Mattie unsnapped her seatbelt and leaned in between the bucket seats. Deep brown curls fell across her face as she look back and forth between Quinn and Garcia. But for the dark hair she’d inherited from Jericho, she was a mini-me to Kim. “Are you guys having a fight?” she said, swaying back and forth between the two seats. Like her father, she’d never been one to sit still. “Because it seems like you’re having a fight.”
Garcia looked out the window, nodding toward Quinn’s ex-wife. “It looks like Kim wants to talk to you,” she said. Her passive-aggressive expression brightened as she turned to give Mattie a wink. “How about you play me that song again on the piano?”
Mattie shrugged. “Yep,” she said. “You’re having a fight all right.”
Quinn pressed the button on the armrest. The driver’s side window came down with an electronic whir. Mattie stopped to talk with her mom for a moment before dragging Garcia inside the house by the hand. Window down, a moist evening breeze hit him in the face, carrying the beginning mists of an approaching rain and the familiar scent of the towering blue spruce that dominated the Quinn’s front yard. It had seemed so big when Jericho and Bo were boys. Over the years, the brothers had lost at least two good hatchets, countless knives, and a half dozen of their father’s screwdrivers, throwing them at targets set up with the spruce as a backdrop. Now as tall as the chimney, the tree cast a huge shadow across the two-car driveway. Its rustling boughs sheltered Kim from the brunt of the north wind.
“Don’t you have dinner reservations?” Kim asked, leaning in so her forearms rested along the doorframe.
Quinn let his head loll back against the headrest. “We do,” he said, raising his wrist so he could see the time on his Tag Aquaracer. “Marx Brothers. In a little over a half an hour.”
“I love that place,” Kim said. “Great Caesar salads.”
She rested her chin on her arms, looking up at Quinn with the big blue eyes that had caught him back when they were still in high school. She stood in silence for a long time, working up to something. Quinn was used to it. There had been many silences between them over the years. Most of them, he deserved. The tiniest hint of a smile perked her lips when she finally decided to speak.
“From the look on your face I’m guessing you haven’t asked her yet,” she said.
Quinn sat up, gripping the wheel and looking directly at his ex-wife. The only other person he’d told about the ring was Jacques. His line of work had trained him to be an incredibly skilled liar, but he and Kim had too much history. She knew all his tells. Quinn decided to draw on his SERE training and stick with the original lie no matter what tricks the interrogator pulled. “Ask her what?”
“Come on, Jericho,” Kim said, her face serene. He knew a look of pity when he saw it. She gave a slow shake of her head. “There’s only one thing in the world that can make you jumpy — and that’s getting serious with a woman. I know, cause I was there the first time you ever got serious.”
Quinn fell back in the seat, surrendering to Kim’s wiles. “I have not asked her,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. I’d planned to, then things got… complicated.”
“I saw the news,” Kim said. “Figured they would.” She pushed off the door so she was standing up, her face level with Quinn’s now. She bounced her fingers on the doorframe, swishing air back and forth in her puffed cheeks the way she did when deciding whether to say something that she’d been holding back. “I gotta say, Jericho, you are hands down the best human being I know.” She peered at him, head tilted to one side so her blond hair pooled around her neck, still deciding. A resigned sigh told Quinn he was about to get an earful. He knew her tells too. “But I have to admit, there is a righteous stubbornness about you that made me want to pull your hair out a million times over. Lord knows I have no right to give you relationship advice. If I had it to do all over again, I’d try not to be so bitchy while you were out doing whatever it is you do. But I own the choices I’ve made.” Kim wiped away a tear with the forearm of her hoodie and stepped back from the window. The front door slammed as Garcia and Mattie come out of the house. They held hands and skipped toward the truck, jumping the cracks in the sidewalk, singing some nonsensical song.
Kim sighed. “You deserve a little happiness. I think you can have it with Ronnie. Just be patient with her. Because as righteous and perfect as you are, loving you is an awful hard thing to do.”
The boughs of the big spruce whispered and groaned as the wind shifted, bringing great drops of rain to spatter against the windshield. Mattie threw back her head to catch the rain on her tongue.
“She learned that from you,” Kim said. “I never can get her to come in out of the rain — no matter how cold it is. I think she’d rather freeze to death than miss something fun.”
Quinn watched as Garcia stood beside his little girl, head tilted back to catch raindrops on her tongue as well.
Kim patted the doorframe. “Your life is always going to be complicated, Jer. Just do what you need to do. If you wait for it to calm down, it’s going to be a long wait.”
Kim made her way around the truck to walk back inside, expertly navigating the wet pavement on her prosthetic leg, ignoring the rain. She gave Garcia a hug, then shooed Mattie toward the door. For that brief moment Quinn had a view of both women together. He and Garcia had fought, and bled, and even killed side by side. They had shared emotions and events that few human beings even discussed. And still, no one would ever know him as well as Kim.
For all his pitched battles and bloody hand-to-hand fights, Quinn could imagine nothing quite so fraught with danger as proposing marriage to Veronica Garcia. Since taking up martial arts in middle school, he’d approached everything in his life with the same strategic mindset: prepare daily to meet his opponent, then, when an opportunity presented itself, move directly to contact.
The evening had fallen from chilly to cold, along with Garcia’s mood. A pelting rain creased the windshield and turned the asphalt streets of downtown Anchorage into shimmering mirrors of neon lights. Sitting across from Quinn in the plush leather passenger seat, Garcia faced away, staring out the window. She’d hardly said a word since they’d left the house, and Quinn couldn’t help but wonder if he was about to walk into an ambush of emotion.
Three elderly couples in brightly colored rain jackets — the last of the tourists until ski season kicked in — walked from the corner of Fifth Avenue and H Street, toward the Glacier Brewhouse. Even inside the pickup, the smells of wood-fired salmon and hot bread made Quinn’s mouth water. It was a fine restaurant, but his parents had taken him there with Kim to celebrate the night they’d gotten engaged. That alone was enough to make Quinn choose a different place to propose to Ronnie. Marx Brothers was more elegant anyway, tucked into a tiny house on Third Avenue, a little over two blocks away.
Quinn waited for another group to cross at the intersection. These were locals, judging from their uniform of Helly Hansen rain gear over fleece jackets, blue jeans, and XTRATUF rubber boots. The windshield wipers thwacked back and forth, adding to the intensity of the silence inside the pickup. He was warm and dry, but Quinn wondered if he might not be happier riding alone in the rain.