[Quinn 04] - The Silenced

She nodded, her face neutral. “Where’s Mom?”

“She’s in back with Reverend Hollis. She should be out in—”

Liz started walking toward the chapel doors. “She’s through here?”

“Liz, it’s probably not a good idea to interrupt them right now.”

“I don’t care what you think. I want to see Mom.”

“Liz, wait.”

But before he could say anything else, she had disappeared into the chapel.

The podium was right before him now. There was no backing out.

With a deep breath, he stepped behind it, then looked out at the room full of his parents’ friends and relatives. Everyone watched him, waiting.

Everyone except Liz. Her eyes were riveted on the flower display behind the casket, her jaw tense. Quinn couldn’t feel mad at her. He knew, like his mother, she was hurting. She’d lost her father. If anyone in the room had ever understood Harold Oliver well, it would have been Liz.

Quinn pulled the notes he’d written out of his pocket and set them on the podium. After another deep breath, he smiled at his mom, then looked again at the people gathered before him.

“What I remember most about my father … what I …”

He stopped and glanced at his notes, but there was nothing there that could help him.

I remember his coldness. I remember his distance.

He had written down things he thought people would want to hear. Lies about a relationship with his father he had never experienced. Feelings he had never had.

I remember his anger. I remember his inability to love. Me, anyway.

If he tried to say any of the things he’d prepared, everyone would see right through him.

He glanced up at his mom again. She was looking back, her eyes soft, streaks of tears on her cheeks. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, that the right words just weren’t coming. But then, as he looked at her, he realized there was something he could say, something that wouldn’t be false.

“What I remember most about my father is the way he loved my mother,” he said. “You could tell in the way he looked at her, and the way he always waited to eat until she was at the table. And the way he waited for her, and didn’t give up hope before they were married.” He told stories of life on the farm, of family trips, of Fourth of July picnics all from the perspective of the relationship between his father and his mother.

“He loved her,” Quinn finished. “And that was enough.”

NO ONE WHO CAME TO THE OLIVERS’ FARM THAT afternoon arrived empty-handed. There were casseroles and sandwiches and baked chicken and pans of Jell-O and cakes and pies and cookies and almost anything you would want to drink.

Quinn guessed that at least twice as many people had jammed into his mother’s house as had come to the chapel. When it got to the point where he couldn’t turn around without bumping into someone, he caught Orlando’s eye and motioned to the back door.

The yard was considerably less crowded than inside the house, but it was something equally annoying to Quinn.

Cold.

He shivered as they walked down the steps. Anything below sixty degrees just felt wrong, and the current temperature was definitely well south of that mark. If this had been Los Angeles, the day would have been considered full-on winter. But here in northern Minnesota, it was merely typical fall. And, as if to emphasize that point, several of the dozen or so people who had also opted for the outside weren’t even wearing jackets.

Quinn shivered again, then pointed at a couple of empty chairs. After he and Orlando were seated, he began picking at his food, but nothing looked appetizing. After only a few minutes, Orlando set her equally untouched plate on the ground and said, “I should check on Garrett.”

She had left her son at home in San Francisco under the watchful care of Mr. and Mrs. Vo. Orlando and Quinn had agreed that this was not the time for Garrett to be introduced to Quinn’s family. Perhaps the following summer.

Before she could retrieve her phone, though, several women approached them.

“Jake, that was just lovely—what you said about your father,” one of the women said.

“Thank you,” Quinn replied. He remembered her as the mother of someone he’d gone to school with, but her name escaped him.

“Yes,” one of the other women said.

“Absolutely lovely,” the last told him.

“Thank you.”

“I can’t believe how grown up you are now. And who is this beautiful woman you’re with?” the first asked.

Quinn could feel Orlando tense beside him. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my girlfriend, Claire.”

The first woman smiled. “Nice to meet you, Claire. I’m Mrs. Patterson.”

“How nice you could come with Jake,” the third said. “I’m Mrs. Moore.”