“You wait,” Buzz said again, but he didn’t continue. Instead, there was a significant pause. “Can you do another business profile for me?” he finally asked.
“But I’m already doing the coin-sorting place,” Quinn said. “I was just working on that.”
“I know, I know,” Buzz said. “I wouldn’t ask, my boy, but I…”
He turned up his hands in a shrug.
“I won’t ask you for one next week. I promise.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Quinn said.
“This time I mean it.”
“I’ve heard that too,” he said.
“I know, I know,” Buzz said.
“Why not ask Kate?” Quinn asked, and when Buzz gave him a blank stare added, “The new girl?”
“Laurence told me he had her working on other things,” Buzz said.
“How about Alexis?” he asked. “Or Helen?”
“They both refused,” he said. “I need it for my pages. I swear this is the last time I’ll have you do double duty. Please. They’ll fire me if I don’t get in enough stories. They are just waiting…”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Quinn said. “What’s the story?”
And that was how Quinn found himself two hours later driving out to Middleburg.
Kate stood before her mother’s grave, reading the inscription for the hundredth time.
“Sarah Blakely,” it said simply. “Beloved wife and mother.”
That was it. Somehow she thought there should be more. Something that made this grave stand out from the hundreds of others.
Carefully, she leaned down and put the pot of flowers by the memorial. This at least gave the impression that someone cared about her mom. When she arrived, it had looked deserted. She looked at the grave and felt guilty.
“I’m sorry I haven’t come in a while, Mom,” she offered. “It’s just…”
Her dad made the trip at least once a year. Even after he remarried, he still came down. He invited Kate, of course. But she never wanted to come and he wasn’t the type to force an issue.
“Dad’s doing well,” she said. “He likes Anne well enough but I don’t think he ever got over you. I guess you are just that great.”
She smiled. She thought that she should feel more, but instead she just felt numb. She tried to picture her mom and couldn’t call up an image.
“I’m sorry,” she offered. “I don’t know what else to say.”
She stood there staring at the inscription. She felt like there was something more she was supposed to do, but she couldn’t think of what. She had spent so long feeling the anger from the day her mother died, she was unsure she wanted to think too much about it anymore. But unfortunately, that had meant not thinking much about her mother anymore either. Not a day went by when she didn’t think about it at some time or another. It had hung over her life like a dark cloud and she didn’t think it would ever go away.
Since she had arrived in town, she had been forced to think about it. The memories and the dreams made it feel like it had occurred just a few days ago, not more than a decade before.
“Wherever I go, some part of me will always be here, Mom,” she said. “I can never leave it.”
She hadn’t visited the grave in years, but it was easy to remember where it was. It was always there in the dreams. She shouldn’t have come back. She had thought it might make it better, but now that seemed laughable. Instead, she was either waking up screaming or seeing things near the printing press. That vision had seemed so real…
She fought it off. Some part of her felt like pulling her hair out. She could never talk about this. Her mother’s death was an untreated wound she kept hidden from the world. It kept her weak and bleeding, but she would never let anyone see it. Sometimes she wished she had died too. She flexed her hand and stared at her mother’s grave. This was it. This was the way it would be. She would move on, but… this will always be here.
She jumped as she heard the gate swing open behind her. Reacting on instinct, she moved herself behind a tree for cover.
She saw a man walking down the path. It took a minute as he came closer to realize she knew him-it was Quinn from the paper. She watched him walk around the bend and made a move to follow. She wondered just what the hell he was doing here.
Kate watched as he walked down the hill and through the inner gate at the back. He paused, looking out at the pond below the cemetery. Then he walked forward and sat on a bench on the hillside.
Kate moved slowly and with great uncertainty. She felt like she was intruding somehow and forgot that it was he who had disturbed her moment at her mom’s grave. But he appeared to be merely sitting on the bench and made no move to do anything else.
Part of her thought she should leave. She should turn around and leave him in peace. But another side wanted desperately to know what he was doing. She also felt some kind of pull towards him, as if she couldn’t quite walk away even if she had wanted to.
Instead, she moved carefully. As she came closer, she could tell the bench was made out of marble. It appeared to be a memorial to someone, but obviously placed there so people could sit on it. She paused and wondered how to approach him.
Lacking a better idea, she moved so that she was in his peripheral vision and called out, “Hello Quinn.”
He jumped up, whirling around. For a moment, he looked ready to run away.
“It’s Kate,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I know,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “It’s just, well, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“What were you expecting?” she asked, and smiled at him.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting anyone to jump out at me,” Quinn said. “And certainly not someone who isn’t in a hockey mask or something.”
“Sorry about that,” she said, as she walked towards him. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Not at all,” he said and gestured for her to sit down. “What are you doing here?”
“I was working out this way,” she lied. “I saw you walk in and I was curious.”
“Wow,” he said, and smiled at her. “You must be a good reporter.”
“I tend to follow my instincts,” she said.
“I can see that,” he said.
“I just wanted to see what you were doing,” she admitted.
“Honestly,” he said, “I’m just here to think. I feel very calm here.”
“So you come here often?” she asked.
“Only when I have had a rough day,” he said and laughed.
“Well, now we are talking,” she said and smiled. “What caused your rough day?”
She swung her legs around so she straddled the bench, then lifted one leg up and wrapped her arms around it.
“I don’t want to bore you to death,” he said.
“No, no,” she said. “Look, I haven’t had much conversation lately that isn’t about watches, or Bill’s treatise on the bologna sandwich. I could use a decent one.”
“All right,” he said, and grinned. “I’m game.”
“So what’s the problem?” she asked.
“Where do I start?” he laughed. “Buzz has got me running around God’s green acre working on business stories. Helen keeps bringing up a story about dog shit, and Laurence’s idea of a raise is about 500 bucks a year.”
Kate laughed. She couldn’t help it.
“Dog shit?”
Quinn laughed back.
“Apparently, it’s quite the health issue. Nobody is cleaning up after their dog, people step in it, kids get sick and basically it’s the end of Western civilization.”
“Wow, that sounds like a great story,” Kate said, and smiled so he would know she was kidding.
