Page 51 of Finders Keepers

“Hello!” I shout down the basement stairs as I descend.

“It’s Nina Hunnicutt! Your daughter! I’m coming down!

” My father is sometimes so focused on his work that he isn’t aware of much else and will startle if you simply appear in his periphery.

Considering he often works with things that are sharp or tiny, he’s reasonably asked that we announce our presence loudly before visiting his workshop.

I wait on the landing for him to respond before going any farther.

“Roger that,” he calls back.

When I reach him, he’s already turned around on his stool, wiping his hands on a cloth and waiting for me to tell him what I need.

“Hi, Dad,” I say, dropping a small kiss on his temple where his hair has turned salt-and-pepper. “Know anything about puzzle boxes? I’ve got one here, and I’m worried about breaking it if I try to open it myself. It’s an antique.”

“Let’s see.” He holds out his large palm—stained slightly green from who knows what—and I sit the wooden box atop it.

My father studies it for a few minutes, turning it this way and that, tapping here and there, giving it a light shake beside his ear.

It looks a little like a doctor giving a patient an examination; I’m half expecting him to ask the box if it hurts at all when he presses here.

What about…here? “Hmm.” He shakes it once more. “Ah. Okay.”

“Do you know how to do it?” I ask.

“I have a guess. No clue if it’s right, though. Shouldn’t hurt to try it.” He hands it back over to me. “Put it down over there,” he says, flicking a finger in the direction of a large wooden table pressed up against the wall perpendicular to his workbench. “More space.”

“And then…?”

“Spin it,” he says.

“Spin it?”

“Yep. Clockwise. Like a top. The lid should lift right off.”

“Seriously? That’s it?” I stare at the box, my hand hovering over it like a claw machine waiting for someone to put in a quarter. Could it really be that easy? I thought I was ready to find out, but maybe I’m not.

“Think so. Clever, huh?” Dad says. “Sometimes things aren’t as complicated as we try to make them.”

Something in me unlocks as simply as the puzzle box might as he says the words.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. Quentin and me— we don’t have to be complicated.

His stupid behavior and my stupid behavior came from the same stupid source: our teenage brains unable to navigate having feelings for each other.

Admittedly, his continued into adulthood, but I can’t completely blame him.

Looking back, I see all of the times he tried to lead me to the answer, or tell me the truth, only for me to change the subject, or for him to chicken out the same way he did when he didn’t kiss me that night on the blanket in his backyard.

I can understand making a bad decision because you aren’t sure you can catch and hold someone’s attention otherwise.

Because isn’t that exactly the same reason I went behind his back that night at Sprangbur?

Some foolish attempt to be remembered after it was all over?

I groan. I was fully planning on stretching out my anger, but it seems silly to fake it when every part of me wants to see Quentin and tell him how I feel about him.

How I’ve felt that way about him for so long that it’s become an inherent part of who I am, even when I tried to suppress it or become someone else.

That I understand exactly what it’s like to feel like you aren’t enough as you are, and the ridiculous hoops a person might jump through in order to convince themselves and the world they’re worthy.

“You, uh, gonna try it?” my father asks after a full thirty seconds of me standing there in silence.

“Not quite yet.” I snatch up the puzzle box, careful not to let it spin. “Thanks, Dad,” I yell as I scramble back up the stairs. His response comes in the form of a mumble that sounds like “Happy to help.”

In my room, I place the box atop the nightstand and make my way to the window.

It’s about two in the afternoon, and the sun is beating down on the backyard.

I haven’t been outside today—or, um, for several days now—but my mother was fretting this morning about needing to water her tomato plants while it was still early enough to try to save them from getting too burned, so I presume it’s toasty out there.

When I lift the sash, it doesn’t let out its distinctive scream. Oh, right. I forgot that Dad came in and silently fixed it sometime early in the week, when I was still hiding under my comforter and crying between bites of chocolate cake.

Meeewow.

Faustine’s distinctive greeting drifts over from next door, telling me that Quentin’s window must already be open, which means he’s probably in there with her.

Maybe I should have just gone over and knocked on his front door like a normal person.

This seemed more fitting, in a way, when I thought of it downstairs, but perhaps this conversation actually deserves direct sincerity.

But I also know that what Quentin told Eugene Aaron about his desire to get lost in the fantasy was true.

He’s a person who has always felt most comfortable when he can shield himself behind something—a joke, a competition, a too-charming smile, a window.

And I can’t blame him. This shit is scary.

Love is scary, a risk, something that I suppose is slightly easier to stare down when you take some of the heaviness out of it and instead insert a horrible accent.

So I take a breath and quickly call out, “G’day, mate!” then squeeze my eyes closed.

“…Nina?” Quentin sounds somehow equal parts confused and desperate as he says my name.

“Nah, no Nina here, mate. Just the Sun. Ya know, big round fella up there in da sky? Center of da solar system?”

“I’m familiar,” he says slowly. “I just didn’t realize the Sun was from…Chicago?”

“Chicago?” I protest in my regular voice. “I’m obviously going for Australia.”

“I have literally never heard an Australian person sound like that.”

“Come on. I sound just like Daniel Ricciardo!”

“Who?”

“Bloody ’ell, mate,” I say, trying again.

“Are you going for Cockney now?”

“Quentin! I’m trying to grand gesture you. Shut up.”

“Grand gesture me?”

“Yes! I am trying to tell you that I forgive you for hiding the treasure from me and that I understand why you did it. It’s the same reason I tried to find it on my own that summer too—I was trying to get your attention, to prove myself worthy of it.

And I want to learn from our past so we can maybe, just maybe, figure out how to have a future together. ”

“Oh.”

“But I hoped to say all of that in a fun accent. To make it, like, I don’t know, sweet? And you’ve screwed it all up.”

“Sorry. But I’m actually glad you didn’t do the accent,” he says. “It was already pretty damned sweet as it was.”

“Quentin.” I sigh. “I know you. Which is how I know that you meant it when you said you were sorry. I hope you know that I’m genuinely sorry too.”

“I do know that.”

“Okay. Good. I’m tired of being mad at you now, and I’m about ninety-five percent sure I know how to open the puzzle box. Will you please open it with me?”

“I would be absolutely honored. Just give me one…second…”

There’s a quiet grunt right before a metallic pop, then a scraping sound before one of Quentin’s bare feet suddenly appears in my peripheral vision. “What the fuck!” I shout, leaning out to see one of his legs hanging against the brick and his head emerging. “Are you trying to climb over here?”

“Yeah,” he says, like it’s not a big deal that he’s currently dangling half his body out of a second-story window.

He did attempt this once before, actually—which is how he wound up with a broken arm that had him unable to go swimming for most of the summer of 2005.

I bet him he couldn’t do it, so I guess it was technically my fault it happened.

“Quentin Foster Bell, use the front door, you absolute clown!”

“Now who’s screwing up whose grand gesture, hm?” he mumbles as he disappears back inside.

I’m only halfway down the stairs when the doorbell rings.