make fun of my uniform."
"I wasn't." He gestures to the mug, then just gives up the battle. "What can I get you?"
He orders Tanya a decaf mochaccino. "You like it, then?" he asks.
"Coffee?"
"Nursing."
He had met Tanya at the University of Maine when she was a student, too. What's this, he'd asked at the end of their first date, trailing his fingers over her collarbone. A clavicle, she said. And this? His hand had run down the xylophone of her spine. The coccyx. He'd spread his fingers over the curve of her hip. This is the part of you I like best, he said. Her head had fallen back, her eyes drifting shut as he bared the skin and kissed her there. Ilium, she'd whispered.
Nine months later, there had been Gideon. They were married, a mistake, six days before he was born.
They stayed married for less than a year. Since then Quentin had supported his son financially, if not emotionally.
"I must hate it, if I've stuck with it that long," Tanya says, and it takes Quentin a moment to realize that she is only answering his question. Something must have crossed his face, because she touches her hand to his. "I'm sorry, that was rude. And here you were just being polite."
Her coffee arrives. She blows on it before taking a sip. "Saw your name in the paper," Tanya says.
"They got you down here for that priest's murder."
Quentin shrugs. "Pretty simple case, actually."
"Well, sure, if you look at the news." But Tanya shakes her head, all the same.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That the world isn't black and white, but you never did learn that."
He raises his brows. "I didn't learn it? Who threw whom out?"
"Who found whom screwing that girl who looked like a mouse?"
"There were mitigating circumstances," Quentin says. "I was drunk." He hesitates, then adds, "And she looked more like a rabbit, really."
Tanya rolls her eyes. "Quentin, it's been sixteen and a half years and you're still being a lawyer about it."
"Well, what do you expect?"
"For you to be a man," Tanya replies simply. "For you to admit that even the Great and Powerful Brown is capable of making a mistake once or twice a century." She pushes away her mug, although she isn't even half-finished. "I've always wondered if you're so good at what you do because it takes the heat off you. You know, if making everyone else walk the straight and narrow makes you righteous by association." She fishes in her purse and slaps five dollars on the counter. "Think about that when you're prosecuting that poor woman."
