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Quinn struggled on, still awkward and earnest. “You weren’t part of it, Andy. You were never part of it. You weren’t from here. You weren’t stuck here. You were on a path, and it was the right path. I mean, you were so far out of my league, it was like you were from a different planet.”

Maybe so, because he continued to wrestle with translating Quinn’s jumble of words.

“What happened after you left me that night? Did you know it was the last time?”

“No.I swear to God. I thought we had weeks left. I thought we had the rest of the summer. But when I got home that night, the old man was waiting for me, bullwhip in hand. He’d finally figured some things out.” Quinn’s smile was twisted. “And…I’d had enough. I got the whip away from him, used it on him—and almost couldn’t stop. I was going to kill him. Iwantedto kill him.”

Quinn continued to smile that weird smile, his eyes glittering in the firelight, and it was one of the most frightening things Andy had seen—and Andy had lived with Marcus.

“I chased him upstairs, into his bedroom, right into his closet.” Quinn’s smile faded. “When I saw him crawling into the closet, heard him blubbering… I decided I’d let him go.” He shrugged. “I packed my stuff and was leaving, when he came outside with the goddamned shotgun.”

“Quinn…”

“I didn’t care. I said to him,Go ahead. You’ve wanted to do this since I was six years old.”

Andy closed his eyes against the pain of that. As private as the Raffertys were, everyone in Safehaven knew the story of how Tiernan Rafferty’s beloved only child, his daughter, Sorcha, had run off with a stranger, gotten pregnant, and eventually—like someone out of a Victorian novel—died and saddled her parents with a little boy. A little boy who looked too much like his father.

He opened his eyes to see Quinn offer another of those strange, frightening smiles. “He stood there shaking, sort of weaving back and forth, and then he turned around and walked back into the house. I never saw or spoke to him again.”

It was so awful on so many levels that Andy had no idea what to say. He’d known the situation was not good—everyone knew that, especially after Mrs. Rafferty, Quinn’s gran, had passed—but he’d not realized that the breaking point had been reached.

Not until Quinn vanished without a word.

“You could have come to us. Uncle C. would have taken you in. You could have—”

Quinn was shaking his head. “I had to get away. Iwantedto get away.”

Andy swallowed. “Yes. Right.”

Quinn’s face softened. “I’m sorry for hurting you. Sorry for leaving that way. I never realized till I came back here that you thought what you did.” He said with painful honesty, “It wasn’t anything to do with you.”

Was it weird that even after all this time his heart ached to hear it? He understood it, though. The thing that had happened to Quinn that night—that final confrontation with his grandfather—that had been so much bigger than any youthful romance. It had been all-encompassing, life-altering.

Andy was not close to his parents, but he had never been actively at war with them. Their relationship could best be described as pleasant and impersonal. They’d never struck him—and they’d never asked him if he was happy. Not everyone was cut out for parenthood, and they’d done the best they could with the tools they had. Uncle C. was the one who’d encouraged Andy to follow his dreams, to be confident in who he was, who’d actually, genuinely loved him.

Even so. Even understanding as best he could, it was wrenching to know Quinn had not cared enough to ever reach out, not once, not ever. Could not make time in sixteen years to say,Hey, I’m okay.To send a goddamned postcard even.

“Where did you go?”

Quinn gave a funny laugh. “Well, I was hitchhiking, and I met a guy.”

“Oh.” Andy flushed at that inadvertent interjection, but yeah. He was—embarrassingly—not thrilled to hear this.

“It wasn’t like that. Not at first, anyway.” Quinn’s mouth curved derisively. “There I was, late at night, limping down the road with my duffel bag, and Jim pulled over and asked me where I was headed. I told him, ‘Anywhere but here.’ He said, ‘Get in.’” So I got in, and I guess maybe I was partly in shock because we hadn’t gone ten miles before I told him everything. All of it.”

Andy nodded automatically. He wasn’t sureheeven kneweverything. All of it. As a boy, Quinn had been closemouthed, reticent.

“And Jim…recognized something in me, I guess. Anyway, he offered me a job, and later convinced me to go on and get a degree.”

“What kind of job?”

Quinn’s gaze never wavered. “Working for the government.”

Andy considered that. Considered the way Quinn was looking at him, with that certain…deliberation.

He said slowly, “You’re a spy?”

“Not anymore. I’m retired. At one time I worked for the Clandestine Service.”