Chapter 2 #2
Several cars ahead of them, a small crowd had gathered.
More residents flocked to the sidewalk, observing something Josie couldn’t yet see.
Her fingers tightened around the wheel. She resisted the urge to fire up her portable radio and find out if anything catastrophic was happening ahead.
There was no smoke. No one was shouting or screaming or moving with any urgency whatsoever.
“Well?” Wren asked, breaking into Josie’s thoughts. “Are you going to tell me about this guy or what?”
“Turner’s just a jerk.” Josie sighed. “But he’s harmless.”
Wren turned in her seat so she could face Josie. “Okay.” She drew the word out. “Do you have stories? What’s with the fifty cents thing?”
In the distance the crowd grew but they seemed to be standing around, talking to one another calmly.
Maybe the traffic was just that hopelessly snarled that people had decided to stretch their legs.
Josie frowned. Unless someone was in imminent danger, she wasn’t leaving her air-conditioned vehicle.
The July heat was oppressive. She’d wondered at having the festival in the middle of summer, but the soaring temperatures hadn’t deterred anyone from showing up.
She threw her SUV into park and turned her attention to Wren, unable to deny the excitement she felt deep in her gut at the fact that the girl wanted to hear something Josie had to say.
It was like a single shaft of sunlight piercing thunderclouds and landing right on her. Miraculous.
She explained the jars. Then she opened her mouth to share stories of Turner’s shortcomings and promptly snapped it closed.
What was she doing? This wasn’t about her.
They weren’t besties who sat around sharing gossip.
Josie was supposed to be the parent here.
The adult. As tempting as it was to indulge in Wren’s curiosity about Turner, this was an opportunity to try to draw the girl out.
The first six months she’d been with them, Josie was convinced that she hated them.
Now, she suspected that Wren was simply afraid to get close to them.
After all, she’d been conceived during a one-night stand, and her mother had kept her existence a secret from Dex for nine years.
It was only after Wren’s mother died suddenly that Dex learned he had a daughter.
They had been strangers to one another. Being the incredible man he was, Dex embraced fatherhood, doing his best to make up for lost time.
He’d loved his daughter with a ferocity that gave Josie chills to this day.
Then he died and Wren was again left in the care of complete strangers.
Only this time, those strangers had no biological ties to her.
No true obligation to take her in other than to honor Dex’s wishes.
Josie and Noah had done their best to show Wren that they were thrilled to have her in their lives.
They’d been in the process of adopting a baby before Noah had been abducted nearly a year ago.
Then their approval had been revoked. They hadn’t had a chance to think about next steps.
Then, as if by divine intervention, Wren had appeared at their door.
For Josie and Noah, wanting children, wanting to be parents, had never been about having an actual baby.
It had been about balancing the evil they dealt with on the job by sharing all the love they had inside with a child.
Josie had never cared whether she gave birth to their biological child or they adopted someone else’s child.
She’d never cared about the age of the child.
In fact, the more she’d considered it, the more she liked the idea of giving a loving home to someone who needed it.
Wren had lost so much. Josie couldn’t fault her for not wanting to get close to her new guardians, but she was determined to break down Wren’s walls.
A couple of weeks ago, she and Noah had renewed their wedding vows and incorporated Wren into the ceremony, making their commitment to her clear before all the people they loved.
She’d been more approachable since then but there was so much more Josie wanted to know about her.
“That’s it?” Wren asked. “That’s all you’re going to say about the guy?”
Josie smiled stiffly. “I’d rather talk about you.”
Wren looked away, her hands wrapping around the edges of her sketchbook. “What about me?”
“How did your session go today?”
Wren’s therapist held a group session for grieving teens every other Sunday. Today had been her second one.
A half-shrug. “Fine.”
Her group and individual therapy sessions always went “fine,” even when she emerged with red-rimmed, glassy eyes.
“Good,” Josie said and here it was: the dreaded awkwardness.
Why was talking to a fourteen-year-old so damn hard?
She’d interviewed and interrogated hundreds of teenagers during her career.
Never once had she been intimidated or at a loss for words, unable to move things forward.
She searched for something else to ask, not wanting to squander this time together, trapped in the car.
“Have you—have you given any thought to getting together with your friends from your old school?”
She didn’t miss how Wren’s shoulders drew up toward her ears just a fraction. Josie wished she could see her expression, but she was still facing the passenger’s side window.
“No,” she replied quietly.
Dex had died in the middle of Wren’s first year of high school.
Even though said school was an hour away from Denton, Josie and Noah had offered to drive her back and forth so she could finish the year there.
Wren had flatly rejected their proposal, insisting on changing schools when she moved in with them.
Despite Josie and Noah’s curiosity about her choice and her life back in Fairfield, Wren had never spoken about it.
She never talked about any old friends. Never brought up wanting to see them again, even after Josie and Noah offered to take her there any time she wanted.
Not for the first time, Josie wondered if Wren had been bullied at her old school. Or was this just about not being reminded of her father?
“You’re welcome to have them over,” Josie pointed out. “If you don’t want to go back there.”
Wren swallowed. “Um, thanks. I appreciate that.”
“You know you can talk to me, right?” Josie finally blurted out. For months, she’d been walking on eggshells, terrified that she was somehow going to screw things up every time she spoke to the girl.
Wren stared at her again. Josie couldn’t decipher her expression. Of course she couldn’t. She didn’t know her well enough. Yet.
“Wren,” Josie sighed. “I’m not just here to make sure you have a roof over your head and that you eat and go to school.
I’m here for you. It’s fine if you’re not comfortable confiding in me or coming to me with your feelings or problems. I haven’t earned your trust yet—not like that—but I want to and I hope you’ll give me that chance. ”
“I—” Wren’s mouth hung open in shock.
Josie was really in it now. No turning back. Might as well lay it all on the line. “It’s important that you know that I’m on your team. I will go to bat for you. Anytime. Any place. No matter what. I’ve got you.”
“Um, th-thank you,” Wren stammered.
Josie’s face was on fire. “I’m not saying that to try to get you to talk to me. I’m not saying it for any reason other than you need to know, okay?”
Wren nodded.
Turning her head so she could look her directly in the eye, Josie said, “I’m not going anywhere.
I won’t leave you. I won’t kick you out.
Doesn’t matter what happens. Doesn’t matter if you screw up.
I’m here. Not because some legal document says I have to be.
I’m here for you. Because this is where I want to be. ”
Tears glistened in Wren’s eyes. Her lips parted. A breath whooshed out. When she inhaled, her shoulders drew up toward her ears another inch. Josie could tell that she was bracing herself. Shoring herself up. In her lap, her fingers tightened around her sketchbook.
“I can’t,” she croaked. “Can’t talk about the kids at my old school but thank you for saying all those things.”
Josie stared at Wren, watching all the signals her body was giving off. Something in her gut tingled.
Can’t. Not won’t. Can’t talk about them. Not “I don’t want to talk about them.”
“Wren,” Josie said carefully. “Did something happen at your old school?”
“No, no. Of course not.”
“Whatever it is, you’re safe with me. You can tell me.”
The moment stretched on until the din of car horns and the swell of voices outside the vehicle became louder.
As Josie waited for Wren to speak, her curiosity grew.
Everything inside her became still, almost as if her body’s automatic processes had stopped, their resuscitation hanging on this moment.
She had never wanted to know anything more than whatever Wren couldn’t talk about and she realized that if the girl didn’t confide in her, there was absolutely nothing she could do.
She couldn’t take her to the stationhouse and interrogate her.
She couldn’t obtain statements from every person Wren had known at her old school in an effort to piece together what had happened, and then use it to get Wren to confess her secret.
She couldn’t offer Wren some deal in exchange for her sharing her story.
With dawning horror, Josie realized that if Wren decided never to tell her what was behind her reluctance, she could do just that.
Son of a bitch.
Parenting was like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane for the first time thinking that every skydiving video you ever saw in your life was enough to keep you from hitting the ground at terminal velocity, then realizing halfway down that deploying a parachute wasn’t that easy after all.
Wren’s lips parted. Josie leaned toward her, keenly aware of her own heartbeat fluttering in her chest.
Then Wren blinked and pointed at the road ahead of them. “Look! It’s a hot air balloon!”
Josie’s head jerked toward the windshield.
Wren gasped in delight before she exited the car, leaving her sketchbook on her seat.
Josie watched as a hot air balloon, checkered with bright colors and easily as large as the two-story homes around them, slowly descended from the sky.
It moved at the speed of an elevator, gliding smoothly through the air.
When its basket plunked gently onto the roof of a luxury SUV a few cars ahead of them, Josie let her head fall back against the seat.
The moment with Wren was gone. She was going to be extremely late for work and since she apparently owed some huge karmic debt, Turner was going to needle her about it for hours. Maybe even days.
“Good times,” she muttered to herself. “Good times.”