“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
—Terry Pratchett, Diggers
Quinn’s head was still spinning from what had happened at the garage. She needed to speak with her mother straightaway. She was a landscape architect and Quinn would bet a month’s salary she’d be able to tell her where to find this particular stratum of pine trees. She was also dying to sit somewhere quiet and comb through the names Lucas had given her. And she was itching to walk on over to the coffeehouse and talk to Maxie, like the Clink-n-Drink ladies had suggested, but she had other places to go. She had promised to cover the store for her parents so they could have some much-needed time to themselves.
Guilt needled her: she hadn’t been much of an employee these last few weeks. She really needed to make it up to them. Quinn arrived at Prose & Scones, said her hellos to everyone, and then headed straight for her office.
There was no way she was going to be able to wait until she got home that night to scan through Lucas’s lists. She was dying to take a peek, to see if anyone in the Hauser family owned a 2013 Nissan Altima or a 2013 Honda Accord sedan. Doubtful, but she still had to double-check. Quinn fired up her computer so she could track down where Scott’s parents lived. She had been over to his place a long time ago, a swank—and personality free—condo in Tyson’s Corner. But never to the Hauser’s home.
Opening her bag, she grabbed all the pages; then a hard knock made her jump.
The door swung open. And it was the last person she’d expected to come by.
It was Daria. No habit, no wimple, just a simple peasant-style dress and flip-flops.
Daria stood in front of her, hands on her hips, face beet red. “I figured I’d grow old and feeble-minded and die before you came by the abbey to apologize. So I’m here, saving you a trip and me anymore aggravation.”
No “Hello.” No “How are you?” No small talk.
Pure Daria Caine.
She may have barged in on a boat christened Attitude, but this was her best friend in front of her, and with one look, she knew Daria had been experiencing just as much anguish as she had been over the last week.
And just like that, whatever anger Quinn had been holding onto evaporated as soon as her brain caught up to what her eyes were taking in.
Quinn slumped in her chair. “I know, I know … I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m sorry too.” Daria fidgeted with her cross necklace. “I can’t even remember the last time we had a fight like that.”
“That’s because we’ve never had a fight like that.”
Tears welled in Daria’s eyes. “I really am sorry for kicking you out of dinner.”
Quinn swallowed the knot in her throat. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “Oh course I am. You missed a really delicious dessert.”
That did it. The tension broke, and the cousins laughed and hugged it out.
“I missed you, Hufflepuff.”
“You too, Slytherin.”
Quinn felt eyes on her, and sure enough, standing front row center over her cousin’s shoulder, right outside her office door, was, well, most of the family.
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”
Aunt Johanna laughed. “Then close the door! The whole town can hear you.”
“Good idea.” Quinn walked over and shut the door.
Once inside, Quinn pulled out a tucked-away stool for her cousin to sit on.
“Listen, I didn’t mean for you to have to be the one to come over. I’ve just been trying to comb through the mess and figure out what I wanted to say.”
Daria tossed her hands up, an exasperated expression coloring her features. “Quinn, this is you and me. When have we ever needed to filter what we say?”
“Honestly? Ever since you decided to become a nun.”
Instead of defensiveness, Daria just offered a sad smile. “Can you help me understand why my decision upsets you so much?”
That was a reasonable question.
“I don’t know if I have an answer to that. I guess if I had been around to see your evolution in this direction, I’d understand better. It just seemed out of nowhere to me.”
“I get that.”
“You don’t talk to me about that kind of thing. At least not anymore.”
Daria wasn’t so quick to respond now either.
Quinn went on. “Listen, I don’t want to push you to talk or anything. It’s just—”
Daria closed her eyes.
Ah crap, did I blow it again?
Quinn kept rambling. “Nothing you could ever say or do would make me love you less. I hope you know that. I’m talking big love, like way up here.” She reached up high, flopping her hand back and forth. “You know what? I’m doubling down. I’m like Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love levels over up in—”
“Stop! Stop talking. I know you love me.”
“So then what’s the prob—”
“Raj broke up with me because I wasn’t Indian,” Daria blurted out.
Quinn wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “I don’t understand.”
Daria sighed, slumping in her seat. “Honestly? Neither do I.”
“But you were tight with his family! They adored you. You went on holiday to India with them—twice!”
“They were fine with me as the girlfriend. They preferred that if he was going to “sow his oats,” it was with one white woman instead of dozens. They basically kept me close so they could keep an eye on him.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could anyone think her cousin wasn’t good enough?
Of course, she understood the arguments against cultural assimilation on an intellectual level, but Daria was brilliant—and hilarious. Compassionate and original. And she was beautiful. Even though she had always despised any kind of popularity contest back when she was Elizabeth, her cousin had won the Homecoming Queen title two years in a row. And those silly high school titles were the least interesting facts about her.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Daria picked at her fingernails. “There’s more.”
Quinn held her breath.
“He said he loved me, but he could never have a ‘jailbird’ as the mother of his children.”
Oh no he didn’t.
“He said what to you now?”
Daria let out a shaky sigh. Quinn could tell she was shoring up everything she had so as not to cry.
Watching Daria trying to hold it together sparked a deep, almost primal anger. Quinn could feel her cheeks and neck getting hot. “Tell me.” Her voice cracked. “Please tell me he didn’t have the nerve to say that to you.”
“Yes, those were his exact words.”
“Wait a second—you have an expunged juvenile record, which means you don’t have any kind of record anymore. Besides, it was for taking a couple of joy rides and hanging out on school property. You never got caught for anything else. Big deal!”
Daria met her gaze, her hurt scoring through her. “Evidently it was to him.”
Quinn grabbed her messenger bag, stuffing the papers back in and taking out the keys to her truck, holding them between her fingers like a weapon. “I am going to kill him. I have a big brother, a dad for a lawyer, and a shovel. No one will miss him.”
Daria put her hand out like a stop sign. “You will do no such thing. Sit down.” She leaned closer. “Please.”
Quinn plopped her bum on the hard seat. “How can you be so calm? Don’t you want to gouge his eyes out?”
“Oh, trust me, I did,” she said with a half-hearted laugh. “When he left—and then you left—I spiraled. But this time, instead of drinking too much and acting like an idiot, like I would have in college, I started going to church. A lot. At first, I’ll admit, it was an escape. But then, I don’t know … something clicked for me. It was like a peace I’ve searched for had been waiting for me this whole time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t share this with you. It’s just that … have you ever experienced something so painful that it took all your energy just to survive it, never mind having to retell it to someone else?”
Yes, every time Aiden Harrington pats my head, I keep each cringe-worthy moment all to myself.
Quinn knew it wasn’t the same thing—not even close. But she had nothing else from her own life to compare it to. At that moment, she felt like an overprotected, sheltered baby.
Daria wasn’t done. “Besides, if I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t have to live my humiliation outside my own head.”
Quinn grasped her hand. “I understand, but you have no reason to feel humiliated. He’s the one who should be embarrassed for being such a poor excuse of a human being. He basically led you on for three years.”
Daria squeezed it back. “I just …”
“What?”
She met Quinn’s eye. “I just never knew someone could be so callous. And I have to admit I’ve been wondering … what’s wrong with me that I never picked up on that side of him before? I prided myself on being shrewd, a good judge of character. But looking back, I had some real blind spots when it came to him. No wonder pride’s a sin … it’s like believing I could read into someone’s heart, like I had some unique gift or something. What a crock that turned out to be.”
It was a special kind of agony, seeing someone she loved suffering so. Now that Daria had abandoned the tough-girl facade, Quinn was bearing witness to her pain: raw and exposed, the kind that hurt to watch.
“Listen, if the church gives you comfort, if you’ve developed this rad relationship with the big JC, then you have my full support.”
Daria wiped tears away. “I appreciate that. But, you know, I’m not one hundred percent sure this is the life I want either. I have doubts, just like everybody else. That’s why the process takes years. It’s why I’m a novitiate.”
Quinn let her words sink in. “Makes sense.”
Both of them got quiet.
Daria took a cleansing breath. “I’m sorry I got so defensive the other night.”
“And I’m sorry I picked a nice dinner to bring up my issues with you.”
“Well, that’s not all on you. The Reverend Mother played a hand in that.”
Quinn grimaced. “Yeah, I know, and I am not happy with her right now.”
“Don’t be mad. It’s her job to gauge my readiness, and she’s all about complete transparency. I knew she’d poke the bear. That’s why I was so nervous that night.”
Quinn still wasn’t thrilled, but what Daria said made sense. “I guess I get it.”
“So, I’m waiting.”
Quinn tilted her head. “Waiting for what? I already said I was sorry.”
She laughed. “That’s not what I meant. I’m waiting to hear an update on your progress with finding Tricia’s killer. I know there’s no way you just sat on your hands this past week.”
Quinn’s face brightened. “You know me so well. I have a lot to tell you.” She got the pages out of her bag again and handed them over, explaining everything that had happened thus far.
“So, unfortunately, they’re not in alphabetical order. Do you mind going through them and seeing if you can find a Hauser or any other name we’d recognize?”
She held out both hands, pretending to grab air. “Gimme … the highlighter too.” Daria opened the cap, putting the highlighter tip right under her nose. “Is it weird that I love the smell of markers?”
“Yes. But I like the smell of gasoline. So, there ya go.”
Quinn got on her computer to look up the Hauser home. It’s scary how easy it is to find where people live.
“Looks like they’re all the way over by Wolftrap.”
“What street?”
Quinn squinted at the screen. “Foxstone Drive. Know it?”
“Yeah, it’s near Foxstone Park.”
She stared at her cousin. “How is it I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never even heard of that park?”
Daria gazed up from the pages. “I don’t know. It’s definitely a woodsier section of Vienna. Lots of pine trees, but that’s hardly enough to even be a correlation. We have pine trees everywhere.”
Quinn eyed the couple of branches she had tucked away, wrapped in one of Lucas’s rags from the garage. Was it also weird she was walking around with branches in her messenger bag? She needed to get these to her mother to examine.
Let your mom and dad have their day off. Everyone needs time as a couple, even people who have been married forever.
Ensuring marital bliss for the parental unit wasn’t Quinn’s only motivation for delay. Truth was, she had a ton of work to do. The deadline to finish Rachel’s project was coming up fast, and she still had a quarter of the job left to complete.
“Do you mind if I work on Granny Nora’s journal while you comb through the names?”
Daria glanced up for a split second, eyed the diary on Quinn’s desk, and shrugged. “Why are you even asking? We’re in your office. Of course you have to work.” She went right back to scanning the pages. “All right, so it appears the Hausers do not own an Altima or an Accord sedan. These are only the 2013 models registered?”
“Yep.”
“There’s a lot.”
Quinn chuckled. “No kidding. It hurt my eyes just looking at it.” She opened the journal and checked the new spine she had glued in. “Looks good,” she mumbled to herself, reaching for the linen thread and needle. She laid the thread next to the journal’s original stitching. “That looks like a match to me. What do you think?”
Daria craned her neck for a peek. “Yeah, it’s ivory. It’s fine.”
“Not a real details girl, are ya?”
“Not those kinds of details. Better you than me.”
Quinn threaded the needle, perusing the pages as she stitched the binding. She started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Daria asked.
“I’m just reading some of the diary as I fix it—and even though young Nora was madly in love with this man named David, Rachel’s great-grandparents kept inviting different single men from the congregation over to dinner. Every Shabbat, a new face. Guess they didn’t like David too much.”
Daria giggled, snorting a little. “That’s right out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding!”
Quinn clucked her tongue. “Poor Toula.”
“Poor Ian.”
Quinn cut the end of the thread with her scissors, shaped like bunny ears. “Well, it worked out for them. I love that movie.”
“Me too.”
Quinn eyed the pages in Daria’s hands, noting she was on the last one. “Any luck?”
Daria made a stink face. “Nope, that would’ve been too easy.” She handed them back, and Quinn shoved them in her messenger bag. “What time is it?”
Quinn glanced at her computer screen and gawked. “Gee Zeus, we need to go.”
“Yeah, I gotta motor.” Daria tucked the stool back under the desk.
“Hey, so what made you finally come over here today?”
She chewed her bottom lip. “Um … Bash called.”
Quinn stopped packing up. “What?”
She swore under her breath. “Crud, I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”
Quinn’s brows shot north.
“He came by after your little field trip to that mechanic—whatever his name—and said he was over us fighting and, besides, it was obvious you and I were a much better crime duo than you and him.”
“He just can’t help himself. He has to try and fix everything for everybody.”
Daria suppressed a grin. “He’s not the only one.”
Quinn ignored that comment. “I’m surprised that’s all it took for you to come over.”
“Well, the Reverend Mother did say I need to work on not being so prideful.”
“You’re stubborn is what you are.”
Daria gave her a pretend glare. “Don’t push it. I only allot myself so many acts of contrition a week, and I’m fresh out.”
“Fair enough. Now let’s get out of here. It’s been a day.” She turned off her computer.
“Oh, and he wanted to thank me too.”
“For what?”
“For the great advice he was never supposed to hear—about putting real effort in with Rachel for a change.”
Now it was Quinn’s turn to chew on her lip or a hangnail—anything to not have to respond.
“You are sooo busted!”
Quinn let out a squeak. “I know! But you weren’t there. Trust me, he needed to hear it. I was moved by the Holy Spirit to speak.”
“Really? You’re going there?”
Quinn didn’t bat an eye, pretending to take a card out of an imaginary deck and slapping it down. “Consider it in play!”
They stared at each other before dissolving into snorts, laughs, and giggles.
Daria wiped her eyes. “I really missed you.”
“I missed you too. C’mon—the Gooey Grilled Cheese is on me this time.”