Valkyrie darted outside to hunt. Loki sauntered across the kitchen, pounced on a chair, and hopped onto the table.
Affronted, he sat on his haunches and stared at Quinn with that pointy, cunning face, as if daring her to yell at him.
“Git!”
He let out an incensed yowl, glancing past her as if searching for his real owner.
“I said go!”
He didn’t move, just stared at her as if she’d offended him.
Maybe he expected Gran to come barreling in, waving her cane, shouting that she was gonna skin him alive if he didn’t get his ugly butt off the table.
Quinn didn’t yell. She didn’t do anything.
Loki stayed on the table.
Thor and Odin wandered the house, meowing plaintively, searching for their mistress. They sensed something was off.
“She’s not here,” she said, barbed wire in her throat.
Quinn went to the backyard and drew a bucket from the well, lugged it to the bathroom, and stripped off her soiled clothing. She used a cold washcloth to wipe the grit and blood from her body.
Gran’s blood. She bit back a whimper. Once she’d finished, she dumped the bucket of dirty water and her clothes in the backyard. Clad in her bra and underwear, goose pimples broke out on her skin. She barely noticed.
She’d take care of the clothes later. Maybe she’d bury them. Or burn them.
She would never wear them again.
When she re-entered the house, Thor and Odin were waiting dejectedly by the door. They’d always been the needy ones. The ones Gran loved the most.
Odin waddled over and pressed his furry head against her shin, meowing mournfully like he was begging for a treat. Only it wasn’t a treat he wanted.
A sudden, irrational fury shot through her. “Go away! I can’t help you!”
With startled yowls, both cats scurried for the safety of the sofa. Fat Odin couldn’t fit beneath it but clambered onto the armrest. He settled his furry bulk and offered her a wounded look.
“She’s not here!” Quinn said in a strangled voice. “Can’t you see that? She’s not here!”
She stumbled down the hallway in her underwear to her bedroom and moved to the dresser, pulled out sweatpants and an oversized Lions hoodie, and tugged them on.
The dressings on her right hand had been filthy; she’d thrown them out with her clothes. The scabs needed topical antibiotics and fresh bandages.
The mere thought was overwhelming.
Quinn moved to her bed and lay atop the unmade covers, stiff as a board, arms at her sides, her head full of cotton.
Time passed. She didn’t know how long. She drifted in a dull, numb haze.
47
Quinn
Day One Hundred and Fourteen
A distant thud sounded. The front door opened and closed.
For a heart-clenching instant, Quinn thought it was Gran.
Reality clobbered her like a sledgehammer to the chest. Gran wasn’t shuffling through the front door because Gran was dead. Dead, dead, dead.
Two sets of footsteps padded through the hallway toward her bedroom. One human, one the click, click, click of paws on hardwood.
She did not lift her head. She did not move or breathe.
“Quinn?” Milo said.
Quinn opened her eyes and stared blindly up at the ceiling.
“Can I come in?”
Her tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of her mouth. Thick and swollen. She couldn’t speak, which meant she couldn’t say no.
Milo took her silence as consent and entered the bedroom. Ghost limped in behind him.
The dog came to the bed and nosed her shoulder, as if reassuring her. When she didn’t respond, he gave a low, sorrowful chuff, then turned a few times in the middle of the room and curled up on the rug.
A second later, the mattress sank. A small warm body clambered into the bed beside her.
Milo lay on his back, his arm touching hers, his feet reaching her shins. He wriggled his stockinged toes and leaned into her. His little kid breath smelled like peanut butter.
She stiffened but couldn’t push him away. Her veins were filled with cement.
Gran was dead. Gran was gone forever. Gran was never coming back.
Quinn’s own mother had abandoned her, betrayed her, failed to love her—but Gran never had. Not for one second.
Gran had been tough and stern, not given to bouts of affection or sentimentality, but Quinn had never doubted that Gran loved her. Never, not once.
And how many times had Quinn told Gran how much she meant to her? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember. That seemed like the worst kind of failure.
Milo took her hand and held it. Small fingers clutched her own. “I miss her. I miss her laugh. I miss her cornbread and how she always gave me extra drizzles of honey. I miss that she taught me things way more interesting than school. Or how she saved all her peanut butter just for me.”