Chapter 20

A week passed.

Quinn stopped asking questions about whatever Julian was doing across the city. She took the car out herself on Saturday morning, needing to be somewhere that didn't feel like a negotiation.

She ended up at a park. The good kind — sprawling, unhurried, families spread across the grass with blankets and small children.

She found a bench and sat with the sun on her face.

On a weekend afternoon years ago, she and Abby had walked through a park exactly like this. Abby had been at that age where everything was an event — she'd pointed out dogs, clouds, other children's snacks.

My birthday's coming, she had announced. Can I make a wish?

Of course you can.

I can't say it out loud though. Otherwise it won't come true.

Quinn had laughed and agreed. But Abby had a three-year-old's grip on secrets: within a minute, she'd been tugging at Quinn's sleeve, bursting.

I'm only telling you because you're Mama. You can't tell Daddy.

What is it?

Abby had leaned up on her toes to reach Quinn's ear.

I want Daddy and Mama to both live to be really really old. So you can stay with me forever.

Children's wishes. Simple. Whole.

Quinn was still looking at the grass. The edges of her eyes had gone wet without her permission.

She would never understand it. Abby had been so full of love — love that had no requirements, no conditions, no calculation. Where had it come from? How had she ended up the daughter of these particular parents? How could someone so good be failed so completely by the people who should have protected her most?

The question dissolved into the afternoon, without an answer.

Something sharp cut through the quiet.

A figure in a pale-striped hospital gown came sprinting across the path, face wild, knife raised.

Serena.

Quinn was already moving before the scream had finished forming in her chest. She pivoted sideways, light on her feet — years of fieldwork, muscle memory that didn't care about grief or cold or the state of her heart.

But Serena had gone beyond calculation. She was pure forward motion, and she'd anticipated the dodge.

The knife came down.

Quinn closed her eyes.

Abby — is this what you wanted? Do you want me to come find you?

She wasn't afraid. She was almost calm.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe she was simply tired enough that the idea of stopping felt like rest.

The pain didn't come.

She opened her eyes.

A hand had closed around Serena's wrist — wrapped tight, not letting go. The knife was stopped an inch from Quinn's face. The palm gripping it was bleeding freely.

Holden.

He hadn't let go.

Serena was taken back to custody. Holden refused to go to a hospital.

Quinn called his assistant, who arrived with gauze and antiseptic. She sat on a park bench and wrapped Holden's hand herself, neither of them speaking until it was done.

When she'd finished, Holden looked down at the bandaging for a moment. Then he looked up at her, just slightly defeated, like a man who'd been carrying a great deal for a long time.

"Can you stay for a bit? Just a bit. You owe me that much."

"No. And you know whose fault Serena is. You don't get credit for cleaning up your own mess."

He exhaled slowly. "Are we really finished? Is there nothing—"

"It was over the moment you chose Noah over Abby." She kept her voice flat. Not unkind. Just honest. "That's when it ended. Not the cliff. Not the chains. That one choice."

The words dropped into the air between them and stayed there.

He didn't argue. He couldn't.

A long, leaden silence.

He broke it quietly. "Will you — would you come with me to visit Abby? I can't ask for anything else. Just that."

She almost refused. Then she thought of the grave with its repaired headstone. The absence inside it.

"You remember," Holden added, almost too quiet to hear. "She wanted us to celebrate her birthday. Together. Both of us."

Quinn looked at the bandaged hand in his lap.

"Fine."

They went to the bakery. They made a cake — the simple kind, nothing elaborate. They walked to Elmwood Cemetery side by side without much conversation.

The headstone had been replaced since the night of the desecration. A new photograph. The urn inside it held only Abby's things now — her clothes, a few small toys. Holden had found what he could.

He set the cake in front of the stone.

"Abby." He tried to make his voice light. It didn't quite work. "Do you miss Daddy?"

"She doesn't miss you." Quinn said it without heat, just as a fact. "She heard everything on that bridge. She heard you choose."

Holden took the impact of that on his feet. Then he slowly, heavily went down on one knee.

Three years late. But the grief had finally found its way through whatever had been blocking it.

"I know," he said. "I know it was my fault. I failed her completely. I—"

"You told yourself every time that you'd make it up to her afterward. She'd understand. She was easy to apologize to, and you knew it." Quinn wiped her own face without slowing down. "There wasn't an afterward."

Holden's shoulders had come in. He was staring at the grass.

Quinn turned.

She walked three steps, then stopped.

Something she'd carried for a long time settled somewhere lower in her chest.

"There's something I should have told you," she said, without turning back. "Abby had a birthday wish she kept secret. She thought if she told anyone, it wouldn't come true."

She heard him go very still.

"She wanted us to live to be very old. She wanted us to stay with her forever."

The words landed in the quiet of the cemetery like stones dropped from a great height.

She heard something break.

She looked back, once. Holden had pressed his face into his hands. His shoulders were shaking. Soundlessly, helplessly.

Abby had been gone for three years.

This was the first time her father had wept for her.

Quinn turned and walked away.