Picture the Dead

brother’s life and everything in it. But that wasn’t enough for you, because you even wanted to tamp out the honor of his memory. What a low and filthy thing to do. It is beyond reproach, Quinn. It’s beyond anything I could have conceived, of you or anyone.”

“Certainly, if that’s how you wish to see it,” he answers me. “Yes, fine, I took on what had been Will’s. I did. But only because he would have wanted it that way. For he knew it’s what I’d wished for so badly.”

“Nate thought it was you who’d been hanged,” I realize out loud. “He was referring to Will, not you, when he spoke about the ‘stuckup brother.’ It never made sense to me that Nate and Will would have been friends but that’s because they weren’t. Nate was your friend. What I can’t see in this nightmare is why Will is not here, and you are.”

Quinn stands like a soldier and he delivers his words simply, belying their weight. “I’d written you my last thoughts in that letter. All of it was straight from my heart. I gave that letter to Nate Dearborn, and I told him to find you. I needed for you to know how I felt about you before they killed me.” His gaze seems fixed into another time.

“But what about Will? What happened to Will?” I am pleading.

“Enough about Will.”

“I won’t stop until ”

“ Will is gone and you refuse to believe ”

“ until you allow him the dignity ”

“ Dammit, Jennie, I swear sometimes you nag me worse than Mother.”

“But I wouldn’t if you didn’t act so furtive and guilty, as if you’ve got ”

“Enough!” His hand whip cracks my cheek.

“Oh!” I reel back, my head snapping against the bridge guardrail as I stumble to my knees. Pain shudders and pings down my neck and arms.

I touch my lips. Blood mingles with rainwater.

Quinn has moved above me, his temper recovered and in check. “What have I done? Forgive me, please, Jennie. I’m not in command of myself. The morphine…and the wine…” Hands on my shoulders, he pulls me up and tries to press me close. A thought grips me cold: perhaps Quinn is insane. I must reason with him carefully.

“I want to know,” I say, “so that I might come to my own conclusion.”

My blood goes cold at his tone. So reasonable, so pleasant, as if he’s worked out every piece of his madman’s logic. “My brother was too moral, too sanctimonious and pious for prison. He was unable to do what was necessary to survive, to thrive. He threatened to turn us all in… I had to do it if I were to stay alive and get out. To come home to you.”

My image of Will at the poker table, free and insouciant, mists away. Now I see brothers arguing over crimes, a locket lost, a girl back home. “Had to do what?”

“We fought. I didn’t mean to. But I was angry, he was angry, we hadn’t slept in days, hadn’t had a warm meal or proper bed…I can’t say who started it. I was in a fury how dare he preach morality? How dare he call us traitors? We just wanted to survive. To survive that hell.”

“What happened?” My voice is a whisper.

“He lunged at me, pulled a knife on me. I hadn’t meant to finish him, but he’d gouged my eye and I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think, not in the moment. My hands around his neck did more damage than I expected. So there, I’ve said it. In war, Fleur, we are not in our right minds…” Quinn’s fingers are trembling slightly as they brush my bloodied lip.

I shake him off. The rain is sloshing on my skin and inside my head. “You killed him.” My nightmares, the strangling Will had been warning me. It is all so stunningly, horrifically clear. I step back. “You killed your own brother.”

“You’re exhausted right now. You’re hearing this story but not the nuances of it. Tomorrow you’ll feel differently. Truly, you could learn to love me. We’d purchase ourselves an entirely new and better life. We’ll refurbish Pritchett House exactly to your liking, for there’ll be plenty of money just as soon as we’re married.”

“Plenty of money as soon as we’re married…” I repeat softly.

He flinches.

“Quinn? What do you mean?” I press. “Do I have money? Of my own?”

“You do have some, yes,” he answers. “A tiny bit that’s coming to you when you turn eighteen. Father is the executor of your trust, and he didn’t think you needed to know, or you’d start grasping for it. But it could be drawn if we were wed, as I’m of legal age.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of a trust.”

“What does it matter? Mine would become yours, yours would become mine. As it happens with any husband and wife.”

The blow to my head is taking its toll. I blink, dizzy, my knees seem to lack strength, my vision blurs.

My own money. A “tiny bit.” Yet significant enough that nobody has ever confided it to me.

It is too much deception, all at once. I’m all out of fight. I lean back against the struts of the bridge, as far away as I can get from Quinn without inciting him.

“Jennie, it’s not a queen’s ransom, believe me. Besides, I’d love you if you didn’t have a penny.” Quinn closes the space between us. “How can you doubt my love? Think of it this way. It was the luckiest thing in the world for both of us that you’d thought Will wrote that stupid confession. On some level of your unconscious mind, I think perhaps you secretly wanted Will to have written it, to absolve me. To put the war behind us and start fresh. With me.”

“No, that’s madness…” Uttering this word, I am fearful of it, for it seems too apt a description.

Quinn waves me off. He speaks with utter conviction. “I’d assumed you’d gone a bit off anyway. Burying your own necklace, drawing on the windows. I wanted to help you. I still do.” His hands grip my shoulders in entreaty. “In time, I’d hoped, you’d grow to love me for it.”

The necklace, the heart, the presence in Pritchett House. All along, Will has been trying to warn me. “You were never going to tell the truth,” I realize aloud. “You’d have taken this secret of yours to your death.”

Quinn’s grip intensifies. “You promised we’d be happy again,” he says. “You promised.”

“With you?” I have to laugh. Unwise, I gauge, too late.

“Have you been playing with me all along, then?” Something in him has died, gone empty. His tone is as cold as his eyes. “It makes me wonder, how could you have cared for me at all if you can turn venomous so quickly? I’ve been a fool.” He releases my shoulders to catch my wrists with hands rough as rope. “Suppose it’s a mistake we’ll both have to live with.” He shoves me back, as if shaking out a handkerchief. “Not that yours will be a particularly long life.” As my spine slams against the guardrail, fresh pain breaks through my body. “But I’ll think of you a little, Fleur. I promise I will.”

“You’re hurting me!” But he won’t stop. “Let’s go home,” I find myself saying. Pleading. “Where it’s warm and dry, and we can talk like sensible beings.”

Quiet astonishment passes into his face as he considers this. If there is a moment when he hinges between this suggestion and another action, it is far too short. His brother, ever the rescuer, steadfast in his desire to do right by his loved ones, hadn’t realized what he was up against. He had been the same young man right to the end. And the Quinn standing before me now was the same Quinn. The beast he always was. Determined to have everything he wanted and sure that he was entitled to it.

I have seen him every day since his return. And yet I’ve not managed to see this.

“No more talking. I’m tired of your tricks, and I won’t live a life where you wrangle your stupid secrets over my head.” He turns faintly seductive as he caresses the side of my cheek. “You never did learn to swim, did you, Jennie?” He smirks. “Don’t worry, love. When you’re closer to death, it won’t be as painful as you think. In fact, I believe it might be a bit like falling asleep.”

“No…you wouldn’t…”

“And then you can join them both. Your twin and your beloved.”

He will kill me. No doubt about it. He has killed before. And killed and killed. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“What I am doing,” he responds, dulcet as a choir boy, “is playing the part of your bereaved fiancé. Not a soul will argue that your suicide was caused by heartbreak…after all, you still love my poor, dead brother. You visited that preposterous spiritualist often enough everyone’s borne witness to your endless melancholia. Marrying