The Bow

Prologue

Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three

Chapter Four

There’s something I have to ask you” Quinn bit her lip nervously. She tapped her fingers on the table she sat at, wondering how she was going to bring this up.

“What is it dear?” her Aunt Edith answered, cupping her mug of tea in her hands.

“What happened to my parents?” Quinn asked curiously.

“You were all involved in a bad accident- you survived but they were killed instantly” her Aunt told her nervously, eyes looking anywhere but at Quinn.

“I had a dream last night” Quinn pressed on, ignoring her Aunt’s explanation. “About an argument I had with my parents just before they died” the memory seemed to come back to her. It didn’t make sense to her; before her dream last night there wasn’t anything she remembered about her parents.

“It was probably just a dream, dear” her Aunt soothed. “You have been through a lot lately” she had to remind Quinn of the death of Adam.

“Why is it I don’t remember anything about my parents then? I don’t even remember anything from my childhood” she wondered aloud. “It’s like all my memories were erased”

Aunt Edith sighed, wondering if this was an appropriate time to tell Quinn the truth.

“It’s complicated” Edith finally replied, not sure where to begin. “I guess I should start with saying, we’re not really your Aunt and Uncle; we worked with your parents” she put her head down low, ashamed.

“You’re- you’re not?” Quinn asked, shocked. “Where do- I mean where did my parents work?” she asked, feeling like she was finally getting somewhere.

“That’s- I mean- it’s classified” Edith disclosed.

“Classified?” Quinn wondered aloud, eyebrow cocked in confusion. “Is there anything you can tell me?” she added, exasperated. She felt as if her life was an entire lie; she had so many questions. When did her parents actually die? Why were people they worked with posing as her Aunt and Uncle?

“You hold some very important information, Quinn” Edith informed her.

“What do you mean?” Quinn scoffed despite herself. “All my life people have been keeping secrets from me; how the hell am I holding important information?”

“Whatever you do Quinn, do not let anybody take this information” Gloria whispered softly. Quinn was dazed and confused, laying down in what she seemed to verify as a hospital bed.

“Wh-wha-t information” Quinn slurred, her eyes unable to stay open for extended periods of time. She had no idea how she ended up here; the last thing she remembered, she was storming out of her house after a heated argument with her parents.

“Nature’s first green is gold; her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; but only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf, so Eden sank to grief, so dawn goes down to day, nothing gold can stay” Gloria whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek.

“I- what?” Quinn did not understand a word her mother had just spoken.

“Remember Quinn, nothing gold can stay”

“Quinn? Quinn!”

She shook her head, head snapping up.

“Huh?” Quinn shook her head, closing her eyes, hoping the headache she now had would subside. “Nothing gold can stay” she repeated the words her mother had told her to remember.

“Quinn, what on earth are you-”

“Nothing gold can stay” she cut her Aunt off instantly. “What does that mean?”

“I can honestly say I don’t know Quinn” Edith confessed; and this time, she was telling the truth. She knew nothing of the information Quinn was given; all she knew was that she was to protect her at all costs; if the information fell into the wrong hands-

“Robert Frost” Quinn spoke up, realizing. “It was mom’s favourite poem” she realized. Her mother loved poetry; she loved to read it, she loved to write it. It was one thing Quinn would never forget about her mother; she hated it but often read her poems before bed.

“I don’t see how that has to do with anything” Edith was lost. A Robert Frost poem couldn’t possibly be the information she was hiding; it did not explain it.

“Do you still have that book?” Quinn asked, heart racing. “The Robert Frost book of poems my mother was so obsessed with?” she prayed her “Aunt” had kept it.

“Well- yes we did; it’s in the closet up-” before she could even get the words out of her mouth, Quinn had vanished, running up the stairs at a rapid pace “stairs” she finished, speaking to an empty room.

Quinn held the book in her hands, unsure of what she was going to find inside. Her mother had told her to remember ‘nothing gold can stay’; that poem had to have some sort of significance. She flipped the pages in the old book, slowly and nervously. Tucked inside the same page as the poem was a yellow piece of paper. Taking it and flinging the book to the side, she unfolded the note, reading the familiar sloppy handwriting of her mother.

Quinn,

You want an explanation, so here you go.

I have a lot of questions to answer to.

I’m so sorry I’m not around to answer the Questions.

Now I’m sure you discovered the place

I kept notes. If you haven’t found out where

Your Aunt and Uncle may shed some

Light on the situation.

Remember the good times

We would have.

I will always remember where we’d

Read together. I wish you the best, stay

Out of trouble. That bit is important. Please.

Quinn read and reread the note, trying to make sense of it. The note was all over the place; there wasn’t a single sentence that made sense to Quinn. How was this going to help her figure out what happened to her parents, let alone in figuring out why Adam wanted her dead.

Was it because of her parents? Was the reason her parents were so secretive the reason Adam was coming after her? Did Adam even really love her at all? Or was it all a ploy to get close to her to kill her? So many questions swirled around in her head; all of this was impossible to make sense of.

“Aunt Edith?” she called out, making her way back downstairs to where she had left her Aunt what seemed like just moments ago.

“Yes dear” Edith replied calmly, trying to keep her calm demeanour.

“There’s something you’re not telling me” Quinn spoke, unfolding the note and handing it to Edith. She skimmed over it; and by the look in her eye, Quinn knew she had already seen the note. “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you?”

Edith simply nodded, biting her lip, as if she was afraid if she didn’t, information would come spewing out of her.

“Please, help me out here” Quinn begged, desperate for a clue or anything that might help. The more she kept prying, the more confused she became, and the more questions she knew required answering.

“I can’t tell you” Edith whispered, almost ashamed. “I’m sorry” she apologized, getting up from the kitchen table and putting her mug in the sink gently. “But if you read the note closely, I’m sure it’ll tell you what you want to know”

“That’s not helpful at all” Quinn grumbled, snatching the note from the table. “Thanks anyway Edith” she sneered, unable to hide the contempt in her voice. Without waiting for a response, Quinn slammed the front door, storming angrily to her brand new car. Adam had insisted Quinn buy a new car just months ago, as if something was wrong with her old Honda civic. It got her from point A to point B; and that’s all Quinn cared about. Now she drove a fancy 2016 Lexus LS 460. It was way fancier than Quinn had ever needed; and way more money she had ever hoped to pay on a car.

Sitting down on the driver’s seat, she unfolded the note and scanned it once again. She read the words aloud, in different tones of voice, to see if she could pick up on something.

“Ugh, Mom why did you have to have such messy handwriting?” she questioned out loud to herself. “Wait a minute...” upon further inspection, she noticed the last word of every line was written in a slightly different fashion than the other words in the sentence.

Quinn’s heart began to race rapidly as she copied the last word from each line onto a sticky note, praying it would make sense.

“Go to the place where sometimes we’d stay please” Quinn mumbled, scoffing. “That kind of makes sense, but-” she cut herself off mid thought, eyes widening with realization. Buckling up she put the car into reverse, and began to make her way to her destination. There was only one place that the note could be referring to; a place they’d go to in the summertime; where Quinn had her only memories of her parents.

Chapter Five —> here