Chapter 2 Wren
Wren
The key turns with a satisfying click.
For a second, I stand frozen—my hand on the doorknob, my son bouncing at my side, and the weight of everything that brought us here pressing down on my shoulders. But beneath that weight, there’s something else too.
The faintest flicker of hope.
The buzzing undercurrent of excitement.
The thrill of the unknown.
“Can I go in first?” Atticus asks, practically vibrating. He’s been patient for the entire drive, even when my phone’s GPS lost signal halfway down a gravel road and I had to wing it like some pioneer mom in a black Audi.
“Go for it.” I hold the door open wide.
He darts inside, his thick, sandy hair bouncing as his sneakers thud against the old wood floors. The place smells like cedar and dust, warmth and love, and a lifetime of other people’s memories. Yet at the same time, it smells like home.
I follow him in, eyes sweeping the open space—the whitewashed walls, the exposed white oak beams, the warm glow of late morning light filtering through sheer linen curtains.
It’s smaller than our downtown loft but cozier, grounded in something real. It has depth and charm and character. If these walls could talk, I imagine they’d have stories for days.
I’m feeling inspired already.
There’s a spark in my chest, a nudge, a niggle in the center of my stomach that gives me reassurance that this was the right move.
“Mom, we have a real fireplace!” Atticus shouts from what I assume is the living room. “And the floor creaks when I jump! Listen! Can you hear it?”
“Just try not to fall through it,” I call, smiling despite myself.
I leave the key on the entryway table, where someone left a little ceramic dish shaped like a horseshoe.
A welcome gift or a forgotten knickknack—either way, I’m claiming it.
Besides, horseshoes are supposed to symbolize luck, and lately I’ve been running low on that.
Atticus barrels back into the foyer a minute later, already winded. “Can I go outside now?”
“There’s five acres of backyard and no one to yell at you for running too fast. Go wild,” I say, waving him off.
Thirty-five acres of this forty-acre purchase consisted of rentable farm ground—which I’m told will bring in about fourteen thousand dollars a year in income, among other tax benefits I had no idea existed.
Not only did I find a property that belongs on a movie set, I’m being paid to own it too.
Mom always told me sometimes things fall apart just so they can fall back together when the time is right.
She’s never wrong about these things. She was right about my ex-fiancé too.
Her first impression of Nick was that he seemed “fickle.” I told her he was probably just nervous, but deep down, I wondered the same about him.
He was notoriously indecisive about everything, from the color of his button-down shirt for work each morning to the drink he was going to order at a restaurant we’d been to a hundred times before.
I used to tease him about it, never thinking he’d one day be indecisive about me.
I suppose sometimes it’s easier to see what we want to see, to believe what we so badly want to believe.
Atticus tugs his little red Converse sneakers tighter, then pauses at the glass-paneled back door, eyes squinting toward the sun-dappled barn.
“We should get a pony,” he says, not for the first time. “And I’m going to need cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.”
I chuckle. He’s been asking for a pony for years now, ever since he went to a birthday party on some hobby farm outside of Winterset.
“We’ll see,” I tell him. “But we have to unpack before we can talk livestock, little cowpoke.”
“’Kay, Mom, I’m gonna go check out the barn.” The door slams behind him, and I’m alone with the echo of his excitement.
I wander deeper into the house, touching plaster walls, brushing dust from windowsills, opening doors like each one holds a different version of the life I’m trying to rebuild.
There’s a small dining room with gossamer-thin curtains, a galley kitchen with navy blue painted cupboards and butcher-block countertops, and a mudroom that smells faintly of the outdoors.
Every room whispers stories of whoever lived here before—but none loud enough to drown out all the ones I hope to write now that it’s my turn.
It isn’t until I reach the front of the house again that I find it—the room.
Not sure how I missed it before.
It’s tucked just off the main hallway, all warm wood floors and quiet charm, with a wide bow window that arcs out like an invitation.
The view from here is something out of a storybook: a winding dirt driveway accented with soaring hundred-year-old oaks, sunlight cutting through the branches like gold ribbons.
I sit on the window seat, dust motes dancing in the air around me like whimsical fireflies. For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel suffocated by silence. I feel . . . still.
And then I see it.
A white truck—big, boxy, and gleaming with chrome. It rolls to a slow stop at the edge of the drive, then idles for a moment, like it’s deciding something.
I squint, shielding my eyes. It’s too far to make out much detail, but I catch a man’s figure. A hand tapping the steering wheel. Other than some dark hair shoved under a ball cap, I can’t make out much else.
Not being neighborly in a small town is practically a crime, so I retreat from the window and trot to the door to introduce myself, only by the time I set foot on the front steps, the truck quickly accelerates, leaving nothing but a trail of dust.
Weird . . .
I watch until it disappears around the bend, a little frown tightening between my brows. Maybe someone just missed a turn. Or maybe they were thinking about turning in to say hi to the former owner and changed their mind when they saw my car.
A nosy neighbor?
A friend of the seller?
“Mom?” Atticus’s voice breaks the quiet. He’s standing in the hallway again, cheeks flushed, dirt already on his knees. I didn’t even hear him come back inside. “Are we staying here tonight?”
“Yes,” I say, standing and brushing off my jeans. “The movers should be here in an hour, so you’re heading to Grandma’s for the day while I get things settled, then you’ll be back tonight. Sound like a plan?”
He shrugs, half disappointed he can’t stay and pal around the acreage, but the glimmer in his crystal-blue eyes tells me he’s excited for a day at Grandma Trish’s.
Besides, he has all summer to explore everything this property has to offer.
There are endless adventures to be had . . . once we’re unpacked.
“You’ll have plenty of time to explore, I promise,” I assure him, quietly relieved at how well he’s taking to this place already.
Atticus scampers off to finish surveying our new digs, and I head up the creaky stairs to the second floor, where three large bedrooms with light-soaked panoramic views await me.
With the office on the main floor and the two of us only needing two of these rooms, maybe I’ll turn the third one into a playroom—though I’d prefer Atticus to do most of his playing outside.
He’s spent almost his entire life—a whopping four, almost five years—doing mostly inside things.
As a single mom, technology has been a godsend more times than I can count.
But deep down, I worry that he’s not bored enough.
When you’re bored, when you have time to be alone with your thoughts, when you have room to breathe, that’s how a person really figures out who they are.
I want Atticus to know who he is. I don’t want his past—my past—to write his story for him.
Moving here wasn’t just for me.
It was for both of us.