Chapter 12 #2
“It sounds like you had a great assignment,” I replied.
“Well, only the best for the future anchor, I suppose. I mean, I guess they’re trying to bribe me. Didn’t you stay at Motel 6 on your last assignment with Josh? Shared a room, too, right?”
Urgh. Motel 6 wasn’t even THAT bad.
“Oh,” I replied slowly. “So you are going for the promotion?”
“Of course. I just figured after your mom died, you’d step away from the fast lane. You know, to work on yourself. And, I mean, the station is going to need someone with serious experience.”
My eyes were steady out of pure skill, but they had figuratively rolled right to the very back of my head. “I’m still very happy in the fast lane. Thanks, though.”
“Colin is just such a great boss, isn’t he?
” she replied, ignoring me. “Honestly, he has been super sweet to me, and I just can’t wait to keep working alongside him.
We work so well together.” Cassie paused, and tried to express what I could only assume was a look of warped empathy.
“I’m sure we can find something for you, Olivia. When you’re ready that is.”
There was nothing in the world I wouldn’t have given to throw dog feces at her and wipe that smug look off her face.
Like most things in Everston, the restaurant I picked to meet Wren had been there a long time.
It was frozen in that same timeless charm of the early 1900s, with its rich mahogany, ornately framed golden mirrors, and leather upholstery.
Wrought-iron chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling above, casting a glow over white linen–draped tables.
The room was dim as I wove through the tables toward her.
They made their own pasta by hand, which I already knew was Wren’s favorite.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said as I sat down. “The highway from Norvale can get a little congested in this kind of weather.”
“If we’re being honest, I was early. I hope you don’t mind that I ordered us some wine.”
I looked at the bottle sitting on the table, a pinot noir from the North Fork Valley. She’d picked one of my favorite wines, completely by chance—or maybe fate just had great taste.
“I don’t mind at all,” I said.
Wren smiled, showing her dimples. Her nose was sprinkled with freckles, and the gentle curve of her lips made me want to memorize the way she looked at me just then.
Her hair fell loosely above her shoulders, framing her face like sunlight catching the edges of a picture.
She was wearing a light-blue cotton dress, with a gold necklace. She was effortlessly beautiful.
“How was work?” she asked, and I was brought back to Earth.
“Honestly, horrible,” I replied. “My boss is still refusing to let me go back to active duty, and today I found out that my archnemesis is also gunning for the anchor role.”
Wren poured me a glass of wine. “Is that the role that your mother had?”
“Yes,” I said, “and I don’t even know if I want it, I just know that Cassie Johnson would be a terrible anchor for HCB.”
“Can you finally tell me what you did to get saddled with desk duty? Please?” Wren said.
I sighed, dreading recounting this story.
“There was an incident on air. I was reporting on a neighbor dispute. A man was complaining that his neighbors were leaving their dog’s poop on his doorstep.
Turns out, they were only doing this because he had tried to poison their dog. So I just started throwing it at him.”
“You threw dog poop at him?” she asked, her eyes wide and her mouth brimming with humor. “On live television?”
“It’s on YouTube somewhere.”
Wren laughed. “That is a story,” she agreed. “A brilliant one.”
“I wasn’t myself,” I said. “I’d found a letter my mother had written to me the night of my prom, and she’d never given it to me.
I suppose I’m glad that she never did, because the letter was nothing short of praising herself, not me, but I guess it just brought up things for me.
I found a bottle of champagne and…well, next thing I knew I was in a dog poop-flinging fight. ”
Wren’s eyes held a depth of understanding. “You are allowed to both grieve your mom and be relieved that she is no longer in your life, Olivia.”
“I know,” I said, softly. “It’s just hard to reconcile both the grief and the relief, you know? Sometimes I feel like I mourn the mom I never had more than the one I lost.”
Wren nodded thoughtfully, reaching her hand across the table, her thumb grazing the tops of my fingers.
“Grief is messy. It doesn’t follow a script, it just demands that you feel all of it.”
She brushed the hair from her face, and I noticed a small scar along the edge of her hairline.
“Do you think about it a lot? The accident, I mean,” I asked, cautiously.
Wren swirled the wine in her glass, her gaze momentarily distant. “I do,” she replied. “It’s hard not to. One moment, everything was fine, and the next, we were skidding along the road. It’s difficult to piece it all together sometimes.”
“That’s normal,” I said gently. “It was traumatic. Of course you wouldn’t want to remember it.”
She nodded slowly, then hesitated before speaking again. “The thing is…the police said that Lucy caused the accident. But I don’t remember it that way. I don’t ever remember her losing control of the car.”
I leaned forward slightly. “What do you mean?”
“My memory may be fractured,” she said, her voice quieter now, “but I remember the explosion. I remember something crashing into us. Our car was knocked off the road and we flew into an electrical pole. But I don’t remember everything the way it was reported.
The police said Lucy lost control—plowed into an oncoming vehicle, then onto the sidewalk, hitting a young boy and finally the pole. But…I don’t even remember the boy.”
“Was anyone else injured?”
“Two people,” she replied, swirling her wine again, as if she was trying to untangle her memories. “The young boy and…well, the police just said a ‘John Doe.’ I never found out who he was.”
I sat upright, my curiosity sparking. “And what did the crash report say exactly?”
“That Lucy lost control of the vehicle, hit the other car, mounted the curb, and hit the young boy, and then the pole. The boy was paralyzed, and the other man was injured,” she said, her brow furrowing as she tried to remember.
“Did they say how the John Doe was injured?”
“No,” Wren responded, shaking her head. “But—” she added, a shadow of guilt passing over her face, “I think, maybe, I distracted her. I was reading to her that night, in the car, maybe she looked at me instead of the road.”
“But you said your car was hit first?”
“I think so,” she replied. “We ended up wrapped around the pole. But the boy was on the opposite side of the road, with the other vehicle.”
I frowned, trying to piece it together in my mind. “But if he was on the other side of the road, how could you have hit him?” I paused. “And what about your car? The damage to it…wouldn’t that show whether you were hit, or if you hit someone else? Did the police say anything about that?”
“They didn’t go into details, at least not with me,” Wren said. “All I was told was that it was Lucy’s fault.”
I leaned back slightly. “It doesn’t make sense,” I said, meeting her eyes. “I mean, if your car ended up wrapped around a pole, and the boy was on the opposite side of the road, it sounds like you were hit, pushed into the pole, and the other vehicle struck the boy. Not the other way around.”
“Do you think so? I haven’t thought about it that much. I try to avoid thinking about it at all, if I’m honest,” Wren said.
There was so much more I wanted to ask. My instincts were burning, hungry for the truth.
Something about her story didn’t add up, and the missing elements pulled at my mind.
But I could see she was feeling overwhelmed by all this talk of the accident.
And I also wanted to know what her favorite color was, what she liked to do when she wasn’t renovating Gill’s old house, what her favorite season was.
There were so many things about Wren that I wanted to uncover.
The candle on the table between us had burned right down, so that the wick was making tiny popping noises.
I had lost track of the time, as we had been talking, eating and pouring more wine.
There was an ease to being with Wren; I felt like I wanted to be near her all the time.
The waiter delivered the check to the table, and I realized our evening was about to be over. I didn’t want it to be.
“Do you mind if we stop by the bookstore on the way out?” I asked, anything to just spend a little longer with her. “It’s just next door.”
“Of course,” Wren replied, and she gathered her keys and bag.