And looming above this assemblage was the house.
The siding was cracked, the windows shimmery, the front door in desperate need of firm sanding and a fresh paint job, and from what Quinn could see, the roof looked like her teeth felt—mossy. (She’d brushed before they’d left, but it had been a long trip with a lot of gas station food.) The bones of a nice house were there—the front porch and its deck swing were charming—but what was on those bones . . . damn.
No time to worry about what she couldn’t change. There was work to do. Getting everything inside would take the better part of the day, and she was determined to get it all done. And quickly. It was still early and she hadn’t spotted any neighbors, but the road to minimal embarrassment was getting everything inside before she and her dad could be seen having a reverse yard sale.
God. Quinn was exhausted. After they got this junk unpacked, she needed sleep. Tomorrow was her first day of school—her second first day of school this year, as it turned out—and she needed to be fresh.
Her dad caught her eye, saw that she’d been taking it all in, and threw up his hands. He gestured to their stuff and looked ready to cry.
“Don’t worry. It won’t take that long,” she said, bending to pull one leg of the couch from where it’d sunken into the dew-damp grass. “But come on. I can’t do it alone.”
On the count of three they each hefted an end of the couch. Dust puffed into the air and Quinn muscled down a sneeze. They should have left it back in Philly. They could have bought another couch, a new couch, one of those sectionals that have cup holders, USB ports, and heated seats. Replacing the furniture had been another opportunity to start fresh that her dad had ignored. Yes, maybe new stuff would have been an extravagance, but her dad was a doctor and the cost of living out here was—he insisted—unbelievably cheap. But even if it weren’t, she’d rather eat rice and beans for a month than live with musty relics of their past life.
The couch smelled like Mom. Fuck, now she was about to cry.
She looked up from the cushions and caught her father staring at her.
“You’re amazing, you know that, kiddo?”
He might have been clueless sometimes, but Glenn Maybrook was often sweet enough he could convince her to push away the hurt.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m a rock, the wind beneath your wings. Swing your end around, okay? I’ll go up the front stairs first,” she said.
“No, no, I’ll go backward.” It was a chivalrous gesture, volunteering to walk in the difficult direction. But he was kidding himself. Dr. Glenn Maybrook was all knobby elbows and floppy feet and Costco four-to-a-pack reading glasses.
Her mother was the athlete; she was the one who’d pushed Quinn into sports. Like it was for her mother before her, volleyball was Quinn’s game. She was long-limbed and quick, not the tallest girl on her team but with a jump that could get her shoulders up even with the top of the net. Her coaches had been crushed when she told them that the varsity squad would be without her this year, that she was moving to Kettle Springs. They tried to talk her out of it—as if it were her choice. They even volunteered to talk to her father on her behalf.
But the whole move happened so quickly she didn’t even have a chance to tell them no. Dad had received the offer on a Monday and accepted by the following Friday. Within a week they were packing to go. He didn’t ask her what she wanted. He just told her one day after school, framed it like a move halfway across the country was just something he had to do. Like he was telling her he’d already ordered takeout without asking what she wanted.
It was a package deal, a great opportunity: take the business and get the deed to the house. They could start over with just the turn of a key. “Please, Quinn,” he’d asked when he’d finally thought to ask. “We really need a fresh start.”
And maybe he was right.
For Quinn that was the sole appeal to leaving Philadelphia: a new beginning. Or, if not a new beginning, a place she could detox for a year, recuperate before applying to Penn or Temple or any of the Philly-area colleges.
In Kettle Springs she could keep her head down, avoid the drama. No one here knew Quinn as the girl whose mother slumped low in the bleachers during last year’s regionals, then puked down her chin.
Nobody in Kettle Springs knew how Samantha Maybrook had died.
Quinn could start over.
She hefted the couch through the threshold and set down her side in the living room, where the smell of stale sweat and cat piss sent her dashing to throw open the windows.
“Oh, what the hell, Dad?” she said.
“The last owner must have been a cat person . . . ,” her dad said, rubbing his neck.
“And a fu— a freaking shut-in.”
Dad dropped his end of the couch—probably leaving two more half-moon dings in the already ruined hardwood—and crossed to the opposite side of the room, throwing open the rest of the windows in the hope of welcoming in a cross-breeze.
It doesn’t matter. Give him a break on the little stuff.
With the air fresher, but by no means fresh, Quinn took in her surroundings. They were coming from a three-story apartment in Fairmount. A trinity, three small rooms stacked on top of each other, where it wasn’t Sunday if she couldn’t hear their neighbors arguing. They had a postage stamp of grass that Mom liked to joke was her “garden.” Quinn had never lived in a real house in her life, and yet it felt like she knew the layout of the house on Marshall Lane by instinct. Turn here and there is your den. Up there you’ll find the bedrooms. Bathroom is the second door on the right.
There was a level of comfort in that familiarity.
Quinn pulled the couch over against the far wall. They were going to need more furniture, newer furniture, to distract from both the size of the room and the general sense of misery and neglect you got from standing in it.
While they were out furniture shopping, maybe they’d pick up a blowtorch and some accelerant, too.
“Going to grab another box and check out my new room,” Quinn said. “Always wanted to live in an attic.”
Her dad frowned, and she put a hand up before he could start to apologize for things he didn’t need to apologize for.
“No, really. I mean it. There’s a bedroom upstairs with pitched ceilings, right?” she said, remembering the pictures her dad had shared. Then she squeezed out more forced optimism: “This place is actually kind of cool. It’s got . . . personality.”
“I’m glad you like it,” he said, struggling to open the last window and seeming not to hear the snark in her tone. Dad whacked the frame with the heel of his hand and loosened the crumbling paint enough to open the window an inch. “Needs a little work, but it does have promise, doesn’t it?”
Quinn smiled and nodded. With enough work and love, you could save anything.
Well, almost anything.
The screen door slammed behind her, sounding loose, and Quinn leaped down the front stairs in a single bound, grabbing the first box she came to labeled “Quinn’s stuff.”
The house was not as intuitive as she’d first tricked herself into thinking, but after two closets and the hall bathroom, she found the stairs. The stairwell was narrow and the steps were rickety, cracked, and unfinished. No sneaking out of the house, she figured. Or at least more difficult sneaking out.