Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
WREN
Gray. Gray. Gray. Autumn in Spunes is nothing but wet and gray, and I love it. It’s like everything is brighter in contrast. I look forward to my days off in fall, since, aside from a few days in June for my birthday, I hardly get any when the summer tourist season rolls around. I dedicate these days to doing as little busywork as possible, and only doing anything at a very mild pace.
I wake up slowly, taking in the misty view out the window into my modest backyard, tendrils of fog stretching across the lawn and coiling around the windswept trees. I’d like to loiter in my blanket cloud, but the smell of coffee and the sound of Sam shuffling around the kitchen both beckon, so I throw on a thick robe and stuff the bottoms of my pajamas into warm socks before I pad out there to assemble us some breakfast. I find him already nose deep in a bowl of cereal and sigh.
“Was going to ask if you wanted an omelet?” I say.
“Yes, please,” he says brightly around a mouthful. “But”—he swallows a bite—“only if it’s quick. I told Indy I’d give her a ride.”
“You happy she’s back?” I ask, aiming for nonchalant.
He cuts me a knowing look. “We’re just friends.”
I chuckle and start cracking the eggs, dropping it for the time being. “You get your last application in?”
“Sure did.” He starts washing his bowl.
“Proud of you,” I tell him, trying to temper my earnestness so I don’t embarrass either of us this early in the morning.
“I know,” he says, bashfully studying his spoon.
“We should celebrate. Bet Auntie Sage could get Fisher to make us something fancy?” I slide an omelet onto a plate and pass it over his way, the table within arm’s reach here in my tiny kitchen.
“Yeah, I’d be into that,” he says. A but hangs silently in the air. “I’m gonna go to Dad’s this weekend, though. I haven’t seen him in two weeks.”
“Really?” I’m a little shocked by this. Our custody arrangement has always been a free-ranging sort of thing with Sam, but even when he stays here more, he and Ellis make a point to see each other all the time, especially since Sam got his license.
“Internet’s better here, and I was doing all the apps.” He shrugs, polishing off his omelet with an enormous bite. “All right, gotta go. Love you.” He pecks my cheek, steals an apple streusel muffin from under the cloche on the counter, and then leaps to the door, my laughing “Love you” chasing at his heels.
I leisurely get myself ready for the rest of the day after he leaves, half my mind on the task at hand and the rest on my strange, developing pen pal situation. Whatever this is, I think it’s good for me. The last letter I wrote felt like pressing on a bruise or deeply stretching a muscle—that odd mix of pain and relief. And even though it’s quite literally a two-dimensional relationship, I realize that it’s the thread of connection that tugs at some long-dormant hope in me.
Yes, I love my bakery and I know my mom will be officially retiring in the next few years and I’ll take it over as my own, and my heart’s so full for Sam and everything he’s bound to go off and do that I’m surprised I don’t swell up like that blueberry girl in the Wonka factory, but… I guess, for the first time in years, I feel like there’s something out there that I might still look forward to, just for myself.
I also have full—if unexplainable—faith that this guy will find out about the pair of horses for me. And thank god for it, too, because no amount of entertaining gossip from the neighborhood Facebook groups could make up for the gut-wrenching sadness to be found in the displaced animals page. Jesus, if Sage ever saw that page, Spunes would end up being overrun by wayward pets.
Thinking of my friend and her affinity for taking in a variety of creatures inspires a plan for my day, so I give up on trying to tame my wild hair, and tug a beanie down over it before I drive out to her quaint slice of Spunes.
Sage’s gargantuan Irish wolfhound lopes down from her porch when I pull onto her driveway twenty minutes later. I spot the tip of a gray tail twitching through the meadow to the right, and gather that her three-legged cat is off on the hunt.
I toss a tree branch posing as a stick for the dog, but just before I start toward the barn, a movement in one of the upstairs windows of the house catches my eye. When I look again, I think I can make out the top of a head.
Strange… it’s a weekday, so Sage is off teaching at the high school. I look across the meadow to the neighboring house that Fisher rents and see his truck still there, so maybe he’s in her house. But why would he try to hide from me? I know he had some reservations about small towns and busybodies and all that, but I figured the guy was cured since he willingly relocated.
Yeah, actually, screw this. He’s in love with my best friend. He’s obligated to be friendly with me.
I march up her front steps and rap my fist on the door. Immediately, there’s a series of thuds and muffled voices—the sounds of scrambling and putting on clothes if I’ve ever heard them. There’s the drumbeat of footsteps and then Sage herself is here, leaning awkwardly in the doorway in a flannel robe, her hair a mussed-up tangle, skin flushed and covered in a dewy sheen. I feel my smile up to my hairline.
“What are you up to?” I ask. “Forget it was a school day, Miss Byrd?”
“I’m sick. I had to call in,” she cheeps.
She’s the worst liar I’ve ever met. All the Byrds are. They each have the same tell. A line between their brows as if they’re trying to look stern, but eyes that widen like they’re scared.
I tilt my head and pout sympathetically. “Aw, poor love. Got a case of the streptoCOCKus?”
“What?!”
“You require an injection only he can provide?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you play coy with me. I know what kind of fever you got. The kind you stay in bed all day for and get precisely no rest.” I cackle merrily. “You’re playing hooky with your boyfriend.”
She darts a resigned glance over her shoulder before she opens the door wider and reveals an equally love-rumpled Fisher, a furious blush on his cheeks and his hoodie on inside out.
“It’s the Friday before Thanksgiving break. We weren’t doing anything, anyway,” Sage admits sheepishly. I press my lips together hard to contain another laugh.
“Hey, Wren,” comes Fisher’s warm greeting. But his gaze bounces right back to Sage, tracing her profile in a way that makes me feel like I might blush, too. It’s like his entire body sighs . He looks at her the same way people look at my fresh chocolate croissants, like he’s imagining taking her apart and how she would melt on his tongue and… and god, I’m lonely. I need to get laid.
It has to be more than that, though. I’ve done that. I dedicated myself to going out and trying to have my bodily needs met early on after the divorce— trying being the operative word. My efforts were met with dismal results.
This ballooning sensation in my chest isn’t wanting physical comfort again. It’s more of that dangerous hope, as delicate as blown sugar. I want that . I want to feel cherished and wanted again, I want to feel that way for someone again. The realization makes me unsteady, like I’m being pulled in two directions.
“Come in and I’ll make us some breakfast?” Fisher offers, and it sends a fresh pain through me. They’re already such a couple , a unit so melded that he’s comfortable enough to make offers when it’s technically her home. I’m elated for her and heartsick for me. Another disconcerting emotion. Sage studies me carefully, and I work to keep my expression bland.
“No, no.” I wave them off. “I’m taking Bud for a ride before the rain rolls in.”
Fisher stretches halfway out the door to peer up toward the sky, one of his earrings glinting in the light.
“Guess that means we should get going then, too,” he says. “I gotta pick up the sample chairs and go through the charade of letting Martha approve them.” He grins.
“Take my van,” I offer. “They’ll fit in the back, and that way if it starts up early, they won’t get wet.”
“You sure?” asks Sage.
“Yeah, I want to muck out Bud’s stall and clean him up and everything, anyway, so I’ll stay awhile.”
They go about getting dressed and take off in my van, so I set myself to brushing Bud’s winter coat, murmuring sweet nothings to him in between his satisfied whickers and snorts.
A cacophony of other animal noises rings through the air. Sable barks happily, the geese honk, and the donkeys bray. I step out of the open barn doors, expecting Sage and Fisher have forgotten something and are back to grab whatever it is, and come face-to-face with Ellis.