Free Miracle by Danielle Steel

admission he had only recently come to accept about himself, and not one he was proud of.
    “She looks beautiful in the photographs,” Jack said quietly. She had been a delicate, almost fragile-looking woman, but there had been far more strength in her than anyone ever suspected, least of all her husband. And her spirit had been gentle and graceful to the core.
    “She was beautiful,” Quinn admitted. It was easy for Jack to see now how much Quinn had loved her. “She was a remarkable woman,” he added with a wistful look, as they wound up the lesson.
    Jack was making impressive progress, and Quinn was giving him something he had always dreamed of. In a way, it was a gift of freedom, and one by one Quinn was helping him to sever the chains that had bound him. His inability to read had been like a death sentence to him, or at the very least a lonely prison. It was Quinn who was imprisoned now, condemned to his own loneliness and bitter recriminations forever. He was still having the recurring dream, but less often ever since he'd started helping Jack with his reading. It was almost as though doing something for another human being was helping to assuage his guilt.
    It was late February, when they were finishing their lesson on a Saturday, that Jack mentioned Quinn's neighbor, Maggie Dartman. He was still doing work for her on Sundays, and slowly fixing the house that had been in serious disrepair when she bought it. But each time he worked for her, he was struck by how lonely she was. Her house was full of photographs of her son who had died. She had told Jack the boy had committed suicide two days after his sixteenth birthday. She never explained why, and it was obvious to Jack by then that there was no man in her life. The work he was doing for her could have been done by any man in residence, if there had been one to help her out. She had mentioned to him once that she was a teacher, and had been on sabbatical for a year and a half, since her son died.
    Quinn and Jack had fallen into an informal tradition of having dinner together on Friday nights, after they finished his reading lesson. Quinn cooked and Jack brought wine, and it was an opportunity to get to know each other better. At times the relationship was one of friendship between two men, and at others Quinn took a fatherly attitude toward him. Jack was fascinated by Quinn's accomplishments. He had grown up on a farm in the Midwest, and had gone to college with a scholarship to Harvard. And from there he had progressed rapidly into his enormous success. Jane had believed in him from the moment she met him. She had been there before he ever made a penny, and never doubted his abilities for a minute. Success had come early for him, and bred more success. He had made his first million before he was twenty-five. He had had the Midas touch, as they said in the financial world. To the uninitiated, it looked like he had never made a bad deal in his life. But the truth was that when he had, he had managed to turn it into something better. And he always knew instinctively when to cut his losses. He was, in his own way, a genius. But from all Jack could see, success hadn't brought him happiness. There were few men as unhappy and solitary as Quinn Thompson.
    And all Quinn wanted now was to become even more solitary, as soon as his boat was ready. He talked to Jack about it like a woman he was in love with and waiting for. It was all he dreamed of now. After being abandoned by Jane when she died, and the torturous relationship he had with his daughter, the boat being built for him in Holland was a nonthreatening companion of sorts who couldn't torment or reproach him, and whom he in turn could not disappoint or hurt. Being alone on the boat, isolated from the world, would be an immense relief. And while he waited for her, he was helping Jack to find his dreams.
    There was much about the friendship that they both treasured. And while Jack was getting to know Quinn better, at