A Soul To Steal (7 page)

“That girl is here to replace me, did you know that?” Buzz asked.

“Why do you say that?” Quinn asked, glad at least to be thinking of Kate again.

“She told me yesterday she wrote some business stories,” he said.

“She’s written a lot of things, Buzz,” Quinn replied. “Including business. I think that was her way of volunteering, that’s all.”

Buzz paused to consider this.

“Well, she doesn’t have my experience, that’s true,” he said, obviously carrying on some type of internal conversation as well.

“Relax,” Quinn said, as calmly as he could. “They are not trying to take your job.”

“You wait,” Buzz said again, but he didn’t continue. Instead, there was a significant pause. “Can you do another business profile for me?” he finally asked.

“But I’m already doing the coin-sorting place,” Quinn said. “I was just working on that.”

“I know, I know,” Buzz said. “I wouldn’t ask, my boy, but I…”

He turned up his hands in a shrug.

“I won’t ask you for one next week. I promise.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Quinn said.

“This time I mean it.”

“I’ve heard that too,” he said.

“I know, I know,” Buzz said.

“Why not ask Kate?” Quinn asked, and when Buzz gave him a blank stare added, “The new girl?”

“Laurence told me he had her working on other things,” Buzz said.

“How about Alexis?” he asked. “Or Helen?”

“They both refused,” he said. “I need it for my pages. I swear this is the last time I’ll have you do double duty. Please. They’ll fire me if I don’t get in enough stories. They are just waiting…”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Quinn said. “What’s the story?”

And that was how Quinn found himself two hours later driving out to Middleburg.

*****

Kate stood before her mother’s grave, reading the inscription for the hundredth time.

“Sarah Blakely,” it said simply. “Beloved wife and mother.”

That was it. Somehow she thought there should be more. Something that made this grave stand out from the hundreds of others.

Carefully, she leaned down and put the pot of flowers by the memorial. This at least gave the impression that someone cared about her mom. When she arrived, it had looked deserted. She looked at the grave and felt guilty.

“I’m sorry I haven’t come in a while, Mom,” she offered.  “It’s just…”

Her dad made the trip at least once a year. Even after he remarried, he still came down. He invited Kate, of course. But she never wanted to come and he wasn’t the type to force an issue.

“Dad’s doing well,” she said. “He likes Anne well enough but I don’t think he ever got over you. I guess you are just that great.”

She smiled. She thought that she should feel more, but instead she just felt numb. She tried to picture her mom and couldn’t call up an image.

“I’m sorry,” she offered. “I don’t know what else to say.”

She stood there staring at the inscription. She felt like there was something more she was supposed to do, but she couldn’t think of what. She had spent so long feeling the anger from the day her mother died, she was unsure she wanted to think too much about it anymore. But unfortunately, that had meant not thinking much about her mother anymore either. Not a day went by when she didn’t think about it at some time or another. It had hung over her life like a dark cloud and she didn’t think it would ever go away.

Since she had arrived in town, she had been forced to think about it. The memories and the dreams made it feel like it had occurred just a few days ago, not more than a decade before.

“Wherever I go, some part of me will always be here, Mom,” she said. “I can never leave it.”

She hadn’t visited the grave in years, but it was easy to remember where it was. It was always there in the dreams. She shouldn’t have come back. She had thought it might make it better, but now that seemed laughable. Instead, she was either waking up screaming or seeing things near the printing press. That vision had seemed so real…

She fought it off. Some part of her felt like pulling her hair out. She could never talk about this. Her mother’s death was an untreated wound she kept hidden from the world. It kept her weak and bleeding, but she would never let anyone see it. Sometimes she wished she had died too. She flexed her hand and stared at her mother’s grave. This was it. This was the way it would be. She would move on, but… this will always be here.

She jumped as she heard the gate swing open behind her. Reacting on instinct, she moved herself behind a tree for cover.

She saw a man walking down the path. It took a minute as he came closer to realize she knew him—it was Quinn from the paper. She watched him walk around the bend and made a move to follow. She wondered just what the hell he was doing here.

Kate watched as he walked down the hill and through the inner gate at the back. He paused, looking out at the pond below the cemetery. Then he walked forward and sat on a bench on the hillside.

Kate moved slowly and with great uncertainty. She felt like she was intruding somehow and forgot that it was he who had disturbed her moment at her mom’s grave. But he appeared to be merely sitting on the bench and made no move to do anything else.

Part of her thought she should leave. She should turn around and leave him in peace. But another side wanted desperately to know what he was doing. She also felt some kind of pull towards him, as if she couldn’t quite walk away even if she had wanted to.

Instead, she moved carefully. As she came closer, she could tell the bench was made out of marble. It appeared to be a memorial to someone, but obviously placed there so people could sit on it. She paused and wondered how to approach him.

Lacking a better idea, she moved so that she was in his peripheral vision and called out, “Hello Quinn.”

He jumped up, whirling around. For a moment, he looked ready to run away.

“It’s Kate,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I know,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “It’s just, well, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“What were you expecting?” she asked, and smiled at him.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting anyone to jump out at me,” Quinn said. “And certainly not someone who isn’t in a hockey mask or something.”

“Sorry about that,” she said, as she walked towards him. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” he said and gestured for her to sit down. “What are you doing here?”

“I was working out this way,” she lied. “I saw you walk in and I was curious.”

“Wow,” he said, and smiled at her. “You must be a good reporter.”

“I tend to follow my instincts,” she said.

“I can see that,” he said.

“I just wanted to see what you were doing,” she admitted.

“Honestly,” he said, “I’m just here to think. I feel very calm here.”

“So you come here often?” she asked.

“Only when I have had a rough day,” he said and laughed.

“Well, now we are talking,” she said and smiled. “What caused your rough day?”

She swung her legs around so she straddled the bench, then lifted one leg up and wrapped her arms around it.

“I don’t want to bore you to death,” he said.

“No, no,” she said. “Look, I haven’t had much conversation lately that isn’t about watches, or Bill’s treatise on the bologna sandwich. I could use a decent one.”

“All right,” he said, and grinned. “I’m game.”

“So what’s the problem?” she asked.

“Where do I start?” he laughed. “Buzz has got me running around God’s green acre working on business stories. Helen keeps bringing up a story about dog shit,  and Laurence’s idea of a raise is about 500 bucks a year.”

Kate laughed. She couldn’t help it.

“Dog shit?”

Quinn laughed back.

“Apparently, it’s quite the health issue. Nobody is cleaning up after their dog, people step in it, kids get sick and basically it’s the end of Western civilization.”

“Wow, that sounds like a great story,” Kate said, and smiled so he would know she was kidding.

“That’s Helen. She’s very generous. Not to mention pushy.”

Quinn stared back at the wall.

“I’m also getting my butt kicked by Summer and I haven’t slept more than four hours a night in roughly a gazillion years.”

“Summer?” Kate asked.

“Local
Post
reporter. Thinks she’s God’s gift to journalism. You’ll meet her soon enough.”

“Well, the sleeping part I can relate to. I have bouts of insomnia myself,” Kate said.

“Oh, I can fall asleep easily enough, but…”

“Dreams?”

“Dreams are nice fluffy things where you get the girl and save the day. What I have is definitely not that. And it feels so real.  I mean, I can hear sounds, feel the gravel beneath my feet… it all seems so intense. Then when I wake up, I don’t want to go back to sleep.”

Kate nodded in agreement. She didn’t want to say anything—she really didn’t know Quinn—but she could relate more than she wanted to admit.

“You have the dream a lot?” she asked instead.

“Every October,” he said, looking out at the pond.

“That’s strange. Only one month a year?”

“It started a little earlier this year, but yeah, always around now. And every year, it’s worse. If I had my way, I would prefer not to dream at all. Ever again.”

“Would you?” she asked as he turned back toward her.

“Yeah,” he said with more conviction. “I would. I’d kill to get rid of that dream. It infects everything else around it. I think about it way too often. Does that make any sense?”

“A lot, actually,” she replied. “But I don’t know if I could give up on dreams. I think maybe they are the closest thing to magic we have. They show us worlds that never existed, places we’ve been that are long gone and give us the ability to talk to the dead.”

Kate did not say what she was really thinking. That her dreams were the only place she could still talk to her mother.

“Mine don’t show me any of that,” Quinn replied. “At least not that I can remember.”

“Maybe it’s there, you just choose not to remember it,” she offered. “Besides, nightmares aren’t all bad. Sometimes they can be a warning.”

“Oh, believe me, that’s what I fear the most,” he said, looking back at her. “That’s the worst part.”

Quinn wanted to tell her the whole truth. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t. The truth would sound better than he had made it out to be. But he thought he might sound crazy. He worried he might have already gone too far.

It is one of the ironies of life that two people can have virtually the same thought at the same time and never really know it. Kate, too, was close to telling him the truth. She desperately wanted to talk to someone. About her mother, about her return to Leesburg, about everything. When was the last time she had talked about any of that?

But for Kate, it had been too long since she talked about it. Her experiences had taught her long ago not to let down the wall that kept others out. It might make you feel better for a time, but ultimately, it would only make matters worse.

For his part, Quinn would have been more than willing to tear down his own walls. Since the moment he had laid eyes on her, he had wanted to get to know her, to be her confidante. But it was precisely his desire that kept him from talking. Though he wanted to be close, he was afraid of what she might find out. Afraid that she would see him for what he really was. It seemed better—safer—to stay distant. Best not to let her see how weird his life had become.

And so they sat there in silence, staring across the gravestones toward the ducks on the pond. 

“This is a nice place,” Kate said after a time. “I can see why you come here.”

“It’s very peaceful,” he said. “You are going to think I’m crazy, but sometimes Leesburg feels a little crowded. My mind gets cluttered with stuff. I come here to get uncluttered.”

“That makes sense,” she said. She looked suddenly at her watch. “I need to get back to the
Chronicle
.”

“Well, it was good chatting with you,” Quinn said.

“You too,” she replied, and stood up. “You want to come with me?”

“I’ve got a little time to kill,” he said.

“You sure? Don’t we have that planning meeting to go to in a couple hours?”

Quinn stared at her blankly.

“Phillips Farm?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Quinn said finally. During the conversation, it had totally slipped his mind. Laurence had asked if he could give the Phillips Farm beat to Kate so she would have something to focus on. Considering Quinn was having trouble keeping up with his own responsibilities, he had been happy to let it go.

“I think Laurence was hoping you could show me around and introduce me to a few people at Friday’s meeting, but if you have some other plans…” she said.

Quinn laughed out loud, then stopped abruptly.