3. Wren
WREN
By the time I make it to the twins’ elementary school, I have half a tank of gas, a folded financial aid worksheet in my bag, and the strong desire to fake my own death.
Nothing overly dramatic, just a tasteful disappearance.
Maybe a new identity in a coastal town in Italy where nobody knows me, nobody needs me, and every bill gets paid by a mysterious rich aunt who appears out of nowhere with excellent timing and zero emotional baggage.
Unfortunately, I do not have a mysterious rich aunt.
I have an old Honda with a weird clicking noise, a phone battery at eighteen percent, and two six-year-olds barreling toward me like glitter-covered gremlins.
“Wren!” Daisy screams.
Lily is right behind her, backpack bouncing against her shoulders, and one shoelace flapping in the wind with each step she takes.
Daisy reaches me first, launching herself at my waist. I catch her on instinct and stumble back a step.
“Oof. Hi to you too.”
“I got a star sticker,” she says into my sweatshirt.
“I got two,” Lily announces, because love is real but competition is forever.
Daisy’s head snaps up. “Mine is bigger.”
“Mine are shinier.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It counts double.”
I look between them. “Wow. First grade sounds awesome.”
“It’s not,” Lily says. “We have worksheets.”
Their teacher waves from the pickup line with the expression of a woman who has seen too much before three in the afternoon. I wave back with the expression of a woman who will be seeing too much until bedtime.
“How was school?” I ask as we walk to the car.
Daisy begins talking immediately. “Mason, he’s in our class, ate glue.”
Lily sighs. “He didn’t eat it; he said he tasted it.”
“He licked the glue stick.”
“Exactly. He tasted it.”
“Ladies,” I say, unlocking the car, “as fascinating as Mason’s culinary journey sounds, please get in and buckle before I age another decade.”
They climb into the backseat, still arguing about whether glue counts as food if someone says it’s not food while eating it.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
2:47 — SNACKS. WATER. brEATHE, POSSIBLY.
I silence it and open the driver’s door before getting in.
“Can we get fries?” Daisy asks.
“No.” The non-stop questioning from the two little humans is enough to drive me insane, but at least they’re cute.
And more than likely, they’ll wear me down by the time we get home, and we absolutely will have something Present Me vetoes.
I wonder if they know this, and that’s why they gang up on me.
“Chicken nuggets?”
“No.”
“A milkshake?”
“Also no.”
Lily buckles herself in. “Do we have snacks at home?”
“Yes.”
“Good snacks?”
“Define good.”
“Not raisins.”
I shrug. “Then maybe.”
Daisy gasps. “Raisins are grandma grapes.”
That description is both accurate and quite unsettling.
The drive home takes twenty-four minutes because Pacific Coast traffic has one hobby, and it is ruining lives.
The twins narrate their day in overlapping bursts.
Daisy tells me about Mason and the glue three more times.
Lily informs me that her table group lost two points because Emma talked during quiet reading, which is apparently an unforgivable betrayal in her book, and Emma has been demoted from BFFFF to BFF.
I make the right sounds in the right places.
My body does the driving while my mouth does the sistering.
But my brain is still in the financial assistance hallway, feeling like one of the last pieces of my life that I had under control just served me an Uno reverse.
There has been an adjustment to your aid package.
Such a polite way for them to say “you’re fucked.”
I pull into the driveway and sit for half a second too long.
Lily leans between the seats. “Are we home?”
“No, this is someone else’s house.”
Daisy gasps. “Really? It looks just like ours.”
“No,” Lily says. “She’s being sarcastic.”
Daisy looks at me with admiration. “You’re good at that.”
“Thank you. It’s my most marketable skill,” I say, hopping out and heading toward the house.
Inside, it somehow seems messier than when we left it this morning. Then again, we were basically a walking tornado when we left.
I drop my bag by the door and immediately pick it back up, because if I leave it there, someone will trip over it, and somehow I’ll be the bad guy.
“Backpacks on hooks,” I tell the twins. “Shoes in the basket. I’ll get you a snack, and you can have it at the table. Worksheets before any screens.”
Daisy freezes halfway through taking off her jacket. “We have to do those right now?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m tired.” She pouts, giving me her best puppy dog eyes.
Lucky for me, I’ve become immune. “Same, girl. Same.”
Lily takes her folder out with solemn obedience. “We have math.”
Daisy groans but gets her paper out of her backpack and takes a seat at the table.
I set them up at the kitchen table with apple slices, peanut butter, crackers, and a bowl of pretzels that will absolutely be gone in the ten minutes it will take them to complete their worksheets. Then I plug my phone in, wash my hands, and open the fridge.
There are leftovers. Technically.
Half a container of pasta. Two chicken breasts. Some lettuce wilting away just like I feel I am, a jar of pickles, and just enough yogurt cups for the twins’ lunches for the rest of the week.
Dinner can be pasta with chicken.
Again.
I can call it “garlic chicken penne” if I add enough seasoning and lie with confidence.
My phone buzzes from the counter.
Harlow: How did financial aid go?
I stare at the text.
Wren: Super fun. Love bureaucracy. Thinking of marrying it.
Three dots appear immediately.
Harlow: That awful?
Wren: Same shit different day. It’s fine. I have to appeal something. Also maybe work-study??
Harlow: So everything is on fire?
Wren: *elmo and dumpster fire gif*
Harlow: Want me to come over?
My throat tightens before I can stop it.
Harlow showing up would help and also make it real. She would look at the red-letter bills if they were still on the counter. She would hug me, and I would either make a joke or crack right down the middle. I’d become Humpty Dumpty, and I’m not too sure I could put myself back together again.
Wren: I’m good. Twins have homework and Justin needs picked up at 4:30. Rain check?
Harlow: Always. Love you.
Wren: Love you too.
I set the phone down and exhale.
“Wren,” Daisy says from the table, pencil hovering over her worksheet. “What’s seven minus two?”
“Five.”
She writes it down. “What’s eight minus three?”
“Also five.”
Her eyes widen. “Whoa.”
Lily gives her a bored look. “The answers are all five, Daisy. Today was all about the number five.”
I do my best to cover my laugh and start to get things ready for dinner.
By the time headlights shine in through the front window, I have garlic chicken penne on the stove, the twins have completed twelve math problems with one emotional breakdown, and I have remembered three separate times that I need to look at the work-study portal.
Each time I sit down to do it, someone needs something before I can.
Justin enters through the back door with his backpack hanging off one shoulder, basketball shoes squeaking against the tile. Thankfully, another boy down our street plays on the same team, and his parents are kind enough to give Justin a ride most evenings when they have practice.
“I’m starving,” he announces.
I turn toward him with a grin. “Hi, Starving. I’m Wren.”
He stares at me, completely unimpressed. “That joke is older than you.”
“And yet it lives.”
He drops his bag by the table.
I point at it with the spoon I’m holding. He sighs like I’ve asked him to build a cathedral, then picks it up and hangs it on the chair instead, which is not the hook but is technically off the floor. I’ll take it.
“Snack?” he asks.
“Apple slices.”
“I said snack, not punishment.”
“Pretzels.”
“Where?”
I glance at the table.
The bowl is empty.
Daisy has pretzel dust on her cheeks.
Lily points at her. “We were starved.”
“I shared with myself,” Daisy says.
Justin closes his eyes. “How do two tiny humans eat so much?”
“I ask myself the same question about all of you, daily. Pasta’s on the stove,” I say. “Start on homework, and it’ll be done soon.”
He groans, but he gets his notebook out.
Holden comes in twenty minutes later, quieter than everyone else. He always is lately. Before Dad left, Holden used to fill rooms without trying. He was loud in this easy, careless way, all laughter and terrible impressions and music blasting from upstairs.
Now, he’s quiet. He feels guilt that he shouldn’t have to, and worries more than I want him to. It’s not his fault our father decided to hop dick first into some other woman's bed while Mom was at home taking care of the twins alone.
I hate Dad for a lot of things.
The change he caused in Holden is at the tippy top.
“How was practice?” I ask.
“Fine.” Holden drops his keys into the little bowl by the door.
“You hungry? Is Parker not coming in today?”
“Yeah, I could eat. Parker is going to dinner with his mom, so he just dropped me off and headed out.”
“Gotcha. Dinner will be ready in ten if you want to wash up.”
“Need help?”
I almost say no automatically.
It’s right there on my tongue, polished from overuse, but Holden is already looking at me like he knows, and I am suddenly too tired to lie with full conviction.
“Can you make sure the twins finish their packets and then help them set the table?” I ask.
His face softens, just a little. “Yeah.”
Lily immediately sits straighter. “I don’t need help.”
Holden pulls out the chair beside her. “That’s good. That means you can help me, ’cause I don’t quite remember how to set the table the right way.”
That works because Lily Calloway was born to manage people.
By 6:12, everyone is fed.
By 6:40, Justin has remembered he needs a poster board for a project due Friday.
By 6:41, I have decided poster board is a scam invented by teachers who hate families.
By 7:05, Daisy is crying because she can’t find the tiny plastic cat that sleeps under her pillow, even though it is very clearly in her sweatshirt pocket.