Each day, he dealt with the tangle of his emotions. Apart from missing Wren, he felt guilty about going behind her back. She’d be angry. He knew she’d be angry. This was Wren, after all. But, he also believed that what they were doing was right. He didn’t know for sure, of course. He could lose Wren forever, and every time he thought this, fear would suck down his insides. And to chase fear away, he’d turn to hope. Hope that a time would come when Wren would be ready to come back to him. Above all, that she’d want to.
He’d driven downtown and parked on Polk Street. He was early, but nothing could make him hang back any longer. As they did every Thursday, Wren and Cherise were having breakfast at Dwyer’s, just a few blocks away. Lee sat in his Jeep, parked across the street from The Children’s Museum, and prayed that they’d made the right choice.
After all, it was his idea.
Lee had read everything about self-compassion therapy he could get his hands on, and, as he read, a plan had formed. Cherise was onboard from the start, and she’d insisted on contacting Mamaw Gigi and Wren’s boss Rocky… who were just now parking a few spaces down from him.
Adrenalin set his heart thumping as he stepped out of his Jeep. Rocky and a woman Lee guessed was his wife were helping Mamaw Gigi out of the back seat when he approached.
Rocky shot Lee a cautious look. “I’m not sure about this,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s gonna be pissed.”
“I know,” Lee said, wincing as he read the shared doubt in Rocky’s wife’s face.
“She’ll be pissed as hell,” the woman said. Then she extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Shelby.”
“Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming.”
This earned him a smiled. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else. Wren’s part of the family.” In spite of the smile, her look of doubt lingered. “I hope she’ll forgive us for meddling.”
“Me, too,” Lee said honestly.
Mamaw Gigi huffed, shaking her head. “She’ll get over it. Wrennie gets fired up in a flash, but she burns herself out just as fast.” She gripped Lee’s elbow with surprising strength. “You’re doing a wonderful thing for her, young man.”
The sparkle in her eyes gave Lee a little courage. Gigi had known Wren her whole life. If she thought this was a good plan, he had to be on the right track.
Rocky frowned at Lee. “They’ll be here soon. Should we go inside or wait out here?”
“I promised Cherise we’d wait out here. She’s worried Wren will bolt if it’s just her to hold it together,” Lee told them.
They stood on the sidewalk just outside the wrought-iron gates of the Children’s Museum, and Lee watched a steady trickle of people enter. The museum had opened just minutes ago, and mothers with their strollers and clusters of playdate groups were showing up for a morning of fun.
Lee checked his watch and searched the far end of the street. They’d come down on their bikes any second now. His heartbeat shifted into high gear at the thought of seeing her again. Excitement wrestled with nerves. She’d be with him, but she’d be mad at him… at least for a little while.
Two bikes rounded the corner from Garfield Street, and Lee spotted Wren at once. Even at that distance, he knew her mood. She was covered from neck to heel, shielded from the world in a full-length boho skirt the color of violets and a black long-sleeved blouse; her clothing said she didn’t feel safe and she didn’t feel strong.
Lee’s faith in his plan wavered, but he couldn’t turn back now. Wren’s eyes had already found the four childless adults standing awkwardly outside the gates of The Children’s Museum.
She saw Rocky and Shelby first, Lee realized, and together, she and Cherise rode their bikes to the curb. Wren smiled despite her puzzled look.
“Shelby, Rock… are the girls inside?” And then her eyes lit on Mamaw Gigi. “Mamaw? What are you doing here?”
When the three she’d addressed said nothing, Wren frowned, and that was when she looked past them, and her eyes met his.
In the nanoseconds that passed, Lee wanted to step closer because her face went so white he feared she might faint. Her soft mouth fell open, but no words escaped. And then he watched her recover — or pretend to recover.
“I-is this some kind of surprise party?” she stammered. She hadn’t directed the words to him — or anyone. Instead, she faced the museum entrance, alone in her betrayal.
All other eyes fell on him. It was Lee’s turn to speak, but all he wanted to do was hold her. He couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t allow it, so, as a compromise, he stepped closer.
She eyed him warily.
“I’ve signed us up to volunteer today,” he said softly.
She narrowed her eyes, skeptical. “Oh?” Her tone arched, and Lee understood anger was beginning to replace the shock and confusion. “Is this some kind of intervention?” The accusation in her eyes was meant just for him.
Shelby came to his rescue. “We’re just going to volunteer, Wren. It’s something we all want to do.”
Wren turned to take her in, and then her eyes searched everyone else’s. Lee followed her gaze and saw concern in Rocky’s, anxiousness in Cherise’s, and warmth in Mamaw Gigi’s. When Wren made it around to him, Lee hoped what she saw was love.
Her lungs filled and emptied, and her gaze slid to the museum’s entrance again. “Fine. Let’s see what this is all about.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LEE.
The moment she saw him — her eyes pulled to the swooped curl of his cowlick and the way his dress shirt hugged his shoulders — Wren was snared. Her body seemed to bow forward, toward him on its own.
Resisting his allure was a lot easier when she couldn’t see him, but, over the last four days, she’d still thought of him constantly. And she’d looked for him everywhere. The gas station. The drugstore. Mamaw’s hairdresser’s.
But even imagining him every moment hadn’t prepared her. The ache she felt pealed through her like a gong. So it took a moment for her to realize what was going on.
She’d been set up. By everyone. All the people she loved had conspired against her. The ache she felt at seeing Lee washed out in a cold flood of shame. At once, she knew she had to pretend, as if it was okay. As if it didn’t touch her. If she didn’t, she’d fall apart.
Words issued from her mouth, and Wren tried to push the shame aside, reaching instead for her anger. It warmed her. It wrapped a shield around her, so, by the time she walked into the museum, she was composed — and completely walled off.
“Here, we have to sign in,” Lee was saying.
He handed her a clipboard, and Wren signed blindly, handing it back and pretending interest in her surroundings. She slapped on the sticker that said Volunteer while a coordinator gave them instructions and outlined the different stations where they could help out. Wren watched her speak, but nothing she said penetrated the shield.
“C’mon. Let’s go to the arts-and-crafts table,” Cherise said, grabbing her by the wrist and leaving the others behind. She pulled her past the entrance into the open space of the museum and toward a cordoned-off section where a handful of children sat at a table. The surface was covered with bins of construction paper, pipe cleaners, glitter, glue, crayons, and markers.
“I want a dinosaur mask.”
Wren looked down to find a little boy struggling with a pair of blunt-tipped scissors and a green sheet of construction paper. She saw then that each piece of paper bore a stamp. Dinosaur. Butterfly. Tiger. Each stamp was centered over two slits for eyes and an upside-down V for the bridge of a nose. One little girl had already cut out the shape of a butterfly and was securing pipe cleaners to the sides to serve as ties.
“I can’t cut good,” the little boy said, the paper dinosaur crumpling under his efforts.
Wren scanned the area for his mother, and she spotted a woman a few feet away with an infant in her arms. She was trying to drape a blanket over her shoulder one-handed as the baby fussed at her breast.
Wren held out her ha
nd for the scissors. “Can I help?” she asked the boy.
With barely a glance at her, the boy gave her the scissors and paper and waited as she cut around the dinosaur outline.
It was a relief to concentrate on the craft project and not on why her friends and family had set her up.
She glanced over at the girl with the butterfly and saw that she was drawing lines over its wings with Elmer’s glue. Wren wasn’t surprised when she picked up a shaker of glitter and sprinkled it over the glue lines.
“Do you want to decorate it?” she asked the boy.
He nodded.
“What do you want it to look like?”
The boy’s eyes grew with excitement. “I want scary scales.”
Wren allowed herself a small smile. A mask with scary scales was right up her alley. She wouldn’t mind one herself. She reached across the table for a bin of sequins and grabbed a baggie full of green discs.
“How about green?”
The boy nodded again. “And red,” he said, decisively.
Wren grabbed the red baggie and another bottle of Elmer’s. “I’ll spread the glue, and you press the scales on top, okay?”
This plan won her a smile.
“Okay.”
Wren placed dots of glue onto the paper, and the boy pressed red and green sequins into place.
“What’s your name?” Cherise asked the boy.
Wren scowled at her. Her secretive, conspiring best friend didn’t need to weasel in on her moment of triumph.
“Daniel.” Daniel didn’t take his eyes off the dinosaur to look at Cherise, and this gave Wren a smug satisfaction.
“How old are you?” Cherise asked, grabbing a tiger sheet and a pair of scissors.
“Four-and-a-half,” Daniel said, pressing scales with unbroken focus.
“Oh.” Cherise looked disappointed at this, and Wren found herself frowning at her friend.
“What is your problem?” she hissed.
Cherise gave her a startled look and shook her head, plunging back into the task of cutting out the tiger.
“Done!” Daniel crowed when he’d stuck on the last sequin.
Wren helped him loop the pipe cleaners through the holes on each side, and when he pulled the mask over his face, she twisted the pieces of wire to hold it in place.
“Yay! It looks great. Do you want to make another one?”
Daniel pushed his chair back from the table. “No.” And he scampered to his mother to show her his creation.
“Say thank you, Daniel,” his mother reminded him, giving Wren a grateful smile.
“Thank you!” the boy called over his shoulder.
Wren waved to him, but Daniel was only interested in showing off his new mask.
She turned her gaze to Cherise. “So what’s this about?”
Cherise kept her eyes on the tiger mask, shrugging. “We’re volunteering.”
Wren sniffed a laugh of derision. “Of course we are.” She pushed up from the table. “I’m going to see what the others are up to.”
She scanned the sprawling space and spotted Rocky and Shelby by a decommissioned ambulance, playing the part of medics. Lee was at the bubble station, and Mamaw Gigi was in the general store.
Wren deliberated. Rocky and Shelby were two against one. She couldn’t make any headway with them. And she certainly couldn’t go to Lee, so that left her grandmother.
The general store consisted of two miniature aisles full of plastic produce, canned goods, and dry goods with a checkout stand and cash register. She found Mamaw Gigi among the aisles, stooped over and organizing the shelves. Without a word, Wren joined her and started sorting the pretend boxes of cereal from the fake fruit. When everything was in its proper place, she forced herself to speak up.
“What’s the point of all this?”
Mamaw put her hands on her hips and leveled Wren with her bespectacled glare. “What do you think is the point to all of this?”
Wren’s jaw set. Her grandmother couldn’t claim all the family’s snark. “To gang up on me so I’ll do what you want.”
Mamaw Gigi’s brow raised; her glare clearly unamused. “And what is it you think we want?”
The question threw her because the answer seemed so obvious. “For me to date a man who shouldn’t be with me.”
Mamaw Gigi rolled her eyes. “We want you to be happy and to have the kind of life you want, without you holding yourself back. Do I think that young man is what you want?” she asked, nodding her head toward the bubble station. “Yes, indeed. I think you want to be with him more than you’ve wanted anything in your life…”
The truth of it was as sharp as a scalpel, and Wren recoiled at its touch.
“…and the fact that you’re trying to push him away makes me hoppin’ mad because, darlin’—” the corners of her eyes turned down, and her face lost all of its ire, if only for a moment “—you deserve to be happy. No one else I know on earth deserves it more than you. And anyone who tries to stand in the way of that — including you — is gonna get a swift kick in the pants.”
By the end of her speech, she was scowling again, which made it easier to push aside what she’d said.
“And I don’t want to make this about me, Wrennie,” her grandmother continued, choosing her words more carefully now. “But I won’t always be around—”
“Mamaw, don’t—”
“Hush now. Listen up. I’m not planning on kicking the bucket tomorrow, but it’s not like I’ll be here twenty years down the road.”
A cold hand seemed to squeeze Wren’s insides, but she held her tongue.
“You need to build your own life. You need to build a family of your own to love and fuss over and hold onto.”
Wren shook her head doubtfully. “Mamaw, if you’re talking about marriage and kids. If that’s why we’re here—”
“I don’t care if you get married, Wrennie. I don’t care if you have kids — though I would love some great-grandbabies before my time comes.” She turned her hands up as though to welcome that possibility. “I’m talking about sharing your life with someone.”
Wren folded her arms across her chest. “Lots of happy people live alone, Mamaw.” But even as she said the words, she knew that a life without Lee would be far less happy than one spent with him. Whether she deserved him or not.
Her grandmother stared hard at her. “Wren Marguerite Blanchard, I’m not talking about lots of people. I’m talking about you.”
Wren turned away. Mamaw Gigi was asking too much. She was asking Wren to ignore her fundamental self-knowledge. To redefine herself in terms that did not apply to her. It was a great lie, and Wren could not allow herself to live it.
Why had it come to this? Who had betrayed her first? Cherise or Lee? Wren stalked across the museum to the open ambulance exhibited there. As she approached, Wren found Rocky stretched out on the floor. No longer the medic, he clutched his heart and moaned. Shelby leaned against the front tire of the ambulance and laughed at him. Kids darted in and out of the vehicle with stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs.
Wren ignored the pretend patient and walked right up to Shelby. “Who put you up to this?”
Her laughter vanished as she read the anger in Wren’s eyes. “I — Cherise got in touch with us,” she stammered, her eyes darting past Wren’s shoulders in search of an ally. “But she said it was Lee’s idea.”
Wren narrowed her gaze. “What do you mean? What exactly was his idea?”
Shelby blinked rapidly, clearly unsure how to answer. “Coming here.”
“But why? What’s the point?”
Pulling in a deep breath, Shelby forced herself to relax a little. “I don’t know. Cherise just said it would help you.”
Wren felt her eyes go wide. “Help me what?”
At this, Shelby just smiled as though she’d passed some kind of test. “I don’t know. We didn’t ask, and she didn’t say.”
Wren frowned. “So you just came? Just like that?”
&
nbsp; Shelby’s smile grew. “Of course we did, Wren. Whatever you need, you know we’re here for you.”
A warmth she wanted to ignore spread across Wren’s chest. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, shaking her head and backing away. Talking to Shelby wasn’t getting her anywhere, and Cherise clearly wasn’t going to shed more light on the situation. That left her with one option.
The bubble station.
There was no doubt that the bubble station was the most popular spot in the entire museum. Kids and parents crowded around the sudsy vats with bubble wands of all shapes and sizes. One dad blew a steady stream of bubbles over the heads of twin boys. One girl with a rectangular wand the size of a placemat tried to spin and loop a bubble around her and her mother.
And Lee Hawthorne stood in the middle of it all. Children formed a line to get to him and stand on a soapy pad in the middle of a ring. It was Lee’s job to manage a pulley that lifted the ring and encased a child in a giant bubble cylinder.
As Wren approached, two little girls stepped onto the pad.
“Okay, squeeze in tight,” Lee told them. “Hands and feet inside the circle.”
The little girls clung to each other, giggling. Clearly sisters, they had matching blue eyes and pale blonde hair. Lee started to raise the ring, and the younger child shrieked with glee. He moved slowly, and a bubble membrane appeared below the rising ring. Seeing it, the younger one jumped up and down, unable to handle the excitement, and, of course, the bubble popped.
“Sissy!” the older one scolded.
“Sorry, Livvy,” Sissy said.
“It’s okay,” Lee reassured Sissy, who now bit her lip. “Let’s try again.”
Lee began to pull down the rope that raised the bubble ring, and that’s when his eyes found Wren. An emotion she couldn’t name passed over his face. She didn’t know what it was, but it touched her all the way to her soul.
Leave a Mark Page 28
