“Thank you, sir,” Qhuinn’s brother said as he put the heavy gold ring on his forefinger.
“It fits, does it not?” Lohstrong asked.
“Yes, sir. Perfectly.”
“We wear the same size, then.”
Of course they did.
At that moment, their father glanced away, like he was hoping the movement of his eyeballs would take care of the sheen of tears that had come down over his vision.
He caught Qhuinn lurking outside in the foyer.
There was a brief flash of recognition. Not the hi-how’re-ya kind or the oh-good-my-other-son’s-home stuff. More like when you were walking through the grass and noticed a pile of dog shit too late to stop your foot from landing in it.
The male looked back at his family, locking Qhuinn out sure as if he’d closed an actual door.
Clearly, the last thing Lohstrong wanted was for such a historic moment to be ruined—and that was probably why he didn’t do the hand signals that warded off the evil eye. Usually, everyone in the household performed the ritual when they saw Qhuinn. Not tonight. The head of house didn’t want the others to know who was in their midst.
Qhuinn pivoted and went back to his duffle. Slinging the thing over his shoulder, he took the front stairs to his room. Usually, his mother preferred him to use the servants’ set, but that would mean he’d have to cut through all the love in there.
His bedroom was as far away from the others’ as you could get, all the way over to the right. He’d often wondered why they didn’t take the leap completely and put him in with the doggen—but then the staff would probably quit.
Closing himself into his quarters, he dumped the duffle onto the bare floor and sat on his bed. Staring at his only piece of luggage, he figured he had better do laundry soon as there was a wet bathing suit in there.
The maids refused to touch his clothes—like the evil in him lingered in the fibers of his jeans and his T-shirts. The upside was he was never welcomed for formal events anyway, so his wardrobe was just wash-n-wear, baby—
He discovered he was crying when he looked down at his Ed Hardys and realized that there were a couple of drops of water right between all those buckles and leather.
Qhuinn was never getting a ring.
Ah, hell . . . this hurt.
He was scrubbing his face with his palms when his phone rang. Taking the thing out of his biker jacket, he had to blink a couple of times to focus.
He hit send to accept the call, but he didn’t answer.
“I just heard,” Blay said across the connection. “How are you doing?”
Qhuinn opened his mouth to reply, his brain coughing up all kinds of responses: Peachy fucking jim-dandy. At least I’m not “fat” like my sister. No, I don’t know if my brother got laid.
Instead, he said, “They got me out of the house. They didn’t want me to curse the transition. Guess it worked because Luchas sure looks like he came through it okay.”
Blay swore softly.
“Oh, and he got his ring just now. My father gave him . . . his ring.”
The signet ring with the family crest on it, the symbol that all males of good bloodlines wore to attest to their value to their lineage.
“I watched Luchas put it on his finger,” Qhuinn said, feeling as if he were taking a sharp knife and drawing it up the insides of his arms. “Fit perfectly. Looked great. You know, though . . . like, how could it not—”
He began weeping at that point.
Just fucking lost it.
The awful truth was that under all his counterculture fuck-you, he wanted his family to love him. As prissy as his sister was, as scholar-geek as his brother was, as reserved as his parents were, he saw the love between those four. He felt the love among them. It was the tie that bound them, the invisible string from one heart to the others, the commitment of caring about everything from the mundane shit to any true, mortal drama. The only thing more powerful than that connection . . . was what it was like to get shut out from its expression.
Every fucking night of your life.
Blay’s voice cut in through the heaving. “I’m here for you. And I’m so damned sorry . . . I’m here for you . . . just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Let me come over—”
Leave it to Blay to know that he was thinking about things that involved ropes and showerheads.
In fact, his free hand had already gone down to the makeshift belt he’d fashioned out of a nice, strong weave of nylon—because his parents didn’t give him money for clothes and the one proper buckle-and-strap combo he’d owned had broken years ago.
Pulling the length free, he glanced across to the closed door of his bath. All he needed to do was tie the thing to the fixture in his shower—God knew those water pipes had been run in the good old days when things were strong enough to hold some weight. He even had a chair he could stand up on and then kick out from underneath him.
“I gotta go—”
“Qhuinn? Don’t you hang up on me—don’t you dare hang up on me—”
“Listen, man, I gotta go—”
“I’m coming over right now—” Lot of flapping in the background like Blay was getting his shit together. “Qhuinn! Do not hang up the phone—Qhuinn . . . !”
Present Day
Market Street and 17th
Downtown Caldwell, New York
Oh, shit! Dad is going to kill us—”
“What are you talking about, ‘us’? I’m not driving—”
“You’re in the car, Terrie! And not because I kidnapped you—”
The two Allaine sisters were talking over each other, talking over the radio that was still playing loud enough to be heard in the suburbs they’d left, talking over the accident that had just occurred. They were also going nowhere, the front grille of the burgundy 2018 BMW 5 series embedded in the face of a dirty, downtown snowbank that loomed big as a mountain.
“I know I’m in the car, Ellen,” the twelve-year-old snapped. “But you’re the one who crashed us!”
“It wasn’t my fault, Therese!” Elle punched the radio button, which canned the music and turned up the volume on two things she was so not interested in dealing with: whatever wasn’t ever going to work again under the hood and her stupid sister’s opinion on what had just happened. “Something ran out in front of the car. It was not my fault—”
“It’s your fault where you steered us, and you’re never going to get your full license—”
“You can stop yelling. Anytime.”
No airbags. The airbags hadn’t deployed. Elle pulled herself up by the steering wheel and looked over the hood. Whatever had shot across the icy road was gone, the black shadow scurrying off as strays did. In contrast, the snowbank they were headfirst into was about five feet tall and a whole block long of going-nowhere. Beyond it? Nothing but a warehouse the color of a mud puddle that was covered with graffiti and absolutely no exterior lights.
Two seconds sooner or later and this would never have happened. The dog would have crossed the street before or after them, and right now they’d be elsewhere—although probably not where she’d meant to be going. She’d been trying to get onto Trade Street, and she’d thought, as she’d made a bunch of turns after taking the—hello—Trade Street exit off Northway, that it’d be no problem to find her way. Instead, they were . . .