and I close the door behind her. I don’t look back to the house. I walk around and get in next to her, behind the wheel.
I breathe out a long slow breath. I’m using non-verbal communication to tell Quinn what I think of the last hour. Then for some reason I think of the last words they said and I’m starting to chuckle. I look at Quinn and she’s confused. What would I find so funny about what we’ve been through?
“Favourite thing to do in the bedroom,” I say and start to laugh, hard.
She raises her brows again, remembering Mary’s words. Then she’s laughing too and we’re sitting there in hysterics until tears are running down our faces, a good minute.
“Crap,” she says. “Did she actually say that?”
“She did.”
“I’m trying to imagine them doing it. I know I shouldn’t but...”
We start again with the laughing.
I turn my head and Grant and Mary are still watching us, smiling.
“Damn,” I say. “They’re still there.”
“Go,” Quinn says, slapping me on my arm playfully. “Go.”
And we do, down the driveway and down the road. My soul is feeling light again and I realise that I have every time I’ve left and that I’m starting to rely on this time to recharge me for the week. I’m becoming addicted to the lightness, starting to need it. It’s odd because we’ve been through some hard things and this makes our hearts heavy, but the unburdening has taken that away.
We’re about ten minutes down the road and I glance toward her. We haven’t said anything since we left and I know that’s okay. I know that silence is sometimes better than too many badly chosen words.
“So,” I say finally with a deep breath. “Date night?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I thought that there was no point in dating your husband.”
“But we did go out before...” I stop. I don’t want to say before you and Wade. I don’t want to think it. I don’t want to imagine it. I want to speak good things.
“Yes, but I think we had our minds on other things.”
“Well, I’m telling you, my mind isn’t on anything else but you right now. Nothing else matters to me, but you, but us.”
She nods. “I can’t stop thinking about us. I go to sleep thinking about us. I wake up thinking about us. It scares me, but I can’t help it.”
“When should we do it, then?”
“Do what?” she asks.
“The date,” I explain.
“Friday night? I’m pretty tired after work though.”
“It doesn’t have to be energetic. We could eat out, or see a movie or take a drive. I think they mean us to be able to talk though.”
“Yeah, I got that idea.”
“Well, let's say Friday night for now. We can work out the rest later.”
“I’ll let you work out the rest,” Quinn tells me and then doesn’t explain herself.
I get the hint and start to think about what we could do. I’ve resolved myself to look for hints because I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of them recently and maybe if I’d been watching for them sooner we wouldn’t be so far down this path. We sit in silence again until we reach the city, and I’m lost in my thoughts. She looks out of the window lost in her own and then as the block to our apartment comes into sight she sits upright and stretches. She looks at me pointedly as I turn into the driveway that leads down to the block’s parking area.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asks me as I pull in next to her Jeep.
“I was thinking I need to do some washing,” I tell her. It was banking up back at the flat and my overnight bag had nothing clean in it.
“You could do that upstairs,” she points out, hinting.
“I could, but it’s easier back at the flat. But I can come over later, if you want.”
“What do you want?” she asks, hinting again.
“I want to come over,” I tell her, and I do.
“Okay,” she says using the voice she uses when things are settled. I know all her voices, all her tones. She gets out of the Porsche and stops, leans over so that I can look down her top and says: “I’ll see you later then.”
The truth was I had another reason for going back my flat. I start my washing in the laundry I share with the owners of the house that sits like some dark beast above my head and head back down. On my bed is the story of my future, the one I wrote the night before. I read it again and know that there is something missing.
I know that this story is about us, about Quinn and me and our future, but I can’t imagine a future without our little girl. I imagine her birth – I’m there of course, not shunted out in the waiting room while Wade holds her hand – and she’s small and wrinkled and messy and perfect. Quinn holds her in her arms, puts her to her breast and our family is complete. We place her in her cot where my single bed sits, rock her gently to sleep. She looks like doll when she sleeps, quiet and undamaged by the world. She’s walking to me, her face full of sudden joy, her smile like mine, her eyes like Quinn’s. I play with her at the park, push her on the swings and she squeals with delight. I watch her go to school, hand in hand with Quinn, who’s big and beautiful and near to having our second. She turns and waves, and she’s as brave as her brother was going to be, she’s ready to face the world with determination and hope. Quinn cries as her little girl doesn’t seem to need her anymore, but bawls when she runs headlong into her mother’s arms at the end of the day. She’s graduated, she takes her certificate in hand with her cap and gown and she has the marks she needs to get started on where’s she’s headed. I’m not sure where that is right now, but I know she’ll have a big life because Quinn and I have given her big dreams. We’ve dared to dream big for her and she’s inherited that from us. She’s smart and she’s as beautiful as her mother and I love her with everything I have. She meets a boy in college and they travel the world, see the good to make their lives even bigger and the bad to make them appreciate what they have. She marries her man, and he’s handsome and as brave as her. He loves her and he speaks to her like she’s the only thing important in his life. He speaks life into her and she blossoms and she’s even more beautiful than before. She’s a mother, and she hands me my grandchild, small and perfect, and I’m oh so proud of her.
I can’t write anything else, because I’m overwhelmed. My life expands before me, so full of possibilities, so much that my troubles seem insignificant. I am loved and I feel so full of love. Even though I am alone right at that moment I feel it so keenly like the hard and fast beating in my chest.
I check on the washing. It’s taking forever and I’m eager to get back to Quinn. I can’t stay away now. I can’t hide any more. I want to be with her all the time and I know that I can now. I can imagine a future with her, a future I can have if I believe it.
I sit on my bed and watch television while I’m waiting. I see something on the tube and I have an idea. I think it’s about time that I returned Phillip’s Porsche and check on my mother. Normally this gives my some level of anxiety and this time it doesn’t. I’ll take a couple of days off this coming week, and give Quinn some space. I’m mindful that I could be pressuring her too much. I don’t know where that thought comes from, but I’m listening to the little voice more and more now. The washing is done and I hang it out. I take some clean clothes from my drawer and repack my overnight bag and then I head back to the apartment and to my wife.
I message her that I’m coming up as I enter the elevator. I’m grinning like a fool when the doors open with a ding and she’s smiling when she sees me. She’s in the kitchen and she’s cooking. I remember that I’m hungry. It seems that I’ve been ignoring these basic human needs in favour of the deeper things.
“Hey,” I say. “Sorry. It took a while.”
“That’s okay,” she says. She’s chopping carrots and I step in and take the knife and take over.
“You okay?” she asks me. “You seem...”
“I feel f
ine,” I tell her and I’m bursting to say that I love her and that I want to move back home, but I don’t. I keep chopping, still grinning.
“Are you going to let me in on the joke?”
“Later,” I tell her and she smiles and nods and starts to cook some chicken in the wok we bought a few years ago when we thought we should cook more at home.
We cook in silence and somehow it seems ordinary and normal and right. We sit and eat and talk about normal things, politics, movies we’ve seen, the lives of others at our jobs. I wash up for her while she watches television and I join her after. We sit close but don’t touch, but I can feel her energy near me, drawing me in like she’s got some powerful gravity. She’s always been able to capture me in her orbit, from the very start, when we were young. I revolve around her enthralled. I stare at her now like a besotted teenager and I don’t care.
It gets late and she yawns and stretches and I know she’s heading to bed. She stands and pulls me to my feet.
“You staying?” she asks me. It’s a loaded question, I know it, but I’m not ready to go as far as sleeping in the same bed with her. Not that bed, certainly.
“Yeah,” I say with a small smile. “I am.” I’m definite now and I see the satisfaction in her face and I wonder why she’s stopped asking me to stay and simply asking if I will. Yes, I’m paranoid. I’ve learnt for so long to keep up my guard and I don’t know how to stop it yet.
“Good,” she says and waits. When I don’t tell