Quinn hates the sun.
Because when it sets today, hers will never rise again.
After Buddy, Quinn didn't think she'd ever again feel this kind of pain. That had been sudden. Torn away from her violently. But this? This was an entirely different kind of violence. This time, she's had to watch slowly as her world crumbles around her.
Cancer was prying Quinn's fingers loose from her grip on Rachel. Pulling her right through Quinn's hands. Like trying to cup water in her palms.
Stump was outside, playing baseball with Big George. They wanted to keep him busy. Idle hands make idle minds…
Quinn half-wishes she were out there with him. But there's nowhere else she'd rather be. No where else she could be. She's earned her place at this bedside. Rachel coughs and Quinn jerks.
She remembers when it was the other way around. For those first few weeks after Rachel'd come back with her, Big George and her brothers, she was like a skittish bird.
One day Rachel dropped a plate setting the table and begged forgiveness from Momma with such fear in her eyes that Quinn had to excuse herself before vomiting in the garden. Another time, Julian was cutting wood in the backyard and every crack of the axe had Rachel flinching.
If Quinn could have killed Frank herself, she would have made it slow. Made him feel it; everything he did to her.
She's suffered enough to last two lifetimes. Quinn hates God for putting her on this bed.
She grips Rachel's hand tighter.
"Tell me a story," she mumbles. "I love your stories, tell me a story. A good tall tale. Tell me the one about the lake."
Quinn snorts through the lump in her chest.
Rachel's eyes are clear. Bright and shining. Her mouth is dry and caked around the edges of her lips, and her skin sunk so low it's sallow.
Quinn's heart is crumbling right alongside Rachel's body.
"That was just a lie." She's angry. So angry. She wants to give into the fury, let it consume her like the cancer that's swallowed Rachel whole.
Rachel cracks a weak grin, "I know that, fool. Tell me anyway. Tell me the story."
Who is she to deny Rachel anything? She never did before, why should she start now.
When they were young and foolishly in love, that meant the freshest berries, picked from the far side of the river. It meant wearing a coat of bees for the freshest honey, still warm and dripping from the hive. Later on, it meant patience. It meant waiting; until Rachel was ready to return and until Quinn was ready to leave the woods. In adulthood it meant compromise; giving and taking to fit two lives together.
Now it's like being split down the middle.
She swallows thickly. "One time, there was this lake. It was right outside of town, and we used to go fishing and swimming and canoeing in it."
Tears are pooling in her eyes.
"And see, one November, this big flock of ducks landed on that lake. Then the temperature dropped so fast that the lake just froze then and there. And the ducks, they flew off you see, and they took that lake with 'em."
Everything is blurry.
"Now they say that lake is somewhere over in Georgia."
She wipes her nose across her sleeve, snot running across her hand. "Imagine that."
Rachel smiles and closes her eyes. "You're just an old bee charmer Quinnie Threadgoode, that's what you are…"