Adele Griffin - Picture the Dead

“I’ll have to remember to thank her.” My voice sounds girlish and scared.

Quinn stops close enough that I see the glint in his eyes, silver and uncomprehending. The injured eye, almost healed, has taken on an unfixed and cloudy focus. Quinn had once confessed that it hardly diffuses more than light and dark.

Suddenly it is this eye that frightens me most an eye gone nearly dead that keeps up a pretense of functioning. An eye that stares at me but sees nothing. I jump back as he takes a step forward. A fresh patter of rain blows in on us, briefly blinding.

“But I don’t understand. What made you go away? Did one of those absurd Wortleys slight you?”

“No…” I realize I am too scared to speak.

“You can’t imagine my frustration to come home and not find you anywhere. Mavis said that when she saw you on the stairs, you looked pretty as a painting. I thought you might be taking a walk around the pond. But your hair, your frock and what’ve you done with your beautiful new shoes?” The concern in his voice has an edge of suspicion now.

The entire journey from Boston I’d throbbed with fury and outrage. But the confrontation is not so simple. I am besieged by so many conflicting emotions: apprehension, disgust, exhaustion, anger, fear and above all, the rush of need to escape Quinn’s presence.

“L-let me pass,” I stammer, pushing forward, but he blocks me.

“Jennie, what’s happened? I’ve been quite heartsick with worry these past hours. And something is undeniably wrong.”

“Let me pass,” I repeat. “I’m returning to the house to collect the only thing I’ve ever cared about. And then I’m leaving.”

“Leaving? Why? And why are you looking at me like that?”

It’s no use pretending. I square myself in his eye, my voice breaking thin from my lips. “The photograph,” I manage. “Locke’s photograph, all six of you. Curtis, Dearborn, you…the one you were looking for last week,” I add.

Caught off guard, he remains composed. “Yes,” he answers simply after a moment. “Yes, you’re right. You’ve found irrefutable evidence though you know nothing of the context in which that photo was taken.”

“Tell me, then.”

His voice is even, neither kind nor unfriendly, and his face is inscrutable his cardplayer’s face. “First you tell me this. What prompted you to go running off into the night searching for an item whose very existence you could have known nothing about?”

“When I realized that Will’s confession was really yours,” I answer. “Your script changed when you began to reuse your left hand. That’s what had confused me.”

“Your eyes have gone so cold, Jennie. Why do I feel tried and hanged already?”

“Why shouldn’t I suspect you?” I cry. “Ever since you came home, you’ve been polluting me with your lies. You lied to Nate that you and I were engaged. You lied that Will was a dishonorable soldier. You invented his role in a gang of thieves and murderers. You’ve come back home wearing your brother’s skin so that you could steal your 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.