Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay, Babette Jongh [book club books txt] 📗

and let it fall again. “I let the donkeys get loose. I let the cat pee in Quinn’s toolbox. I let a bad kid climb over the fence during a field trip. Quinn complained about the noise when we had field trips, but I didn’t do anything to address his concerns.”

“What the hell could you have done? Tell sixty kids to be quiet all day long?”

She shrugged. “More like ninety kids most days, but yeah.”

“This is not your fault. The same thing would’ve happened if Reva had been here.”

“Maybe, but I still feel bad.” She didn’t elaborate on the main reason she felt bad—because she’d slept with the enemy.

* * *

Monday evening at 6:59 p.m., Quinn stood at Abby’s door wearing clean jeans and a crisply ironed shirt, his hair still slightly damp from the shower, carrying a perfectly chilled bottle of expensive wine just waiting for the cork to pop. She’d had the entire weekend to fume, and he hoped that after a couple of glasses of wine, she’d be ready to listen to reason.

He tapped on the sliding glass door. Wolf came slinking around the corner of the house to sit beside him. Quinn reached down and caressed the dog’s head. “You need to let somebody give you a bath,” he advised the dog. “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but you smell like a dog.”

Wolf grinned a canine grin while his long, plumy tail swished back and forth along the concrete patio. Quinn tapped on the door again, then peered inside. The living room and kitchen lights were off. A light shone from Abby’s bedroom, but the door was closed, which would explain why Georgia hadn’t rushed out the dog door to greet him.

“Maybe Abby’s in the bathtub,” he said to the grinning dog. “Maybe she’s still getting dressed.” But something about the lights being off in the main part of the house made Quinn’s skin shiver. He glanced at his watch; he wasn’t early. He was spot-on, exactly on time.

He thought about going inside; he even tried the door, but it was locked. He checked the text from Abby inviting him—well, okay, grudgingly giving him permission—to come today. Surely he hadn’t made a mistake on the timing.

A new text had come through. He read it, and everything behind his ribs—heart, lungs, everything—dropped through his rib cage and hit the concrete with a crash: Don’t come.

Abby’s incomprehensible message read the same way the second time he scanned the terse line. Don’t come.

He set the bottle down on the patio and texted back: Why not? Is everything okay? Are you okay?

He had enough sense to figure out the answers to those questions. But he hoped to God there was some other explanation. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she’d come down with a cold or something that she didn’t want him to catch. His immune system was working just fine, and he wasn’t afraid of catching whatever little bug she might have. Already imagining the scene in which he had to walk away from Abby with nothing but an uncorked bottle of wine in his hand, he knocked on the door, harder this time. And when nothing happened, he knocked on the laundry room door, the one with the dog door in the bottom, the one closest to the guest bedroom.

Georgia barked from the bedroom, her high-pitched alarm yodel. Something could really be wrong with Abby. Meningitis, food poisoning, a virulent flu—okay, it wasn’t flu season—but… Something could be wrong. He tried to convince himself that anything could be wrong.

Anything but the distinct and maybe unavoidable possibility that she was done with him.

He banged on the door. Georgia’s alarm yodel rose in frequency and tripled in volume. After a second, he heard a door slam and pounding footsteps coming his way before Abby yanked the door open. “Did you not get my text?”

“I got your text. I’m worried about you. Are you okay?” She didn’t look okay. Her eyelids were puffy and red-rimmed, her nose was pink, and her skin was flushed as if she’d been sleeping hot. Her wavy hair was even crazier than usual, the waves ending in little corkscrews on the ends. She wore a stretched-out slouchy tank top over Daffy Duck boxer shorts. “Are you coming down with something?”

She put a hand on her hip. “I’m coming down with a bad case of getting over your stupid, lying, betraying ass. That’s what I’m coming down with.”

“Oh.” So just as he’d feared, she wasn’t sick, just sick of him. He took a step back, into the haze of mosquitoes and gnats and all manner of flying bugs that circled around the porch lights. “Can I come in so we can talk?”

She took a step back and slammed the door in his face. Wolf whined and crouched low to the ground, but stayed by Quinn’s side. “Thanks for the backup, buddy,” he said, reaching down to stroke the dog’s ears. “I think I’m gonna need all the help I can get.”

He knocked on the door again. “Abby, please let me in,” he called through the closed door. “I understand that you’re mad at me. I think I understand why. But I know you’re not the kind of person who’d turn me away without giving me a chance to explain.”

“You don’t know what kind of person I am,” she challenged in an angry, loud voice he heard easily. He was surprised it didn’t rattle the windows. “But if you keep standing there, you might just find out.”

“Just give me five minutes,” he pleaded. Wolf’s furry body pressed against his leg, giving comfort. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but—”

She opened the door and speared him with a look so filled with hatred that he gasped.

“I know everything.” Her face was tight with anger, her voice filled with bitterness.

Shit. He should have confessed before, when they could have laughed—okay, maybe not laughed, but… “I know this looks bad, but—”

“I don’t care what you have to say.”