This Is Home by Lisa Duffy

Author:Lisa Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

 14

Quinn

All week she’s avoided Bent. She can’t shake the feeling that he’s somehow on the other side of this—on John’s side—is how it forms in her mind. The conversation by the fire replaying in her head over and over all week, the way he said doesn’t mean he was a good husband.

He’s hiding something from her. Protecting John in some way. Maybe she’s just imagining it, but he’s avoiding her too. They used to pass each other when she left for work or came home, and she hasn’t seen him once this week, but she hears his footsteps on the stairs after her door has clicked shut. Quick, as though he’s rushing to leave so he won’t run into her.

Then she feels paranoid for thinking this.

Midweek, she got tired of herself. Sick of waiting for her life to make sense again. Once, she gave over to the feeling, to the overwhelming unknown, and Desiree’s face popped in her head, the way she’d asked Quinn why she hadn’t unpacked.

There was something in her voice when she’d said it—as though she was sizing up Quinn. Wondering if she was the type who needed a man to guide her. The type who couldn’t even unpack by herself.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she realized how absurd it was—she’d been doing this life all by herself anyway. With John overseas, she was basically single—no different than what she was now.

And the way they all just did it. Like they were on some sort of mission. Desiree had returned with the picture-hanger thingy, Lucy behind her. While Quinn unwrapped dishes and glasses and silverware, Lucy and Desiree assembled the table and hung the heavy mirror and moved couches and bureaus and Quinn’s massive headboard.

She painted the kitchen and the dining room, getting up early before work to paint the trim and rolling the walls after she got home from work, the radio on and the windows open, the apartment finally looking as though someone lived there.

Lucy came back on Friday to help her finish decorating.

And for the first time in her adult life, Quinn likes her house. No—loves. She loves this house.

The way the light streams through the windows in the morning and the sounds she falls asleep to at night.

In the dining room, there’s a built-in hutch filled with her mother’s china, unpacked for the first time ever—there wasn’t space for it in their duplex—and every time Quinn walks by it, she pauses and studies it, feels her mother right there in the room with her.

She’s thanked Desiree and Lucy over and over for their help—even left a thank-you note and a plate of brownies by their front door—but it still doesn’t seem enough.

Which is why when Desiree asked Quinn to come to her yoga class, she agreed. Quinn thought the idea sounded odd—power yoga in the backyard—and Libby overheard Desiree talking about it and whispered to Quinn: She just needs bodies—live subjects.

Quinn wasn’t overly fond of yoga—she’d rather go for a run or take a spin class.

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