Free Quinn by Sally Mandel Page B

and pretended it was the footprint of an angel who guarded her sleep. Tonight she could see only the face and body of William Ingraham. Some angel.
    The nuns at St. Theresa’s had warned her about sex, pointing their white fingers and whispering warnings about “going the way of Mary Frances DeFalco,” poor Mary Frances, who compensated for her flat chest and buckteeth by dispensing favors from the backseat of her brother’s Chevy. Well, Quinn had finally accomplished the unmentionable, and despite all predictions had not fallen under the wheels of a truck on the way back from Lou’s, nor had she become crippled, or blind, nor even, she was confident, pregnant.
    She stretched, aware of the texture of the sheets against her bare legs. The things her body knew how to do—amazing. She would never get to sleep. Not tonight.
    Fifteen seconds later Van poked her head through the door and whispered, “You awake?” There was no answer. Quinn lay on her back with arms flung out to either side in a posture extravagantly relaxed, like a sleeping child. The blanket had been kicked off onto the floor. Van retrieved it and gingerly covered her friend’s bare legs. She studied Quinn carefully, but was unable to determine a thing from the quiescent face. She left the room, tiptoed down the hall, and resigned herself to postponing the questions until morning.

Chapter 10
    Will kept drifting in and out of his dream, not sure whether it was a good one and worth continuing. When it began, he and Marianne were on a large wooden raft that looked as if it might have been constructed by Thor Heyerdahl. Seagulls swooped overhead, and great mountains of turquoise water swelled beneath them. Marianne was explaining something unintelligible and sad, and Will was crying. When he half awoke from this section of the dream, his throat felt tight with a kind of nostalgic grief he sometimes felt when he remembered some perfect moment that was forever lost to the past.
    He sank back into sleep, but now the wooden raft had become a haphazard structure beside a river that was too narrow to be the Salmon and too wide to be the creek that ran along behind the house back home. Fragrant smoke emerged from a hole in the roof, and Will was drawn inside. A naked girl sat cross-legged in the dirt. Her skin was golden in the firelight. Her hair was the color of the flames that she stirred with a long stick. She looked at him solemnly, then dropped the stick and held out her arms.
    In the morning Will woke up feeling luxuriously warm and snug, but when he tried to recapture the dream, he could see only the water of the river rushing over dark stones.
    There had been no romantic episodes in his life since Marianne’s accident nearly two years ago. Her death had siphoned off his vitality, as if he had lost a Siamese twin who had been attached to him in many crucial places. His brain no longer hummed and clicked. His heart was indifferent, continuing to beat out of a sense of obligation rather than joy. His perceptions were dulled by dispirited nerve fibers. That first year Will had marveled that he didn’t actually limp from the crippling effects of losing her.
    As he lay thinking about Marianne with her quiet voice and serene intelligence, it occurred to him that what he had anticipated was someday meeting a similar woman who would plug in the holes and revitalize the parts that had died with her. What he had not expected was Quinn. Thinking of them both was like trying to compare pearls with sapphires. Will had spent the first quarter of his life with Marianne. He had only just begun to know Quinn. How could it be that he was already wondering about the children he and Quinn would produce? Would they be redheads? Would they be fiery and extroverted, or contemplative and withdrawn? Where would this new family live, in the valley near Will’s school, or would they build a place far up in the mountains?
    These speculations