Page 50 of Finders Keepers
Our journey from Richmond to Catoctin immediately takes the prize for Most Uncomfortable Time I’ve Spent in a Car.
Which is impressive considering that, freshman year of college, I carpooled with a girl from my dorm and her girlfriend to get back to Maryland for winter break and they had a massive blowout fight and broke up about twenty minutes into the trip.
Quentin doesn’t even try to talk to me. Which is good, because I am not at all in the mood for more conversation.
He stares out the windshield with the intensity of someone trying to drive in whiteout conditions and grips the steering wheel so tightly that his fingers become colorless from the knuckle down.
They don’t regain blood flow until he parks in front of our duplex two hours later.
Wordlessly, I follow him into his house, where Faustine greets us with a haunting and distressingly deep meeeeewow .
Quentin marches past her, through the dining room, and into the kitchen.
I follow him, somehow managing to avoid tripping on the cat weaving through my legs as I walk.
He slides open the drawer next to the sink, reaches into the very back, and pulls out what appears to be a wad of grocery bags.
Those are peeled away to reveal a wooden box, approximately five inches by four inches, and another four inches high.
It has stars carved into the top, reminiscent of Sprangbur’s front door.
He hands it over to me. “Here,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “It’s all yours.”
I examine it, looking for some clue as to how it opens. “Do you know how it might—”
“No.”
“Okay. Well. Thanks.”
He finally looks at me. “I’m sorry, Nina. I really am.” His voice is full of pain, and regret, and shame.
“I know,” I say softly, because I can tell how much he means it.
There’s something to be said for this genuine apology.
It’s much more than I got the last time things fell apart (and infinitely more than what I got from Cole when he lied to me).
It doesn’t mean it will be enough to repair what’s broken, though.
In this particular moment, my anger is outweighed by sorrow.
That this is the conclusion of our treasure hunt, and probably of us—here, in Quentin’s mostly empty kitchen with his naked cat noisily cleaning herself atop one of my feet.
The absurdity hurts so much that tears well in my eyes.
Quentin takes a hesitant step forward, then a more determined and certain one.
His hand comes to my face, gently cupping my cheek and swiping away the moisture with his thumb.
He leans forward and kisses me, so gently that his lips are only a whisper against mine.
Not the beginning of something, but an ending.
And not the happily-ever-after kind in the romances my mom reads with her book club.
Once again, I managed to convince myself this was a different kind of story than it actually was.
To see things one way when the entire time they were really another.
Lesson finally learned.
Saying goodbye seems redundant since that’s clearly what that kiss was meant to be, so I turn around, clutching the box to my chest, take a deep breath, and leave.
···
For a long time, I sit on the steps of my parents’ porch, staring at the damn box as the Orioles game drifts across the street from Mr. Farina’s radio.
I can’t muster up the curiosity to open it yet, although I am extremely close at one point to throwing it down on the walkway to crack it the hell open, just because I bet it would be cathartic.
The only thing that stops me is that I’ve heard stories of tamper-proof puzzle boxes.
Also the box is so beautiful that it really would be a shame to break it.
Quentin and I have already left enough broken things in our wake.
Man, how embarrassingly emo.
Eventually I take the box inside, barely acknowledge my mother when she calls a greeting from the kitchen, and go up to my room.
I consider calling Sabrina to tell her what happened, but I’m not ready to rehash it all yet.
The pain after I broke up with Cole was delayed, and then when it hit it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared.
This, on the other hand…This is a profound wound, a reopening of an old one that’s even deeper and wider, new damage and old damage mixed together in a way that’s turned a fading scar into a fresh one that I’m not sure will ever heal correctly.
Even a best friend can’t do much for that, and I don’t want her digging around in there, thinking she’s helping but only making it worse.
Instead, I sit with my orange-and-pink comforter wrapped around me like it’s my own soft little cave and simply stare at the box where I’ve placed it on my nightstand.
With the drama of how I came to possess it, it still hasn’t really hit me that this is Fountain’s treasure. That it wasn’t a practical joke after all. (Or, at least, not completely; the contents could still prove to be ridiculous, I suppose.) I can’t believe it actually exists.
Right now, I kind of wish it didn’t.
Time doesn’t feel real, so I’m not sure how long it is before my mom calls up the stairs, telling me that dinner is ready.
My stomach grumbles; Quentin and I didn’t eat lunch.
I trudge down to the dining room to find my mother placing bowls of macaroni and cheese on the table.
“A recipe Aunt Joan sent me,” she says, not yet looking up.
“I haven’t tried it before, so I hope it’s good.
More mustard powder than I—” The moment she sees me she stops talking and moves forward to wrap me in a hug. “Oh, sweet baby.”
I thought I was going to be okay, but my mother’s embrace is like the gentle version of a battering ram, slamming into the place storing all the hurt I’ve accumulated and stashed away.
My sobs against her shoulder are ugly and violent.
Nothing like the quiet, woe-is-me tears I shed after getting fired and breaking up with Cole and leaving Boston.
Jon Bon Jovi himself could show up at our front door right now to call me delusional in person, and I wouldn’t even be able to manage a raised middle finger. The anger just isn’t there.
It turns out I was delusional after all, to think Quentin and I could be together.
That I could find happiness in this place where I’d only ever felt disappointment.
Disappointment that’s now crashing to the floor, taking me with it.
Heavy, heavy, heavy. Duffle bags full of bowling balls and suitcases stuffed with bricks.
A security envelope with its seams straining under the burden of twenty-six dollars in pennies and nickels, its single stamp guaranteeing it would never arrive at its destination, just thud and clang when it’s slipped back through the mail slot.
My tears do eventually dry up, and my stomach’s demands recapture my attention.
Mom guides me to my dining chair as if I might not be able to find it on my own and whisks away the bowl of dried-out macaroni.
She reappears a short time later with a fresh, steaming bowl in one hand and a bottle of wine and two glasses in the other.
I love this woman so much. I hate that it looks like I’m going to have to leave her and Dad again now that the life I wanted to build here has failed its permit inspection.
Turns out you can’t build on quicksand. And quicksand is pretty good at pretending to be regular sand. And also that it loves you.
Okay, I am in absolutely no emotional condition for good metaphors right now.
As we eat, I gradually fill Mom in on what happened in Richmond.
First, I tell her about meeting the son and great-granddaughter of the man who interviewed Julius Fountain in the thirties, which she pretends she finds interesting even though I know it’s not the part of the story she cares about. Then I get to Quentin’s confession.
“So he did goblin you!” she declares. “I must’ve known all along somehow.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask, attempting to rub away my exasperation and sinus pressure with little circles of my fingertips on my forehead.
“He played a nasty trick. That’s what goblins do, right?”
“I honestly could not tell you,” I say.
“It’s what they do,” she says, bringing a self-satisfied forkful of noodles to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, though, Ninabean. I really thought he was better than that.”
“Me too.”
“Did he tell you why he did it?”
“Oh. Um.” I can already tell what my mother’s response is going to be if I tell her he did it because he wanted to spend time with me. She’s going to switch sides so fast, and I want her on my side, dammit. “It’s…complicated.”
She gives me a look like she knows I’m not telling her everything, but all she says is, “Do you want me to make those brownies you like, with the salted caramel swirled on top?”
“Yes, please.” My voice is small and childlike, but this time I’m fully embracing it.
I’m going to let my mom take care of me, the way she wasn’t able to the first time Quentin broke my heart—mostly because I wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, but then also because she was so preoccupied dealing with the aftermath of Dad’s accident.
I was afraid to use up Mom’s limited supply of love and care.
But as she places a gentle kiss on my temple before making her way to the kitchen, I understand now it’s the most limitless thing on the planet.
That reverberations of it will remain even after she’s gone, inside me where my own limitless supply has been growing, waiting for the moment it will be activated.
First I need to find someone worthy of it.
Or maybe I should direct some of it toward myself. I’m going to need it back in Boston, when I’m alone again.
Mom’s voice drifts into the dining room, interrupting my thoughts. “On the upside, at least you didn’t get picked up by the police this time around.”
Hold up, what!?
“Um, I don’t know what you mean. I never…” I turn and meet her gaze through the open doorway. I’m not fooling her even a bit. “How long have you known?”
“Mr. Bell called us that night to tell us everything. Did you really think he wouldn’t?”
“I mean, sort of. Yeah.” I can’t believe I’ve carried that secret for so many years and my parents knew all along. More to the point, I can’t believe they didn’t punish me. “Why weren’t you mad?”
“Because you were a good kid, Nina. We knew your heart. We didn’t think you’d be making a habit of it. Besides, you were always your own harshest critic. If you made a mistake, we knew you didn’t need us to tell you.”
She’s right. I did make a mistake, and I did know it.
I just wish I had a better sense of if I’m making one now.
···
For the next five days, I cry and mope around the house like a woeful ghost. Mom must fill Dad in on the most basic details, because he tells me he’s “sorry about what happened” when we pass in the hallway the first morning, then otherwise gives me an extra-wide berth.
It isn’t long before even hearing evidence of Quentin’s existence next door starts making me too sad, and I haul my comforter down to the couch, where at least we aren’t sharing a bedroom wall and my window can’t taunt me with memories.
I consider leaving and going back north, crashing on a friend’s couch for a week or two until I have the offer letter from Malbyrne and can use it to get a new apartment. But this isn’t over yet.
There’s still the unopened puzzle box, up in my room.
I occasionally sit on my bed, staring at it, considering how it might open and what it might contain.
Then I inevitably get too annoyed and angry that I’m doing this alone and shove it back into the top drawer of my nightstand.
I spend most of my time consoling myself with my favorite comfort foods (thanks to my mother), making a bunch of macramé plant hangers (also thanks to my mother), and getting way too into Formula 1: Drive to Survive (that one’s actually thanks to Hanako; we’ve been texting).
But inevitably I hit the limit of how many baked goods I can possibly consume, and soon thereafter I run out of both string and episodes featuring horrific crashes and Guenther Steiner being eminently quotable.
I take it as a sign that it’s time to get myself together again.
This was the type of all-encompassing sulking I came here hoping to partake of back in June, which Quentin ruined with his presence and talent for getting me to laugh and smile and agree to his stupid challenges.
I finally got to do it, just not over the things I thought had made me sad.
Now, though, I’m finished. Like Forrest Gump deciding he’s run far enough. Time to do something else.
Like figure out how to open that damn box.