Winter Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

come home.
    Kevin:
Dude, come home.
    Patrick reads the three messages again, but his head is swimming with the vodka and the Vicodin. Mitzi
left?
For where? He gets confused, thinking of Jen at Logan, sipping a glass of good chardonnay at Legal Test Kitchen while the kids play on their iDevices at the gate. Patrick closes his eyes and pictures the Bar, where his brother Kevin works. Kevin is the happiest person in the family, and Ava, a music teacher at the elementary school, is second. They never felt any pressure to earn or achieve or propagate the Quinn family name—because they always had Patrick to do it for them. They don’t even particularly
like
Patrick, he doesn’t think. He’s only ninety minutes away, but they never come to Boston to visit; they think Patrick is a carbon copy of therelentless bastard their father used to be before he quit his big, important job in New York and bought the inn on Nantucket and became a nice guy. Probably, when Ava goes to the Bar to have a beer with Kevin, all they do is talk about what a tool Patrick is. They need him now because there’s a crisis—
Mitzi left—
and neither of them is a problem solver. Patrick is the problem solver, always.
    But what they don’t know is that Patrick can’t help today.
    His phone accidentally drops to the floor with a clatter, but Patrick can’t summon the energy to retrieve it. Even though he knows they don’t like him as much as they like each other or Bart, there is still something appealing to Patrick about walking into the Bar to have a beer with his siblings. But he’s in no condition, and they don’t want him anyway, not really. If Bart were on Nantucket, Patrick would go, but Bart is in Afghanistan, nobly serving their country. Bart grew up idolizing Patrick—beyond Big Papi, beyond Santa Claus, beyond God. What would Bart think of him now? He would realize that Patrick is a little man behind a big facade, like the Wizard of Oz. Patrick does another shot of vodka and takes another Vike. Oblivion—how much poison must he ingest to achieve it?
    He watches the tree sparkle. Three thousand ornaments. Despite everything, he thinks, it is still so pretty.

AVA
    S he drinks another beer at the Bar with Kevin, who has to work until closing. He will be no help except in numbing Ava’s senses, impairing her judgment, and getting her drunk—but this has always been the case with Kevin. He calls himself the Underachieving Quinn, the slacker, the loser, the Big Zero, names Ava scoffs at, although she realizes that Kevin’s sense of worth has suffered from his life choices, many of which have been dictated by his dead-end relationship with Norah Vale, whom Ava always thinks of as Norah Vale the Cautionary Tale.
    Kevin and Norah started dating in tenth grade, and they famously became engaged in eleventh grade. Kevin bought Norah a silver claddagh ring, and together, they announced they were going to get married as soon as they turned eighteen.
    Kelley, Mitzi, and Margaret had all tried to talk Kevin out of it. Kevin had already been accepted to the University of Michigan; Norah wasn’t going to college. She didn’t have the grades, or the money, or the interest. None of the parents came right out and said it, but Ava now understands that they didn’t think Norah Vale was a quality choice for a life partner. Norah had five older brothers, but only the eldest of the brothers and Norah shared a father; the four boys inbetween had been sired by two different men. Norah’s eldest brother, Danko Vale, was a tattoo artist. He had tattooed a fearsomely realistic python around Norah’s neck and shoulders. The head of the snake had been done in trompe l’oeil style, so that it looked like the python was striking from just below Norah’s clavicle.
    This tattoo had given Ava nightmares. She had never been able to hug Norah Vale, not even on her wedding day.
    Norah had gone to Ann Arbor with Kevin, but she was
miserable
there. And so Kevin