Page 35 of What Love Can Do

“Remember they’re staying at Penny’s place down the road? Nana told me about them yesterday. I told you,” her friend said.

“Oh, that’s them?” Bernie asked.

Quinn left the catty banter behind. Lilly’s disdain was written all over her face, and he just wanted to address it quickly before she got the wrong idea. “Lil, wait for me.” He followed her out the door into the parking lot.

“Lilly?” he heard one of the women mutter to the other.

Lilly whirled around, snaking her scarf back on. “I didn’t realize…I didn’t mean to…”

“I thought you were working tonight,” Quinn said, realizing how bad that both sounded and looked, as though he had taken advantage of the fact that she was busy to go hang with other women. “I don’t know those birds. They just came up to me and started talking to me.”

“That’s fine, Quinn. It’s not like you’re not allowed to talk to other women,” she said, shrugging in that clearly disturbed way women did when they insisted nothing was wrong. “I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. I’m actually…” He held onto her shoulder to make her stop walking and reached for her hand. She let him take it. “Really happy to see you. Come in and talk.” But her worrisome expression told him that something had shifted in her again, though he didn’t know what it could be. “Are you alright?”

“I need to talk to you,” she sighed, worry at the corner of her eyes, “but not inside there. Too many people.”

“Er…there’s only like ten people in there, Lil.”

“Ten too many. In this town, everyone talks, and I don’t want anyone hearing me.”

“Let’s take a walk then? Just…wait for me.” Quinn ran back inside, grabbed his jacket, and slapped a twenty dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change, Paul. Conor, text me later. Let me know you’re not floating in a river somewhere, eh? ‘Night, everyone. ‘Night, ladies.”

“Leaving so soon?” The blond woman pouted, disappointed that her cornered mouse was getting away.

“I’ll see you around town. Be here for a while.” Quinn saluted them with two fingers to his temple then blew outside, meeting up with Lilly. They walked slowly down the sidewalk toward a small park with a water fountain offering up a misty spray in the breeze. “So, what’s up? You look out of sorts.”

“I am…out of sorts,” she muttered, hands in her pockets. She didn’t want to hold hands or look at him, that much was evident. “Quinn…” she began, a churning quiet storm turning her blue eyes steel gray. “In your mother’s journal, did you read anything about another boyfriend, someone she knew in Green Valley before meeting your dad?”

He thought back to all the times he’d read through Mam’s journal. “Not a boyfriend as such. She mentioned that bloke who took her to see Star Wars and didn’t drive her down the coast like she wanted to one night. Wasn’t Ken the name? Why, do you know him?”

“Yeah, I do. I did. Quinn, Ken was my father—Ken Parker.”

Quinn stopped walking, felt his lungs squeezing out a gasp of air, as they both hung opposite each other waiting for more oxygen intake. “Whoa.”

“I know.”

“This is sort of Star Wars-ish too, I have to say. Lilly, I am your father…” He imitated Darth Vader’s deep, breathy voice, then remembered that she seemed perturbed from the moment she walked in, and returned to normal. “I mentioned Ken before. Why didn’t you say something then?”

She paused underneath a pine tree and looked at him with tears in her eyes, nodding. “Quinn, there’s more. I don’t know if you know this—I don’t know if your mother mentioned it in her journal, but your mother was engaged to be married…to my father. Not only that, but your mom broke my parents up when they were going out in their early twenties, then your dad came along, whisked her away to Ireland, and my parents got back together.”

“I see.”

And he did. Suddenly, it was all very clear, why everyone was so cold to him, why Mam’s family had shut her out. She hadn’t just been casually dating other men when she’d met his dad. She’d been promised to another. She’d wreaked havoc on two families by making her choice to move to Ireland.

“Quinn, according to my mom, my father was never the same. She hurt him very much when she left him for your dad, then when she left for good, she hurt everybody.”

This explained why his grandfather was sour with him too, pretended not to know who he and his brothers were, but really? Still? To go to such an extreme just because she fell in love with someone else? Quinn couldn’t understand it. Wasn’t family supposed to forgive you, no matter how crazy you were? No matter how cross he was with his daughter, he still should have found a way to talk things through with her. “There was no reason to shut her out,” Quinn said, walking ahead of Lilly. He needed to think this through.

“But Quinn, this whole town is like family. She hurt a lot of people by leaving.”

He spun around to face her. “You’re the one who’s going to hurt a lot of people when you leave, Lilly.” Damn, he couldn’t believe he’d said that.

“What?” she gasped.

“Nothing, forget I said anything.”

“You think I’m doing the same thing as your mom? Quinn, you’re the one who told me to go, follow my heart, go up against my mom. I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

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