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When she left her parent's house, Quinn barely remembered to throw her schoolbooks on top of clothes she'd outgrow in a few weeks. She shut the front door just as the microwave timer went off. Finn carried her bags and kept his head down.
Finn's mom is the one who packed her bags for her, after Babygate broke, and Carole was nicer about it, hesitant and careful as she refolded the same t-shirt three times. She'd already bought baby clothes, little ruffled dresses and pink flowered rompers—Quinn wasn't supposed to know, so it wouldn't hurt either of them as much when they didn't go with her.
Puck asked her not to go. His jaw was clenched tight, and he kept staring at the desk, the empty chair, the glee club yearbook photo perfectly preserved and framed on the nightstand. Anything but her. He'd look at her stomach sometimes with so much longing that she wanted to cry for him. But not enough that she was going to change her mind. About anything.
She couldn't look at him either.
Quinn never doubted any of her choices, really. She didn't have it in her for regrets anymore. Mercedes had the radio on, singing along, and her mom kept the entire house updated on TMZ in between belting out commercial jingles like they were show tunes as she flipped pancakes for dinner. Quinn packed her own bags slowly, used to leaving things behind.
Quinn didn't realize that she'd always carried one thing with her. But her life was a Joni Mitchell song, and she spread out starfish style on the floor of the room she only thought she'd grown up in. She put her hands on her stomach—still for the first time in months—and hummed goodbye songs into the quiet.