Miracle by Danielle Steel Page B

smiled with pleasure.
    “She sounds like a beauty,” Maggie said with a look of admiration and nearly envy.
    “Do you sail?” Quinn seemed surprised.
    “I used to. I grew up in Boston, and spent my summers on the Cape. I loved to sail as a kid. I haven't in years. My husband hated boats, and Andrew never liked them much. It's been a long time.”
    “Jane and my daughter didn't like sailing either, especially after my son died. I had a boat years ago, when we first moved out here. But I was too busy to use it. I sold it the year after Doug died. This is going to be a rare opportunity for me to indulge my passion.” He smiled at both of them. Jack was enjoying the exchange between them, glad that he had encouraged Quinn to invite Maggie to dinner. More than they knew, or even he did, they had much in common. And they were each in need of companionship and friendship. They both spent too much time alone, and had too many painful memories to dwell on. A night like this did them both good.
    “A hundred and eighty feet of ketch is a lot of passion,” Maggie teased him. “That must be very exciting,” she said as her eyes danced.
    “It is, and it will be. She'll be finished in September.” He offered to show her the plans then, and they pored over them sitting at the table, as Jack cleared the dishes, and then returned to the table to join them. It was a particularly nice evening, and much to Quinn's surprise, the Friday night dinner was even more pleasant as a threesome. Maggie had definitely brought something to it, despite her heartfelt confessions. But everyone's spirits seemed to lift as Quinn described the boat in its most minute detail. Maggie asked all the right questions. She was extremely knowledgeable about sailboats, and knew of all the most important builders and naval architects and designers. Her extensive knowledge impressed Quinn considerably. And after he put the plans away, Jack suggested a game of liar's dice, which was what he and Quinn usually did at the end of their Friday evenings. Maggie laughed at the suggestion, and looked amused.
    “I haven't played in years,” she warned, and managed to beat them both at least once each, and then Quinn took over. He was the expert among them, and usually beat Jack as well. They had a good time nonetheless, and it was after midnight when Maggie finally left them and went home. She was scheduled to be on the teen suicide hotline at one o'clock, and she was in surprisingly good spirits.
    Jack only lingered for a few minutes after she left. “She's a nice woman,” he said, smiling at Quinn. “She's had a tough time. He was her only kid, and the guy who does her gardening says she found him.” She hadn't told them that. “The husband doesn't sound like a great guy for leaving her after all that,” Jack said, although she had described him charitably. She was a good woman, and a pretty one, and deserved to have had someone who stuck by her. It was hard for Jack to imagine the trauma they'd been through.
    “People do ugly things to each other in those circumstances,” Quinn said wisely. “Jane probably should have left me too. Thank God, she didn't. I wasn't very sensitive to her needs then. All I could think of was how I felt to have lost my son. I thought if I didn't talk about it, the pain would go away, instead it just went underground and ate at us both.” But he had seen clearly in Jane's journals that she understood, not only her grief but his, and had allowed him to mourn in the way he needed to, on his own. She had carried the full weight of her solitary grief on her own shoulders, not unlike Maggie when she lost her son.
    Jack left a few minutes later, and Quinn was in his kitchen for a long time, putting things away, and washing the dishes. And when he went upstairs finally, he saw the lights on in Maggie's kitchen, as he looked out his bedroom window. By then, he knew she was on the phone, answering the teenage hotline. Her lights were still