Chapter 27
Henry
In our first group meeting, Winnie had posed a rather unusual question to Max: “What is the saddest story you have ever heard?” At first, I found this question quite peculiar, almost intrusive.
But the longer I thought about it, the more I realized Winnie wasn’t asking out of morbid curiosity; she was searching for some answer to her own pain.
Perhaps if she heard about someone else’s grief, she might better understand her own.
Max, ever patient, had recounted a story about a mother traveling with her family during the holidays.
An oncoming four-wheel drive collided with their car, killing her three children in the back seat and leaving her gravely injured.
For years afterward, Max explained, the woman told anyone who asked that her children were alive.
She had built a world in her mind where they grew up, went to college, got married, moved overseas.
She had created an entire alternate reality—an escape from a truth too unbearable to live with.
Max explained that grief can be so overwhelming, so all-consuming, that we sometimes construct parallel spaces to exist in, where the grief cannot follow.
I had never forgotten that story.
It was all I could think about as I tried to unravel what I had learned about Wren.
Had she done the same thing? Had she rebuilt herself piece by piece, brick by brick, not as Brooklyn Paisley, literary sensation, but as Wren—the friend who brought croissants to me on Friday afternoons after a long week of work; the woman who stayed late after grief group to rearrange chairs and wash empty mugs; the person who always smiled at the dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre I kept on my desk, teasing me that I’d read it more times than anyone could count?
She had slipped into this version of herself so seamlessly, so convincingly, that none of us had questioned it.
I felt a pang of heartache that settled in my chest, heavy and unwieldy.
How could she have hidden this from me? From all of us?
How had I not seen it? And yet, as I sat with the thought longer, Max’s story echoed in my mind.
When people choose to believe something, others often go along with it, unquestioning. Wren presented herself as someone ordinary. A woman trying to heal in a small town. And we all believed her, because we wanted to.
After I lost Jacob, if I’d had the opportunity to run, to recreate my life, to become someone else, who would have I become?
Perhaps Henry the baker, waking up at dawn to knead dough and hand out pastries.
Or Henry the editor, sipping espresso in a sleek office as I nurtured stories into the world.
Or maybe Henry the carpenter, building something tangible, something solid, something that wouldn’t collapse under the weight of loss.
I lay awake, staring at my ceiling as the darkness dragged on through the night.
I thought I knew Wren. Hell, I thought I knew Olivia.
How could she have done this to Wren? Olivia was vivacious, strong, and opinionated—but cruel?
I’d never known her to be cruel. But then again, I was starting to question how well I knew anyone.
Eventually my anxiety about the poetry evening began to creep in too.
What if the press turned it into a spectacle?
What if it overshadowed everything we’d worked for?
Max’s words floated back to me: Grief changes people.
Sometimes we create spaces where the pain can’t follow.
Grief reveals the truths we would rather not face, but it also reveals the ways we both run from and return to ourselves.
As the clock ticked past midnight, I felt more uncertain than ever.
I arrived at the library earlier than usual, just as the first light of dawn began to break over the mountain.
The sight never failed to strike me—the way the sky unfurled into a palette of pinks and purples, clashing beautifully with the motley painted buildings along Main Street.
I loved this town; I loved the way it felt tucked into its own little corner of the world, cradled by the mountains’ shadow.
The smell of coffee already wafted down the street from the café, mingling with the smell of fresh rain from the night before.
But today, something felt off, like the town itself noticed an absence.
As I approached the library return box, the morning air was cool against my skin.
I opened the metal lid with a slight creak, half expecting some sort of firecracker to go off, but all I found was a note.
The paper was neatly folded. I recognized Wren’s handwriting immediately. I inhaled deeply as I opened the note.
I’m sorry for everything, Henry. But I am not sorry to have met you, to have been part of this group that you created. You are and will always be the glue of it. Everston saved my life, and I will never forget you. I have returned to New York, so I will not bother you again.
Be well, Henry.
Hours later, I was still staring at Wren’s handwriting, too distracted to even reprimand the teenagers scribbling in library books—an offense that usually earned my swift and stern intervention.
Suddenly, Emerson burst into the reading corner, narrowly avoiding one of the new lamps I’d placed on the table just the other day.
Her thick, wavy black hair was escaping from her ponytail, and her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d run the whole way here.
“Nobody tells me anything!” she exclaimed, breathless. “No calls, no texts, nothing. I’m gone for, like, three days, and all hell breaks loose. And nobody bothers to call me?”
She bent forward, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.
“Well, nobody except Gill, who is a mess, by the way. And Rita, she thinks it’s all her fault for telling that reporter about Gill’s place.
Bobby and her had this huge fight about it, because Bobby said she shouldn’t have said anything.
Now Rita is with my mom, crying her eyes out, because her and Bobby were supposed to perform their poem together.
And Julian is dealing with some family emergency—which could mean literally anything.
Olivia’s phone is off. And here you are, staring at the floor like the pipes have burst again. ”
“We didn’t want to worry you,” I said. “There was nothing you could’ve done anyway, Em, you were in Denver. Why worry you when you were hours away?”
“Because I would have come home sooner. I would have started punching those reporters!” she retorted, straightening up. “I would’ve come in swinging.”
“I’m sure assault charges would look fantastic on your college applications.”
She huffed and crossed her arms. “But it’s one of us, Henry. One of us!”
“Well, how much of an ‘us’ could she be, when we didn’t even know who she really was?” I said. “Besides, they weren’t here very long anyway. As soon as they realized no one was going to give any interviews, they left.”
“This is unbelievable,” Emerson muttered, flopping into the armchair beside me. “Where is she?”
“She’s gone,” I said, the words unexpectedly catching in my throat. “Wren. Or Brooklyn. Or—I don’t even know who she is.”
“She just left?” Emerson asked, her voice low, as if saying it too loudly might make it more real.
I nodded. “Back to New York, if that’s even where she lives.”
Emerson sighed heavily. “She does live in New York,” she said. “The accident was bad, Henry. Like, really bad.” She paused, her fingers absentmindedly brushing the deep scar that ran along her neck. “But the press that followed? That was way worse.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because obviously I have now googled the crap out of her,” she replied, as if it were a no-brainer.
She pulled out her phone, her thumb swiping purposefully across the screen, before leaning closer and holding it out to me.
“Look,” she said softly. A video started playing, shaky and chaotic, like it had been recorded by someone shoving their way through a crowd.
There was Wren, emerging from a building.
Her movements were slow, labored, her body hunched as if every step took monumental effort.
A large gash ran across her forehead, dark-purple bruises pooling beneath both eyes.
Bandages were wrapped around her wrists, and gauze peeked out from beneath the collar of her shirt, covering her neck and arms. She looked utterly destroyed, both physically and emotionally.
“That’s a rehabilitation facility,” Emerson interjected. “She was trying to get well, and faced this every day.”
Paparazzi swarmed around her like vultures, their flashes blinding and relentless. The shouting was deafening, overlapping questions and accusations hurled at her without mercy.
“Brooklyn, how does it feel to know that boy will never walk again? Do you think your fame is protecting you from justice? Are you hiding behind your dead fiancée’s memory?”
Amid the chaos, other voices rose, angrier, crueler.
“Why aren’t you paying for the boy’s care!?” someone shouted. “Celebrities think they’re above the law!”
“You should be in jail, bitch,” another jeered.
“I’m glad your stupid fiancée died.” Wren visibly flinched at those words, her face crumpling. She clutched her arms, as though trying to shield herself from the barrage.
“God,” I whispered.
The video continued, showing her being ushered toward a waiting car. A security guard tried to hold back the crowd, but the shouts followed her, pounding against the windows as she was driven away.
Emerson scrolled through the comments, and they were just as bad.
“They’re ruthless,” she murmured. “It’s like they found joy in her grief. Imagine people glad that Jacob had died because it meant they could see you fall. It’s gross. It’s the worst parts of humanity.”