Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
WREN
Ellis helps me finish loading the desserts into my van while I consider everything he’s put forth.
My heart feels like it’s sprouted brand-new wings—naked ones without feathers—and is being pushed toward the edge of the nest. Ironic, given that I am close to being an empty nester. My budding panic must be obvious because as soon as I shut the final door, I find him giving me a wary look.
“You don’t have to answer right this second,” he says. “We’ve got a few weeks.”
I let myself look at him. Really look at him. I used to keep a mental tally of the laugh lines that’d deepened around his eyes, secretly excited each time a new one would appear. I don’t think he’s gained anything new over the last few years, and it makes me unbearably sad. He still looks good, though. Painfully so. He’s put on some weight again, all his sharp lines strengthened rather than chiseled down. A healthy man in his prime, going gray at the temples.
In my peripheral, I spot Athena from the bookshop walking by, accompanied by her sister, Venus—our town’s head librarian. I raise my arm in greeting.
“Hi, ladies,” I call out.
“Hey, kids,” says Athena, no matter that Ellis and I are in our thirties. “You tell Sam congratulations from us tonight.”
“Will do,” Ellis says.
“Tell him to come by the library for his gift!” says Venus.
“No problem!” I yell. Our smiles fade the farther they get down the sidewalk, watching them whisper back and forth while they throw glances at us over their shoulders. Ellis and I sigh at the same time, catch it, then laugh.
“You can practically hear the rumor mill start to crank,” he says.
“I wouldn’t want to get their hopes up, Ellis,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. No one can know anything more than the fact that we’re co-parents taking a detour on the way home to celebrate successfully sending our kid off to college.”
“Does that mean you’re saying yes?” he asks.
“ Ellis. ”
“I’m kidding.” He laughs, putting his hands up in surrender. “I wouldn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, either.” His eyes link with mine again, and time seems to yawn and settle between us.
“I can’t believe we’re about to watch him graduate high school,” I say in awe.
“I’m so fucking proud of him,” he says with a disbelieving chuckle. There’s something like How is this feeling even contained? in his smile.
“I’m proud of us, too,” I say truthfully. “In spite of everything.”
“So am I,” he says, voice hoarse.
After a pause, I try to lighten the mood. “Should we high-five or something?”
“Or something,” he replies, like it actually were a multiple-choice question. He scoops me into a hug before I register that it’s happening, and I melt and press myself into it automatically.
I’m excruciatingly aware of every place his body fits against mine. The way he always smells a bit like smoke and the same soap he’s used since we were younger. Rock-solid thighs beneath his jeans, the firm chest under my cheek that I know is dusted in hair. I arch into the hug, maybe only half an inch… because it feels so damn good and he’s so damn warm and dammit , I’m already grappling with myself. I feel his breath hitch, and mine does, too, but for a different reason entirely. I cannot forget why these hugs lost their power over me or how we fell apart.
We’re not the kids who loved each other as friends or the teenagers who were overwhelmed by want. And we’re not the bright-eyed optimists who thought we were the exception when it came to young love, who thought our love and marriage could conquer all. We’re the war-torn adults who loved each other fully and still didn’t make it together in the end.
I step back out of his embrace and head toward the bakery’s back door.
“I need to get this over there and get changed and all that,” I say, stabbing a thumb at the van. I haul my eyes up to his. “I’ll see you there.”
He nods with a tight smile and walks past me.
“Save me a seat?” I ask quietly. It’s an inside joke, one of those very old, tiny traditions made into something bigger over the years, and for a moment, I’m terrified he’s forgotten it.
He stops, but doesn’t turn to look at me. “I’ll save you the best seat in the house, Byrd.”
I wait until he’s gone to head back inside and change. When I finish the rigamarole of closing up the shop, something on the counter catches my eye.
It’s an origami bird, made from one of the flyers for the graduation ceremony, and the recognition sends a clutch of emotion down my throat. Ellis used to leave these in places for me all the time, starting around sixth grade. When we got older and the paper got a bit sturdier, I’d save the more colorful birds he made for me. Even hung some from our porch ceiling outside Sam’s nursery window, back before we learned how hard-water air could ruin precious things.
After I drop off the desserts at the high school gym, I find the Byrds all in the front row of chairs down on the football field, where I also see that Ellis has saved me a seat between him and Sage. I’m happily shocked when I spot Micah in the front row, too, on the other side of Fisher. The youngest Byrd brother and the tallest at a staggering six foot six. Jet-black hair that is currently cut into a real-life mullet. He sits with his elbows braced on his thighs, spitting sunflower seeds into the grass like it’s the middle of the ninth inning. He winces when he pushes up to his feet to give me a hug.
“Ugh, Jesus, Micah ,” I say, lip curling. “You smell like a distillery. Did you seriously come to your nephew’s graduation drunk?”
“Unfortunately, no. But I will be remedying that as soon as we conclude here.” He tries for a weak smile. “I was drunk yesterday in California. Sobered up in time to drive here in the same clothes.”
“He got released from his contract,” says Silas with a grimace. “Did you see his nose ring? Wren, please tell him it looks ridiculous.”
“You’re coming home with me when we’re done, not going out drinking again,” Ellis grouses at the back of Micah’s head.
“But I don’t want to stay with Papa Bear,” Micah whines to me, jutting out a lip. And now I do notice the tiny silver hoop in his nose.
“You won’t fit in my little place.” I laugh. “Sam’s not gone yet.”
“I can’t stay with Sage,” he groans. “She and the boyfriend made me sick over Christmas with all the tongue kissing and hand-feeding each other.” I wouldn’t know. I stayed away at Christmas last year.
“Well, you sure as hell can’t stay with Silas,” says Ellis. And he’s right. Silas and Micah turn into the bash brothers when they’re together and stir up a world of trouble everywhere they go. Best to keep them apart while one of them is in a crisis, let alone both.
“Can’t help you there, bud,” I tell Micah.
“He’s a grumpy fucker without you around, you know,” Micah says to me, low enough that no one else can hear. “I feel like I have to listen to him even though I know, as an adult man, I actually don’t. And he never has any treats in the house.” He’s the only other Byrd sibling with freckles aside from Sage. A spray of them across the bridge of his nose that keeps him perpetually boyish—height, build, and jawline notwithstanding.
“Poor baby.” I pat his cheek. “I’ll send you home with whoopie pies tomorrow if you stop by.”
“I want some!” Silas complains.
“What about me?” Sage chimes in.
I laugh at the three of them, then catch Ellis giving them a fond look, too, and a fissure runs straight through my heart. When his gaze tracks back to mine, it’s heavy with a million things. Memories of us all sharing what is now Sage’s house. Baby Sam passed around a table while we all ate in a rush and tried to get to wherever we needed to go. Silas throwing a dirty diaper under Micah’s bed until it stunk up the entire floor. Kids raising kids and juggling a million things we had no business trying to manage. Those were some of the happiest years of my life.
All of us are safe and here , in spite of the shit we’ve endured.
But… the balance we’ve achieved in this family is safe again, too. The idea that we could harm that in any way by opening up old wounds utterly terrifies me. When Ellis and I got divorced, it felt like we were letting them down almost just as much. I don’t know if I could let myself get close to him again only to rip myself away, while still maintaining the boundaries that keep us all comfortable. If we couldn’t make it before, why would we this time? What would be different? I suddenly feel like I’m sinking into the grass with the weight of my doubts.
“I’ll make you a whoopie pie, sweetheart,” Fisher says to Sage.
Micah and Silas both gag, groan, and roll their eyes, just as I hear a mic check behind me. I slip into my seat between Ellis and Sage.
When the music starts a moment later and I see Sam and his classmates all gather by the stage in their awful mustard gowns, I feel winded. My throat stings, emotions tangling in knots. Ellis’s quick intake of breath beside me only makes it worse. I am dying to reach over and squeeze his hand, to thread my fingers with his so we might celebrate the best thing we ever did together. When my knuckles accidentally brush up against his, I feel it in every other bodily joint.
Our entire row stands to obnoxiously holler and whistle when Sam is called across the stage early on. I don’t dare look at Ellis when we sit back down, afraid of what I’ll do.
My mom and Indy meet all of us in the gymnasium for the celebration after, where we take an inordinate number of pictures and eat an inordinate amount of cake. I am careful to maintain a safe distance from Ellis as much as possible for the rest of the evening, but when the kids have all left to continue their celebration down at Founder’s Point and it’s down to a few remaining adults on cleanup duty, I find him by a garbage bin.
Of course he’s one of the last here, too. Perpetually steady and reliable to a fault.
Maybe it’s the fear of the unknown that makes up my mind, since we faced the reality of Sam leaving the nest today… but maybe it’s that thread of hope again. Maybe it’s both. Whatever it is, my feet carry me his way. I make it to him in a blink, and before I lose my nerve, I quietly tell him, “Okay. Pitch it to me. How many days, what’s the exact objective, et cetera?”
Standing before me with a full garbage bag in each of his hands, it feels like he’s taking a moment to drink me in before he says, “One week. And I just want to celebrate with you, Wren. It’s your birthday, it’s a big change in our lives, and I…” He shrugs. “I fucking miss you.”
I miss you, too sounds glib. You have been missing from me is more accurate. There’s a void where you lived in me.
“And as far as objectives go, I was honest about mine,” he goes on. “One week to see if we want to, I don’t know, I guess date again?” His mouth turns down like saying that tasted bad. “Be together again,” he amends. “But even if you decide you don’t—”
“Or if you decide you don’t,” I say again, repeating myself from earlier.
He shifts restlessly. “Even if either of us decides we don’t. I still want you in my life… more. More than whatever this has been.”
Whatever we’ve been isn’t enough for me, either, no matter how much that scares me to admit. I’ve never gotten entirely over him, and I have to believe there’s a reason for that. Maybe it’s because we’ve always had Sam between us. Who knows if we’re really even compatible anymore? If we’d even want to be friends without the ties binding us? This trip could be closure for me, too.
“Okay,” I say. “Plan it.”
His eyes flare with muted triumph before he nods. The surge of excitement I feel in response to that look is unnerving, and I practically speed walk away.
And when I get home to a dark and empty house that night, my head and heart and stomach too full of way too many things, I figure I’ll try to relieve a bit of one of them and sit down to write, this time reaching for the journal I bought from Athena’s.
The first compliment I ever received from Ellis was in third grade when he told me my eyes reminded him of a cow’s. His compliments would not go on to become smoother or more flowery over the years, but that was what I liked about them. Ellis’s goodness was raw. Unpracticed and somehow totally exacting. Even when he proposed, he hadn’t made an elaborate plan. He’d just gotten home from working on a fire for three days and came into our room, where I was taking an afternoon nap with four-year-old Sam. He sat on the bed and skimmed his thumb along my cheek until I woke up to his soft smile.
“Marry me,” he whispered, his eyes bright with unshed tears.
Still, sometimes I wished for a little more romance, and when I tried to coax it out of Ellis, he did his best. He usually found an alternate route of his own. Something unexpected and just as effective in the end.
When it came to us getting married, we knew our families couldn’t afford a wedding, but I still wanted us to write our own vows for the courthouse.
“I can’t do that,” Ellis had said, frustrated. “I’m sorry. I won’t get the right words out, and I can’t put everything I feel into some paragraphs that way. I don’t know what to say.” He gave me a broken look. “All I know is that if I found out heaven was real and got there first? I’d hang back in the waiting room and save you a seat.”