28. Wren #2
But the peace feels like an absence. I haven’t seen him since the storm.
I haven’t heard the low, dry rumble of his voice or felt the strange, grounding heat of his presence.
I told the world he was a man in a suit, and now I’m starting to feel like I’ve actually turned him into one—a phantom that only exists in my memory.
I walk out of the shop and around to the back of the log, heading to the tree line. The mud is drying, the forest reclaiming the paths the tourists carved out over the last few weeks. I stop at the edge of the old growth, where the shadows are deep.
“Rowan?” I whisper. My voice doesn’t even carry to the first branch.
I wait, listening for the snap of a twig. I listen for a correction, for a dry voice to tell me that I’ve over-explained again or that I’m being ridiculous. I listen for anything that isn’t the wind in the needles.
There is nothing. The mountain is just a mountain. The forest is just a forest. I’ve done my job too well. I’ve made the world stop looking, and in the process, I might have made it impossible for him to find me again.
I stand there until my toes are numb and the sun is high enough to burn through the canopy.
I’ve traded the man for the mountain. I’ve traded the miracle for the mortgage.
It was the only choice I had, but as I turn back toward the lodge, I don’t feel like a winner.
I feel like the person who just burned down the only museum they ever loved to save the gift shop.
As I walk back inside, all I can think about is the way Rowan looked when he was bark-skinned and powerful, before I turned him into silicone.
I don’t know if he’s out there watching me, or if he’s retreated so deep into the old growth that he’s forgotten the woman who lied to save him.
I don’t know if I’ve earned his gratitude or his permanent silence.
I just know that the lodge is safe, and I’ve never been more alone in my life.
I spend the afternoon playing the role of the harried administrator, answering the emails that mattered and ignoring the ones that were just vitriol from people who felt cheated out of a monster sighting.
By four o’clock, the first ‘deep dive’ video from a prominent tech YouTuber is already live, titled The Physics of the Cassidy Suit: Why We Should Have Known.
They are doing the work for me now, pointing out ‘glitches’ in the movement that they had previously hailed as ‘undeniable proof of biological complexity.’ The human brain is a funny thing; once you tell it it’s been tricked, it starts finding the strings even where there are none.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the lobby mirror as I walk toward the kitchen.
I look like a stranger, the exhaustion beneath my eyes masked by a layer of professional triumph that felt like a coat of cheap varnish.
I have become the ultimate curator of a fiction.
The Cassidy name is no longer synonymous with a failing lodge or an eccentric hotline; we’re the masterminds of the decade’s greatest marketing stunt.
Yet the victory tastes like copper and old tea.
Marge is in the kitchen, her back to me as she scrubs a heavy cast-iron skillet.
The rhythmic sound of the scouring pad against the metal is the only noise in the room.
Walt is sitting at the small table in the corner, staring out the window at the parking lot where a few straggler vans are finally packing up their gear.
“The bank called,” Walt says, not turning around.
“Mr. Howard. Sounded like he wanted to buy us a drink. Said the news of the marketing collaboration has the board feeling very confident about the lodge’s long-term viability.
They’re extending the credit line. They’re even talking about a low-interest renovation loan for the roof. ”
“That’s great, Walt,” I say, but the words feel hollow. “That’s what we wanted.”
“Is it?” Marge asks, finally turning around. She doesn’t look angry, just profoundly sad. “The lodge is safe, Wren. You did that. But the woods... they feel different today. Too quiet. Like the mountain is holding its breath.”
I don’t have an answer for her. I head back out, driven by a restless, gnawing anxiety that no amount of financial security can soothe.
I follow the trail toward the creek, the same one where Rowan lifted me over the mud just weeks ago.
I look for a sign—a footprint too large for a man, a broken branch at a height no hiker could reach, a single golden jar of honey left on a stump.
The woods remain stubbornly, devastatingly ordinary.
The ferns are just ferns. The trees are just trees.
I have successfully demystified his home, stripped away the veil of the supernatural, and replaced it with the mundane certainty of a Rowan Smith in a silicone suit.
I have given the world a cover story, and in doing so, I have perhaps given Rowan the ultimate reason to never show his face to me again.
The plan has worked with a surgical, terrifying precision, leaving the lodge standing and my heart a total wreck.
I stand at the edge of the creek, watching the water rush over the stones, and realize that for all my competence, I have no idea how to find a man who had been faked out of existence.