Page 41 of Finders Keepers

Thank god, Quentin’s car is parked out front when I arrive back on West Dill Street. I ring his doorbell, then ring it two more times.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I hear him call through the door. It swings open and his eyebrows come together. “Nina?” he says. “What…Are you okay? Did you…Have you been running?”

I gasp for air and hold up a finger. I didn’t run so much as speed walk all the way here, but running sounds more impressive, so I nod.

“I found something,” I say. “Something that might lead us to the treasure. I don’t know yet for sure, because I wanted to wait to talk it through with you before I did anything, but I really think this could be it, Quentin. ”

“When?” he asks.

“When what?”

“When did you figure this out?”

“Just now. Or, like, fifteen minutes ago.” My words slow as I realize I have made an error. That, in my excitement, I forgot the part where he might actually be super mad at me for researching without him.

But his face isn’t angry. It’s just very…serious. “You figured it out, and you immediately came to tell me?”

I nod. “I mean, I was at Hanako’s bar, and I had to get back here. But yes, as immediately as possible.”

We look at each other, our gazes acknowledging the significance of the decision I made to include him this time. The fact that I didn’t have to, yet I did.

“Don’t look so surprised,” I joke. My smile is somewhat sheepish. “We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” he says. “We are.” He opens the door wider and motions for me to come in. “Come on. Don’t hold me in suspense. Tell me what you found, Dr. Hunnicutt.”

I step inside. My legs ache and my lungs still burn. I want to sit down, but…Right. Quentin doesn’t have any furniture here. I start making my way toward the stairs. “Okay, but give me like, two minutes to recover. It’s like ninety degrees out and I—”

“You can go up to my room if you want,” he says. “There’s a bed there to sit on at least.”

“Oh, so now you want me in your bed?” I tease, though I’m sure I’m not that attractive with sweat running down my forehead, conspiring with my heavy breathing to fog up my glasses.

He smiles anyway, then says, “Go up and settle in. I’ll grab you a glass of water and be right there.”

When he said there was a bed in here at least, he meant it literally.

There is a queen-size bed in here, and very little else.

I take my laptop back out of its bag, then set my things on the floor.

The mattress is thick foam, probably of the purchased-online variety.

I sit on the edge and toe off my sneakers.

There are two pillows, one more indented, and before I can think it through, I grab it and hold it up to my nose, breathing in deeply.

I drop it back where it belongs just as he enters the room. “Were you being weird with my pillow?” he asks as he hands me a glass of ice water.

“Nope,” I say, and take a long drink as he watches me with suspicion. I drain the glass before long, and he takes it from me to place on the floor. “Nice bed, by the way.”

“Thanks. I had an air mattress at first, but it kept deflating on me. Also, as an unemployed single man in my thirties, I got tired of feeling like a sad cliché.” He moves to the other side of the bed, where he stretches out with his arms behind his head. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me what you found.”

I open my laptop and show him the passage that caught my eye at Flow State.

Then I take him to the contact page of Emily Aaron’s website.

“Maybe Fountain did give Edlo to Albert Aaron, whatever that actually means. And maybe Emily or her grandfather or someone else in the family can tell us more about it.”

He’s quiet for a long time, simply staring at the web page until the screen goes dark and I have to swipe the trackpad to wake it up again. “What are you thinking, Quentin?” I ask. “You don’t seem…You’re mad at me, aren’t you? That I reexamined the transcripts on my own. I’m sorry, I—”

“No,” he says. “I’m not mad. Just…trying not to get my hopes up too much, you know?” He turns over and props himself up on his elbow. “You’re a genius, Neen. This is a solid idea. Good job, cookiepuss.”

My heart fills with joy at his words, even though his expression doesn’t fully line up with them. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

He grins, and I’m glad to see the shift as his expression relaxes. “Because I know it bothers you.”

“Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I love it. Maybe I’m thinking about adopting it as my legal name.

” I try to joke around with him, but the fact that he’s not upset that I did research on my own somehow makes the guilt of having gone to the library alone more intense.

If he finds out later…“Quentin,” I say. “I need to tell you something else.”

His grin deflates as he registers the sudden seriousness in my tone. “Okay.”

“After the Sprangbur venue tour, I went to the library. To the special collections room. Without you.” I turn to face him more completely, folding my legs under me.

“I was…I was feeling desperate to get this over with, because I wanted you so badly and I…I didn’t find anything then, I promise.

It was completely uneventful.” I remember Mrs. MacDonald trying to coerce me into taking her job.

“Except for Mrs. MacDonald thinking I should replace her.”

Quentin frowns. “She’s leaving?” he asks.

“She wants to. But she’s been waiting for the right successor. And, uh, she thinks I’m it.”

“Do you think you are?”

“I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing here. I am telling you that this was not the first time I researched without you, and—”

He holds up a hand, stopping me. “It’s fine. When you found something you came to me. I’m much more interested in this whole you-replacing-Mrs.-MacDonald thing.”

“I mean, it’s not a thing. It’s not happening.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Why?” I echo. “Because…because…it’s ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous about it exactly?”

“You think I should just stay in Catoctin and spend the rest of my life sorting through Mrs. MacDonald’s hoard of unlabeled bankers boxes?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he says. “Would that make you happy?”

And, fuck, put that simply, I think it might. Especially if Quentin were the one waiting for me at home each evening, kissing me hard when I walk through the door, even if I were covered in dust and cobwebs.

Where did that thought come from?

“Why is everyone always asking what will make me happy all of a sudden?” I say too loudly, my voice breaking.

“Nina.” Quentin’s hand comes to rest on my knee. Soothing. Supportive.

I move to lie down beside him with a heavy sigh.

“I don’t really know what will make me happy because I don’t even know who I am anymore,” I whisper.

“I’ve been a certain version of myself for so long.

Ambitious Nina. But she was all wrapped up in my old life, in Cole and in academia.

I don’t think I’m going to get to be her again, or that I want to be, but I’m not sure who to be instead. ”

“Why can’t you just be you?” he asks, running his fingers lightly up and down my arm. “Why do you need a modifier? What’s wrong with just Nina?”

“Because…just Nina isn’t enough. She’s never been enough.” His fingers pause where they are, and that line forms between his eyebrows. “She wasn’t enough for you to want to stay friends, and she wasn’t enough to keep my dad safe, or to know how to help when we almost lost our house and—”

The tears come all at once, a deluge. They feel alien against my cheeks. Probably because they aren’t current tears, but very, very old ones that I’ve held back for seventeen years. Quentin takes me in his arms and holds me tight as I sob and sob.

“Ambitious Nina is who I had to be after you left,” I murmur into his chest when I can catch my breath.

“She let me feel like I had some semblance of control again. And people liked her. My parents were proud of her. She was the best daughter, their high achiever who could take care of herself and, one day, hopefully, them. It felt good to lessen their burden, even if it was only that they didn’t have to spend their limited energy and resources worrying about me. ”

I sniffle and Quentin rubs his hand in slow circles over my back.

I’ve never felt this combination of safe and emotionally raw and slightly turned on before.

I continue talking, trying to explain everything I’m only now understanding myself.

“She served me so well, for so long, that I started thinking that’s who I actually was.

That her goals were my goals, and I don’t know, maybe they were, because I did enjoy a lot of what I accomplished.

But happiness wasn’t…that was never part of the equation.

It seemed like something to keep striving toward, something I’d get eventually.

A one-day sort of thing I had to earn. Something I dangled in front of myself so that I would keep going instead of…

instead of stopping. Instead of risking having to feel all those horrible things again that I felt that fall. ”

“Nina,” he whispers. “Neen, look at me.” I lean back and look into his eyes, blinking away the moisture still clinging to my eyelashes. The hand that was on my back comes up to cradle my face. “I’m so sorry. I am so sorry that I made you feel like you weren’t enough.”

“It wasn’t just you—” I start.

“Hush,” he says, pressing his thumb against my lips.

“The silence between us, that was not your fault. It was mine. Do you hear me? It was because of my failings. The Nina I grew up with was enough. And the Nina you are now—the one who still can’t say no to a competition and who loves her family and who stands topless in front of windows—she’s enough too. More than enough. She’s everything.”

With that he leans in and presses his mouth to mine, so sweetly and gently it feels like a dream. He slowly ends the kiss, and we simply stare at each other for a moment.

“You’re a lot better at this than my therapist back in Boston,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.

“At kissing? I don’t think you’re supposed to be doing that with your therapist.”

I give him a small shove until he’s flat on his back. This is dangerous, us in his bed, me still feeling vulnerable, and him looking like…well, like he always does, which is really hot. “We need to figure out what to write to Emily Aaron,” I say, sitting up.

Quentin shakes his head subtly, as if resetting himself, then reaches for my laptop. “You talk, I’ll type,” he says as he enters our names into the contact form along with his email address. I dictate the message, and he dutifully transcribes it:

Hello Emily,

We hope this message finds you well, and that it isn’t a problem we’re contacting you through your business site.

We’re doing research on Julius Fountain, the turn-of-the-century industrialist, and have been relying heavily upon your great-grandfather Albert’s oral history interviews with him.

There’s a part of the interview we don’t fully understand and were hoping you (or any other relatives you might have on that side of the family) would be open to chatting with us.

We’re happy to do so virtually, by phone, or in person—whichever is most convenient.

Thank you for your consideration,

Nina Hunnicutt, PhD, & Quentin Bell, Esq.

“Hey, wait,” Quentin says as he finishes typing. “Why does your name get to be first?”

“Because I’m the one who figured this out.

And my doctorate makes us sound more legitimate.

Which is probably helpful since we’re just two randos contacting this woman out of the blue about her family history.

That’s also why I think we should include our honorifics, even though it looks a little douchey. ”

“Good points all around,” he says. “All right. Send.” He presses the button, then stretches his arms as a confirmation page appears.

I suppose our treasure-hunting business is over, and it’s best if I leave. Before I can announce my intention to head out, he says casually, “You could stay for a while. If you want. We could get takeout and watch a movie.”

I’m about to turn him down for the same reason I’ve turned him down most of the other times he’s tried to get me to hang out outside the scope of our agreement—it’s too dangerous for my heart.

But I think that ship has sailed. Whether it was that tender kiss a moment ago that hoisted the anchor or something long before now, all I know is that I’m waving to it from the shore.

All I can do is hope the journey is smooth from here. “Sure,” I say. “That would be nice.”