Broken Nests

Broken Nests Draft 3

By: Antoine Ho

When Quinn was twelve, she found out her father had been lying to her. Before this, however, for her ninth birthday, the birthday after Mom had left, she had received a package in the mail from her. It contained Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and for her sister Sarah, a warm fleece blanket with cat paw prints on it. Before she read the new book, she read the note that Mom had sent.
“I’m sorry I can’t be there, Quinn. Happy Birthday, Mom.”
The following year, Quinn had frantically worried because the package was late and lamented so to her father. Miraculously, the next day it arrived containing a pair of zipper shaped earings. She got another gift card from Dad, but it was okay because it was for Borders and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire didn’t come out for months.
For her eleventh, she received a digital camera of her very own. Dad had spent a long time lecturing her to be careful, to keep it in its case when she carried it around, and how to upload pictures and how to back them up onto his external hard drive. She remembered it as one of the few times having Dad explain something technical to her didn’t annoy her. Reliably, Dad had gotten her another giftcard, but it was okay since it had been to Best Buy where she needed accessories for the new camera. The absence of a new Harry Potter book was a crime that Rowling was mercifully forgiven of.
Two weeks before her twelfth birthday, she had found a brown package in Dad’s office area hidden inside his desk. It was addressed to their house and claimed to be from Mom. It contained in it, The Giver and The Count of Monte Cristo.
When Dad had gotten home that night, Quinn was in the backyard, burning a stack of books. Sarah, who was four at the time, was setting twigs on fire and waving them, transfixed by the trails the glowing embers left in the air.
Dad was angry at first, but it had died in the face of Quinn’s wrath. She shouted at him, throwing the others books in the pile that had not yet been fed to the flame. Quinn managed to shotput The Count of Monte Cristo off of Dad’s temple. She said some horrible things to him, none of which she took back or apologized for.
Dad didn’t yell or admonish her. Quinn was a very well-behaved child, so he rarely got the practice. Dad’s unusual approach to parenting was to treat children like adults, trying to reason moral or appropriate behavior, as if throwing books or streaking through the living room whenever Hannah Montana came on the television was something that should’ve been debated.
When it was all over, Dad had put out the fire quietly, waited until Quinn was too tired to scream anymore, and took them inside.
The next year, she didn’t receive anything in the mail. In fact, Quinn had requested not to have a birthday party. She told Dad that, “she was beyond all that.”
However, Sarah had innocently asked where Mom’s present was.
Quinn was a late July baby, whereas Sarah was born on August 2nd. Their birthdays were combined to avoid the headache of back-to-back childrens’ birthday parties.
Dad was about to respond when Quinn said, “I’m sure it’s just in the mail. Right, Dad?”
Her father’s puzzled face stared at her when she said that, but he didn’t disagree. Magically enough, the package showed up the next day with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory along with a DVD of the movie.
“Nothing for Quinn?” asked Sarah.
“I’m twelve now,” declared Quinn. “I’m like a grown-up. Birthday presents are for kids.”
Sarah had patted Quinn’s hand consolingly and generously let Quinn watch the movie anytime she wanted.
So they kept playing this game and Quinn got very good at it. She began to write birthday cards with entire stories and messages about being stuck in Africa doing volunteer work for the poor children with HIV and bloated stomachs. One card, stained with water stains and dirt, apparently from India for Sarah’s ninth read:
“Sorry. Not home. Must go – typhoon.”
This year was different because Quinn was leaving the weekend after the party to head out to California. As such, Quinn felt obligated to give Sarah something extra special. She had convinced Dad to add another line to the family cell phone plan so that Sarah could have her very first cell phone.
“What kind of phone is that?” asked Dad.
They were in the study and he had come in to see what she was doing seated at his desk. She had decided to take the phone out of the package and put it a colorful gift box. Then that went into a deliver box, which, as always, bore no return address.
“It’s nothing special,” she said. “It can take pictures and that’s about it. The cheaper ones always last longer.”
“It’s very pink,” he observed.
Which was true. Quinn had placed a shiny, gaudy pink cover on the phone, the sort of tacky sparkle and glitter that Sarah adored despite Quinn’s gentle discouragements.
“Well, you know Sarah.”
He gave a vague hum as a response, turning to his bookshelves. Dad always did this when he was thinking of something to say. Quinn had spent many times, seated in the chair on the otherside of the desk as her father paced the room, browsing the books, thinking of how to phrase or chastise her properly.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I do know Sarah, but you’ve always known her better.”
This was true, she didn’t see a reason to dispute him. “Right. So?”
“I just think it’s odd that you believe that this is what Sarah wants.”
“If I don’t, she’s going to wonder why Mom didn’t send anything,” replied Quinn, placing the little box inside the larger one.
Dad was using one hand tracing the spines of the biology textbooks. He made another humming sound. “Are you so sure about that?”
“You’re being a total hypocrite now, Dad. You,” Quinn’s hands shook slightly. She took a breath to keep the tremble out of her voice. “you completely messed with my head. I don’t know where you get off telling me not to do this for her now.”
“It was wrong,” he said. “So how come you’re propagating this?”
Quinn was now artificially weathering the package by hitting it against the corner of the desk. After a few satisfying pounds, she looked up. “Because you let me!” she shouted. “What’s the deal, Dad? You never stopped me before. How come you’re suddenly playing ‘Parent’ again?”
He pulled a book off the shelf, beginning with a quick browse of the table of contents before flipping through it. He took a breath, then spoke slowly and gently. “When Sarah lost her first tooth, it was you she ran to. It was also you that told her she couldn’t marry Jason Sears in the first grade.”
“Shears,” corrected Quinn.
“Ah, right,” he coughed. “And it was you she ran to when she went through menarche.”
“What?”
“Her first period.”
Quinn made a face, “well, yes. Dad. I remember how you freaked out when it happened to me.”
“I did not ‘freak’ out.”
“Dad, you told me to look it up on the internet.”
“Didn’t they teach you about that in school?”
“Right, but I didn’t believe them!” exclaimed Quinn. The package received more weathering, rather enthusiastically.
“The point I’m trying to make is that it’s you that Sarah turns to, not me.”
The box was placed back. By now, the package in front of Quinn looked like it had come from some third world nation and been subjected to enhanced interrogation methods when it entered the country.
“Yeah, well,” said Quinn sharply. “Should’ve been a better father then.”
Dad resumed walking along his shelves. He reached Sarah’s area of the bookshelf. It had all her books in it because she liked how they looked there. So Dad’s study had ‘Clinical Pathologies of the Foot’ next to a run of The Boxcar Children.
He pulled out a thick, charred and blackened volume off the shelf. Quinn knew which book it was without having to look closely.
She rose from her seat and walked out, heading to the backyard to get some dirt and water on the box as Dad flipped through The Count of Monte Cristo.
* * *
Beneath the afternoon sun, Quinn and Sarah crept along, close to the grass as they approached a thicket of trees. Sarah held up a hand sharply, like a platoon leader spotting a sniper’s nest in the distance. She ducked and rolled to one side, placing her back against a large rock. They had officially reached The Beyond, an area of trees that bordered the meadow and shielded the gentle eyes of the neighborhood from the wall that enclosed their gated community. Due to inexact landscape planning, it was much thicker in some areas than others. In some areas, the outer wall and grassy meadow were both visible. In others, a ten year-old girl, with some effort, could lose herself beneath the thick canopy.
Quinn tilted her head back at a slight angle, shut her eyes just a moment, and savored the idea. Here the trees muffled the texture of neighborhood sounds and it was almost possible to believe one had escaped suburbia. Sarah’s voice pulled her back to the moment. Her sister was waving urgently to take cover behind the rock. With less gusto than her young sibling, Quinn kneeled behind the rock, peering over the top alongside Sarah.
Laying in the dirt was a malformed pink fledgling, now encrusted with mud and dirt. It flapped irregularly and when it did, it seemed the body was not in consensus about whether to take to the air or wallow in dirt. It traveled in a circular orbit, its enthusiastic struggles returning it to where it started.
Sarah’s face was not filled with sadness or even curiousity. There was no intensity in that gaze, just the emptiness of observation, as if she’d go on watching the bird until eventually, its flapping would slow, become sporadic, and then cease.
Quinn stood up and walked over to the bird. Her hands were in the pockets of her hoodie jacket, holding each other. She looked down at it, its erratic movements nearing her shoes.
“Sorry, Sarah,” she said. “Not sure there’s anything we can do for it. It looks hurt.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
She shrugged as Sarah crept closer.
“It doesn’t have its real feathers yet. Its nest might have gotten attacked or something. Or maybe it left the nest too early.”
“Can’t the parents build a new nest?” asked Sarah.
“A nest is a very dangerous place,” said Quinn, “you know the saying ‘don’t put your eggs all in one basket’? It’s kind of like that with birds because they have to when they’re raising their young. Thing is, since it takes so much effort, if something like this happens, sometimes they just abandon their young. Try to start over somewhere else.”
“Start over?” The girl turned away from the bird. “So, what’re you going to do?”
Quinn reached out toward the back of Sarah’s head, running her fingers down through her hair. “If you want to just go back, I’ll take care of it.”
“What’re you going to do?”
She took a breath, “I’m going to take care of it.”
“Okay,” said Sarah.
Quinn kneeled down before the bird and reached out with her hands to it. It continued to struggle as it was manhandled. She glanced up at her sister again, but she hadn’t made a move to leave. With a firm but gentle grip on the bird’s bare head between her thumb and index finger, she twisted quickly. It wasn’t as if she killed birds normally, but she had assumed that was enough. There was an unsettling quickening of movement in her hands before it went limp.
Quinn raised her hands slightly, obscuring the view of the poor little thing for what good it did.
“We should bury it,” said Sarah.
She nodded in agreement, the last thing she wanted was her sister coming back to see the bird going through various stages of decay.
With a bit of searching, they found a short stub of a stick that they used to dig a hole, a few inches deep. The bird was laid to rest and where the mound of dirt was firmly patted down, marked with a pull tab.
They sat in silence for a while, both of their fingernails blackened from scrabbling around. Finally, after a few glances from Quinn, Sarah nodded. “Lets go.”
* * *
Normally, Quinn wouldn’t have had Sarah help her bake the birthday cake for her own birthday, but the days were limited. They made a chocolate cake, with vanilla frosting. Sarah had pleaded to write the frosted letters on the cake, so Quinn let her as she began the cleaning up process.
When she returned to the cake, added to the expected ‘Happy Birthday Sarah!’ was, in smaller writing and much more scrunched up, “Come Back Soon, Qui.” The two n’s were on the side and in danger of falling off.
She smirked. “Thanks, Sarah, but I think your friends may think this is kind of weird since it’s supposed to be your birthday party.”
Sarah grinned toothily. “I can tell them you’re leaving.”
“Or,” suggested Quinn, “we can just hide it underneath candles. I mean, you’ll get ten of them this year.
“No!” said Sarah, giggling. “Leave it.”
“They’re probably going to ask you who Qui is,” said Quinn, pointing to the side with the errant n’s.
“Then they can stand on the right side.”
“All right, fine,” relented Quinn.
* * *
It was after ten, a time Quinn had been used to having to herself in the house, which was why she was surprised to see her Dad walking into the kitchen.
“Anything bothering you, Quinn?” asked Dad.
Quinn stood over the stove, warming her chilly hands over a boiling pot of ramen noodles.
“Other than the fact that I’m cold?”
“I just meant, it seems you’re up late. Are you nervous about going off to California?”
“I’m always up this late, Dad,” she said, rubbing her hands. “You always go to bed at nine. How else do you think I sneak out and engage in shenanigans?”
Dad made a noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh. The two had an agreement in discussing Quinn’s social life. As in most father-daughter pacts, she would be upfront and honest about everything, provided he never ask her about it.
“Right,” he said, “I’m to just assume that you coming down here in your pajamas to cook ramen is a normal occurance.”
She skewered and mixed up the noodles with her fork while giving him an odd look. “Yes. Practically every night, Dad. I can’t sleep on an empty stomach.”
“Really,” he said flatly.
When Quinn’s face didn’t change, he leaned forward on the stool. “What, really? Every night?”
She tipped the noodles and broth into a bowl. “Yeah, Dad, everynight.”
Her father’s silent lingering prompted her to look up at him, wearing a pre-occupied expression. “Since you’re the one who’s never up this late, is something bothering you, Dad?”
He gave a shrug, “I imagine that I’m just sad to see you leaving the nest and all.”
“Don’t worry, after I blow my first couple of semesters, I’ll be back home when I drop out, ready to have you support me until I’m thirty.”
“I know that’s not going to happen, Quinn.” He sat down on a stool at the kitchen island. “You could get a waitressing job out there or sell your eggs. It’s quite profitable these days.”
“Ha ha,” she said. She sat down next to him, twirling her noodles onto a fork.
“Sarah just seems down about it,” said Dad.
“Did she? She seems excited for her party if anything.”
“I think she’s going to miss you.”
Noodle slurping was interupted as she nodded, “well, yeah. I’ll miss her too. I’ll be back for Christmas and summer.”
“It’s a long time for you to be gone,” he went on. “It’ll be the first time in her life that you won’t be living with her.”
There was enough of a hook on that statement to annoy her, “What else do you want me to do? Go to some crappy community college in town?”
“Not at all,” he said.
“Then what’s with the sudden guilt trip, Dad?”
“Guilt trip?” he managed to sound geniunely surprised, a touch of panic crossing his features.
“Yes. It’s not exactly a surprise that I’m going to college.” said Quinn dryly. “We’ve both known a long time, and here you are, suddenly bringing all of this up.”
He shook his head, staring at nothing. His mouth opened, then shut. Raising an eyebrow, he finally settled, “good God, are you really salting your ramen?”
She stopped, looking up at him, caught in the middle of salt grinding. “It’s a good thing you won’t see me binge drinking out there. You’d probably have a stroke.”
That at least caused a faint smile. “I’m not worried about you, Quinn. I never was.”
She set down the salt shaker. “Yeah?”
“It’s about Sarah,” he said.
She gave him a warning look, so Dad continued slowly, picking his words with care. “I’ve been thinking about what I did years ago by lying to you. About why.”
He tapped his fingers on the counter a few times. “It was because when Mom was gone and it was just me and you and Sarah, I could tell that I wasn’t enough for you.” He smiled again, a man enjoying a sad joke. “And when you leave, I’m afraid I won’t be enough for Sarah.”
Quinn stared at the brown opaque broth in her bowl. “You’ll do fine. You stuck around, Dad. That counts for something.”
Her words were like glass; fragile, but sharp and pointed so that getting closer was awkward. She let them litter the silence as he gave a shrug. She finished up, deposited the bowl in the sink, and left the man alone, still quiet at the island.
* * *

Quinn was laying down on her bed, staring at the ceiling. It was a claustrophobic experience due to the walls of boxes that rose on the side not occupied by walls. She was in a fortress of boxes that had been constructed with the aide of her sister. It was mostly an inconvenience to have only a single walkway to the side of her bed, but Sarah had a lot of fun with it. Besides, how often did one get to make an actual box fort?
Only about a dozen of the boxes were filled with her things. The rest were empty, purchased from the movers because according to Sarah, ‘we gotta make an inner wall if we make an outer wall.’
It had been fun. And yet…
And yet… even while looking at Sarah’s writing marking boxes of ammunition, boiling oil, and siege sustaining rations, Quinn felt relieved to be leaving. It was a thought that bubbled in her mind, reeking of guilt.
She would be free, but what about Sarah? Damn Dad for bringing it up.
A sound outside her open door, downstairs, made her sit up. The door was always open incase Sarah needed to come in during the night, as she often did in the case of nightmares, upset stomachs, or boredom.
Quinn raised a hand, flicking on the lamp that was perched on a parapet. She stepped between a pair of towers, and made her way past the battlements. She descended the stairs, trying to discern the faint disturbance that sounded like people talking. When she reached the living room, it became clear from the tone of the noises that it was a television, cartoon images spoke in exagerated tones.
Sarah was curled up on the couch on her side, gripping a pillow to her chest, her face bured in it.
Quinn grabbed the remote off the coffee table and turned it off. She was about to gently jostle her sister awake when she saw the box on the coffee table, the package that she had meant to put into the mailbox. It was open, its contents on the table laid neatly on the table.
A moment of panic raced through her head.
Did I just leave it on the table because I’ve been so busy? Did she just think the package came for her and we forgot to tell her? No, because why would she be here asleep? Something’s wrong and I messed it up.
She considered quietly walking back up the stairs. She could pretend she never found her and maybe by the morning Sarah would’ve made up some explanation to herself. Despite this reasoning, she was surprised to find that her hands decided to shake Sarah awake.
“Did you forget where your bed is?” Quinn began.
“My bed’s in my bedroom,” said Sarah muzzily.
“Then did you forget where your bedroom is?”
Sarah was sitting up, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “No. It’s upstairs.”
“Then why aren’t you in bed?” chided Quinn.
“Because I forgot where I was,” she got off the couch.
“Cute,” said Quinn. “But lets get you to bed.”
Her sister took a few steps and seemed to remember something. She turned and looked at the open package on the table. She turned back to Quinn, who tensed.
“Why was mom’s present on the table? Why didn’t you tell me it came in?” asked Sarah.
And the look Sarah had on her face was confused, but also was the complete and desperate obedience that suggested she would believe whatever Quinn told her.
“I,” Quinn faltered, “I don’t know. I must’ve just left it there since I was so busy today with everything.”
“It’s funny because mom’s present got here early,” Sarah reached for the cell phone, staring at the glittering buttons. “Just in time again because we’re celebrating early since you’re leaving.”
Quinn remained silent, despite the question in her statement. Sarah hit a few buttons on the phone.
“Your number’s in here. Dad’s too,” said Sarah.
“That was courteous of her,” said Quinn with a forced brightness.
“But not Mom’s number,” she replied flatly.
“No,” said Quinn.
“I don’t even know what she sounds like,” she added in a brighter tone, “I know what she looks like though from the picture that you have.”
Quinn nodded. The picture was from the photo album that Mom had kept for the family before she left. Dad was not a photo album kind of person, or maybe he couldn’t stand looking at the old photographs, so it fell to Quinn to keep track of things. Almost all the pictures were stored safely and out of the way.
The picture was a close-up of Mom’s face. She’s laughing, her face off-center and in motion, her raised palm and splayed fingers occupy the rest of the photo. Dad must’ve been more spry back in the day, because he managed to take a clean shot of her. It was taken before Quinn was born, and she always felt that the picture implied those were happier times.
“Yeah, I know.”
“She looks like you,” said Sarah, still in that meandering tone of voice that doesn’t want to get anywhere.
Quinn nodded. Dad never mentioned it, but it was true. The straight, black hair, brown eyes, and even same crooked smile was present in Quinn’s smirks.
Sarah looked up at her again, “it was you and Dad, all along, wasn’t it? Who sent me this present? And all the others?” Her tone was wheedling, almost a plead for her sister’s innocence.
“Just me actually,” said Quinn softly.
And still present in Sarah’s face was an expectation that Quinn couldn’t have been at fault.
“Did Dad make you do it?”
“No, just me.”
“Why?”
“Because you were young and you wondered where Mom’s present was,” she said quickly. “So, I just made sure you got what you wanted.”
“You should’ve told me,” blurted out Sarah. She paused, “that year was the My Little Ponies. I liked them a lot.”
“Yeah,” said Quinn, “I know. You cried because you brushed it so hard the tails came off.”
Which, incidentally, contributed to Sarah’s mistaken belief in later life that horses didn’t have tails.
“I don’t even care about Mom,” said Sarah. “I don’t know why you tried to so hard to make me think she cared. I knew they came from you. I always knew.”
“You always knew?” she said doubtfully. “Then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because you and Dad made this huge deal about it coming from Mom, so I believed you!” She threw up her hands in exasperation. She continued, quieter. “Even though I knew you were lying.”
Sarah shook her head, staring hard at the cell phone in her hands like she was angry at it.
“I don’t know why you have to go either,” she mumbled. “Are you going to look for Mom?”
“What?” Taken off-guard, Quinn sat down on the couch next to her. “No, Sarah, I have to go to college.”
“But there’s a college here too,” said Sarah.
“Yes,” said Quinn slowly, “there is, but it’s not- it’s not what I wanted.”
“But Dad doesn’t know where the Great Beyond is, he doesn’t have an Alpha-Brownie-Charlie Clearance, and he can’t do weird voices. He’s Dad, he doesn’t know how to play.”
There was a moment of guilt, but Quinn was horrified to find that deep down, beneath that layer of guilt was a speck of relief. It’s not that she hated playing with her sister, but the thought of not having to anymore, of not having to spend evenings in as a default, to be finally free of any obligation…
And maybe Sarah saw that relief because she turned away.
“Fine, just go.”
“Wait, Sarah, it’s not that simple,” said Quinn, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“No, just…” and by now, Sarah had twisted out of Quinn’s grip and pulled away, “just leave me alone, just like Mom. Dad can put your name on presents, postcards, and all those stupid things!”
It was surprising to Quinn how much ground a squirming nine year-old girl could cover in such a short time. The backdoor was closing again by the time she reached the kitchen herself.
She took a few steps onto the back porch to find that Sarah had pulled on the shoes that she normally left there, slipping into them without having to undo the laces. The only shoes Quinn had were packed or by the front door. She watched as Sarah took off across the garden and through the back gate.
Even though it was summer, the evening was still chilly in only her pajama shorts and a tank top. The easy thing to do would’ve been to let Sarah run off because realistically, where did she have to go? She’d run around, get cold, calm down, and have to come back.
The other side of logic though was the instinct to run after her.
She ran back in to grab something off the kitchen counter and was off, barefoot as she made her way through the backyard and out the back gate. After clearing the door, she could see a shape in the distance disappearing into The Beyond.
Things underfoot dug into her feet as she ran, causing her to break her gait at odd moments when she drew her foot up in pain.
She reached the cover of The Beyond, the canopy swallowing what light the meager moon had provided.
“Sarah!” she called out, for what good it would do. “Come on, it’s cold out.”
Even though the wooded area was laughably small, it still provided a hundred places to hide a little girl who didn’t want to be found. The canopy provided the occasional break to navigate by the sparse moonlight. The clammy air was already working a chill into her bones. Quinn walked along slowly, arms wrapped around herself.
“Sarah?” She stopped because she had arrived at the bird’s grave, the pull-tab reflectively eye catching in the dark.
She stared down at the pitiful small mound of dirt. In doing so, she saw her own filthy feet. She wiggled her toes then curled them against the cold.
“Sarah, I’m sorry,” she said to the darkness around her. “I lied to you. I don’t know why I did.”
She rubbed her arms, taking a few more steps. “I guess I thought,” she sighed, looking up, “it’s weird, but as long as one of us believed, it made it less of a lie. That somehow the idea wasn’t so dead if we kept talking about it.”
Quinn reached into her pocket and pulled out Dad’s cell phone she had grabbed off the counter, proceeding to dial.
There was a dull texture to the sounds around her of grass and leaves rustling, wind, and various disturbances. The tinny, electronic ring that followed in the woods was extremely out of place.
Quinn made her way toward the noise, expecting it to be cut off shortly, but it kept ringing. She found Sarah wasn’t far, sitting against a rock and staring at the cell phone.
“You cheated,” said Sarah as Quinn walked up
“I did.”
“Just because you believe in something, it doesn’t make it true,” said Sarah.
Quinn gave a quiet laugh, “yeah. I know. But it should’ve been.”
“That doesn’t make it true either,” said Sarah, resting her forehead on her raised knees.
“Way of the world.”
“Don’t go, Quinn. Please,” said the bowed head. There was also a faint snifle.
Quinn sat down next to her, wrapping an arm around the trembling child. “Sarah, look…”
“Just say it. Just tell me you’ll stay. Or that you’ll come back. Or that you’ll come back when you’re done. I’ll still be in highschool when you get back.” She wiped at her eyes. “Or maybe I can come with you. Dad can give you an extra allowance to take care of me. I won’t get in your way. You won’t even have to play with me anymore. Just don’t leave me.”
“There’s no Beyond up there. There’s also no Braggio’s with the lasagna you like. Jason Shears lives here too,” said Quinn.
“I don’t care,” said Sarah stubbornly.
“Really? I think he’s going to come around anyday now. Don’t you guys talk at lunch?”
There was a pause, her head looking up for a moment. “He made fun of me for being a vegetarian so I called him a dork.”
“That’s nice.”
Somewhere in the dark, there were the sounds of a sprinkler going off.
“Just tell me you’ll come back,” said Sarah finally.
Quinn opened her mouth to do so, but stopped. Somehow, it didn’t seem right. She never had to plead to Mom, she instead pleaded to everything else – the sky, her ceiling, with anything or anyone who listened to her when she was by herself.
Sarah was staring at her, loyally hopeful. “Quinn?”
She could make things better just by saying so, but is that what she wanted Sarah to learn? That you can put your hopes and dreams into other people and they can fulfill you? That seemed like such a dirty lie.
Mom’s not coming back, thought Quinn. And damn her, because I don’t care anymore.
“Sarah,” began Quinn softly. “People are going to lie to you.”
“Why can’t you just tell me you’ll be back?”
“Listen,” Quinn tightened her grip on her sister. “You can’t count on anybody, not Dad, not even me to make you happy. You can’t rely on anybody to never lie to you and always tell you the whole truth. I’m sorry I had to do that to you, but…” she laughed bitterly. “It’s only because I was lying to myself. Because it looks like I can’t even tell myself the truth.”
Sarah shoved away at Quinn, tears in her eyes. “You’re just… you’re just being like Mom. You’re only saying that because you can’t… you don’t want to…” Sarah raised a hand to her face, sniffling loudly. “You’re my sister.”
“I know,” said Quinn. “But I lied to you. You trusted me and I lied to you. What does that say about people you’re supposed to depend on?”
“Why are you saying this?” Sarah stood up, recoiling from Quinn. “Stop it! Just…. Please.”
“I’m only telling you the truth, sis. People are going to let you down.”
Quinn stood up slowly, her knees popping as she straightened up. She brushed off her rear, looking at Sarah who looked angry beneath the tears. She knew this was cruel and she probably didn’t have the right, but there was a part of her that wouldn’t let her stop.
“People are going to let you down. They’re going to fail you,” said Quinn.
Sarah looked distraught, but she didn’t look like she was going to run, as if the will to escape was beaten out of her.
“Knowing this,” said Quinn, kneeling before her sister. “are you going to be believe me when I say that I love you?”
Sarah wrinkled her brow at her. A look of confused, agonized betrayal crossed her features.
“I’ll come back, Sarah, I promise.”
Sarah raised a hand, rubbing her nose on her forearm.
Quinn wondered if Sarah really understood what she was trying to say. Most likely not, because Quinn wasn’t certain either. She knew it had something to do with an empty place setting at the dinner table, with learning how to braid her hair from the internet, and how long you could stare at a damn picture and hope, night after night.
Wordlessly, Sarah stepped toward Quinn and threw her arms around her. She set her chin on Quinn’s shoulder, and began crying fully. Whatever she had used to dam it back was now broken, and she trembled with her sobs.
After a while, she grew quiet again and Quinn thought she was asleep. She raised her sister up, who was getting heavy and began to carry her back to the house. The grass of the meadow was wet, her shins became soaked. Crossing under the moon, walking home with Sarah on her back, she whispered into Quinn’s ear. “I believe you.”