Page 27 of Finders Keepers

Quentin’s car is missing. Or rather, it hasn’t been parked out front for the last several days.

Not that I’m watching for him or anything.

Just something I noticed, along with the complete silence emanating from the other side of the duplex since we spoke Monday night. Like maybe he’s gone missing too.

My anxious mind keeps imagining him in various scenarios ranging from innocuous to disastrous.

Mostly it oscillates between him being dead in a ditch somewhere and having accepted the Chicago job and left without a word.

They both feel like worst-case scenarios.

A best-case with him suddenly absent from my life again is hard to land on, and I don’t want to examine why.

I’m sure it’s just the strangeness I’ve been feeling since our most recent window conversation.

That’s the closest we’ve come to discussing the fallout from that summer since Quentin’s half-hearted apology that first night on the porch.

It didn’t help; all it did was make that dull ache in a long-ignored corner of my heart turn into a sharper twinge.

Sometimes not intending to hurt each other isn’t enough to keep it from happening anyway.

Was he saying that he knows I wasn’t trying to hurt him when I went rogue that night, but that I still did?

Or was he acknowledging that he hurt me, but claiming it was unintentional?

Whichever way he meant it, it’s a reminder that we managed to wound each other deeply and that the scar left behind might never fully fade away.

All this remembering makes me feel small and vulnerable and young—things that, as Ambitious Nina, I thought I would never feel again.

She was a suit of armor I got used to wearing, and Quentin’s reappearance in my life at a time when I’ve been left unprotected feels like the universe has an unfair advantage over me.

As a distraction, I’ve thrown myself into preparing for our tour of Sprangbur that’s coming up this weekend.

That’s why I’ve spent so much time staring at the events gallery this week, thinking about the people in those photos.

And I guess all of those images of weddings against the setting of the Castle are really messing with my brain, because I’ve decided that something is wrong with them.

I just can’t put my finger on it. They look…

weird. Off. At first I thought they’d been Photoshopped.

But now that I’ve spent the last hour reviewing them all again (hey, don’t judge), I think I’ve finally figured it out: The people in them look happy.

Like, genuinely, truly happy . Especially in the photos where the couples are together.

That’s what my brain is having trouble comprehending. And, god, that’s sad.

Because I’m realizing that the reason it looks so foreign is that I have zero pictures of Cole and me looking even remotely that happy.

I even check to make sure I’m not—what’s the opposite of sugarcoating?

Salt-coating? Citric acid–coating?— the truth.

Ignoring the bubble of nausea that floats up inside my stomach, I open the digital folder filled with all the photos of the two of us.

There are a couple from early on where there’s a slight hint of it.

Maybe. If you squint. But especially in the most recent one, from a grad school classmate’s wedding we went to in October, we look like we might not even know each other.

There’s a noticeable amount of space between our bodies, and his hand hovers near my shoulder without touching it.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think we’d just met an hour before the photographer asked to take our picture.

That releases a whole bunch of stuff I kept in a corner cupboard in my brain.

Because now the memories of countless instances where it was clear we weren’t working but I insisted we continue soldiering on in some attempt to force it are spilling out, threatening to bury me.

It’s the conclusion of a long, drawn-out epiphany that started the other night as I was talking to Quentin.

Cole and I weren’t interested in each other as much as we were invested in creating an ideal us —one that he envisioned but that I wanted just as much.

As soon as it became apparent that I was falling behind, that I wasn’t going to have the career we both expected of me, he started losing interest. I think I saw the signs but didn’t want to accept them.

Breaking up with Cole would feel too much like giving up on myself.

Admitting defeat. And that’s what’s hurting now—not that I lost someone I care about when we split, but that I lost the version of myself I’d grown so used to being.

Ambitious Nina was so wrapped up in Cole’s expectations, and the expectations I had for myself because of him, that I’m not sure she can exist outside of those confines. I’m not even sure I want her to.

I send a message to Sabrina even though it’s late in Belfast: I don’t think I was ever really in love with Cole, just the idea of who he thought we could be together.

I get a response about thirty minutes later: Didn’t your therapist suggest that last year and you got really indignant about it?

Oh. Right. That did happen. I guess I was unhappy for a lot longer than I wanted to acknowledge. Yes, but it’s rude to bring that up when I’m in the middle of a breakthrough.

Sabrina sends back a kissy face emoji, followed by a heart.

It sounds terrible but…I don’t know if I know who I am without him, without my job .

As soon as I press send, my pulse races as I recall that Sabrina was friends with Ambitious Nina, not this lost, sad version of me.

What if she doesn’t like whoever I become next?

What if she can’t relate if we’re no longer on the same path?

Reading my mind as any good best friend does, she immediately responds with, It doesn’t sound terrible.

Those things were major parts of your life for a long time.

But they were just that: parts. They weren’t YOU, Neen.

And I know it’s scary to feel like you’re starting over, but isn’t it exciting too? The world is your oyster!!

My heart slows slightly as I read Sabrina’s supportive words. But I don’t like oysters , I type but don’t send, because just then I hear a quiet thud on the other side of the shared wall. Quentin. He’s back?

Unless it’s only someone coming to gather his belongings. A moving company or his family, depending on if he’s vacated or dead, I guess.

No. It’s him. Something in me recognizes his presence, even through the wall.

My heartbeat revs familiarly as I go to the window, which I already opened earlier when my room got too stuffy.

There’s a good chance he won’t know I’m here without my window’s distinctive siren call. Or maybe after the other night, when I didn’t have anything to say in response to his cryptic pronouncement, he won’t want to talk at all. “Hello there, Moon,” I say, only half expecting an answer.

I guess he must already have his window open too, because I hear a few noises that sound like him coming closer, followed by a tired “Bonsoir, Nina.”

“I’ve missed you,” I say before I can think better of it, “these last few nights.”

“Oh? Zee, uh, zee feeling is mutual,” Quentin says, sounding distracted. There’s another little thud.

“What the heck’s going on over there?”

He replies, dropping the Pierre Escargot impression for a moment, “Taking off my pants and almost fell over, if you must know. I’m about to hop in the shower.

” I have the immediate mental image of him standing there naked, water sluicing off his skin, darkening that trail of hair on his stomach, leading lower…

He picks the accent back up again, pulling me out of the fantasy. “?a va, mon amie?”

“I’m fine,” I say, digging deep into the one semester of high school French I took after I exhausted their German offerings and hoping I’ve responded correctly. “Spent the last few days being dragged to every flea market in the tri-county area by my father. What about you? Where have you been?”

“I, zee Moon, have been right here, of course, despite zee silence.” His normal voice returns, sounding even more tired than before. “But I, Quentin, have been on a plane for the last ten hours.”

“Oh. Where—”

“Paris.”

My nerves kick up as my brain scrambles for reasons he might have gone back to France and keeps landing on He’s getting back with his ex . Not that it should matter to me if he is. “I didn’t realize you had a trip planned.”

“I didn’t. But Tuesday morning I woke up to an email from Charlene.

” My heart and stomach drop as one, plunging into the depths of my torso.

I try to muster some semblance of happiness for him so that he won’t know how disconcerted I am.

Why am I so disconcerted, anyway? He continues, “Turns out she and my former best friend are moving in together. How very wonderful for them!” I’ve never heard this biting, sarcastic tone from him before.

Is it wrong that all I feel is relief that we get to continue being miserable together?

“She was writing to tell me Jean-Luc doesn’t like having Faustine around.

Charlene was going to give her to a neighbor unless I came to get her. ”

“Who’s Faustine?”

“My daughter,” he says.

“Excuse me?” His ex was going to give his daughter to a neighbor? Wait. Quentin has a daughter ?

“Hold on, I’ll send you a picture,” he says.

My phone vibrates on the nightstand and I snatch it up.

On it is a photo of the most hideous cat I have ever seen.

It’s one of those super wrinkly, hairless ones, mostly beige with some black splotches on its head and tail.

She’s wearing a striped sweater and an expression that might actually give me nightmares.

Frankly, it’s even more shocking than him having a human child.

“Jesus Christ,” I say.

“She’s sweeter than she looks,” he insists.

“She’d have to be, considering she looks like she’s possessed by Satan’s even eviler cousin.”

“Faustine is fourteen years old. Her days of torturing souls are behind her. Now she mostly sleeps and summons minor demons.”

“I can’t believe you flew to Europe to bring home an ugly, elderly cat,” I say.

Except that I can absolutely believe it.

After all, this is the grown-up version of the boy who tried to send an envelope filled with loose change to the World Wildlife Fund when he was seven.

It was returned to sender for insufficient postage (obviously—twenty-six dollars in coins isn’t exactly light), but my mom was so touched by the gesture that she personally exchanged his nickels and quarters for a thirty-dollar check and a fresh postage stamp.

“She may be ugly and elderly, but she’s my baby and I love her,” he says defensively.

“It broke my heart to leave her before, but I didn’t want to put her through the long plane ride, and I thought she’d be happy enough with Charlene.

” His voice goes quieter. “I didn’t think she’d give her up so easily. ”

If I’ve learned anything over the last few weeks—not to mention the last seventeen years—it’s that it’s a lot easier for most people to get rid of someone they supposedly value than one might imagine. But that is a thought I am not going to voice. “Tomorrow…” I start instead.

“Oh, right. Shit. The venue tour. I almost forgot.”

“Do you want to reschedule?” I ask.

“No, no, it’s fine. The trip was so short I didn’t even bother trying to adjust to the time difference, so I’m not jet-lagged, just exhausted.

I should be fine after a good night’s sleep.

Also, that reminds me,” he says. “I have something I need to give you. Can you come over in about half an hour?”

“Um. Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, cool.” There’s a moment of silence, and I’m worried he’s about to say something else vague and profound to end the conversation. But then it’s just, “Let me go shower so I can put my fig leaf on, then.”

Heat engulfs my cheeks as his window quietly slides shut.