Chapter 12 - The Night She Ran
Wren didn't decide about the memorial concert that night. Instead she lay awake in her studio listening to the radiator click and tried to remember what she'd done after the fire.
The memories came in fragments she didn't trust. A curb wet with black water. A bus station with a broken clock. Somebody telling her she couldn't sleep in a waiting room. A woman in a yellow coat offering a sandwich and asking for a name. She remembered saying "Wren" then, though she wasn't sure if she had invented it that night or learned it later.
The name had been a place to hide. It had also been a place to rest. For years it was the only thing she could offer without explanation.
At her next clinic appointment Dr. Rahman asked whether she had been sleeping. Wren shrugged.
"Do you want to talk about what keeps you up?" the doctor asked.
"I think I ran when I should've stayed."
"In the fire?"
"After. Maybe both."
Dr. Rahman didn't tell her she was brave. She asked how old she'd been and whether someone had helped her get to safety. Wren remembered cold air against her face, coughing, and a stranger steering people toward the street. She couldn't remember how she'd escaped the building itself.
"Our brains don't always store terrifying experiences in the order we want," Dr. Rahman said. "Some details may return. Others may not. It doesn't mean you owe anyone a neat story."
"But what if the neat story is the only way people believe me?"
"Then those people may need to learn how uncertainty works."
Wren left with a referral for trauma-focused counseling and a reminder to finish the medication for her scalp. She was tired of appointments. She kept the referral anyway.
At the community center that evening Marcus was practicing the same four measures of music for the thirtieth time. He played them badly, stopped, and banged his hand on the keyboard.
"I'm quitting," he announced.
"Okay," Wren said from the folding chairs.
He looked up, offended. "You're supposed to tell me not to."
"I'm supposed to put the chairs away."
He laughed despite himself. "Can you listen once?"
She sat beside him. He played the passage again. On the third try it was almost right.
"You rush there," she said, pointing at a bar.
"How do you know?"
"I don't know. I just heard it."
He made her play the opening notes. Her fingers went to the keys hesitantly and found a melody she'd not consciously remembered. It was the same tune Celia had played to send the children home.
Wren stopped after six notes, embarrassed.
"You play?" Marcus asked.
"I used to, I guess."
"Well, you should practice. You're rushing too."
She laughed and stayed another half hour, helping him work through the measure. Evelyn watched from the doorway without interrupting.
That night Wren asked Evelyn about the last conversation she'd had with Iris before the fire. Evelyn opened a drawer and brought out an old address book.
"We had an argument," she admitted. "Iris wanted to leave New York for music school in Michigan. Celia thought she should take another year and build a better audition portfolio. I told Iris she needed to be practical. She told me I couldn't stand the idea of her leaving because then the house would feel empty."
"Was she right?"
"Partly. I was worried about money, and I was lonely. Both were true."
Wren folded her hands in her lap. "Did you say sorry?"
"No. I planned to at dinner the next week. We had a hundred ordinary Tuesdays before that. I thought there'd be another."
Wren examined the address book. On one page Iris had written a note in the margin: Aunt Ev—don't forget the yellow music folders. YOU promised. The letters tilted uphill, impatient and uneven.
"That's my handwriting?"
"It is. You made capital letters whenever you wanted to win an argument."
Wren smiled. Then she looked at the note again, tracing the uneven line without touching the paper.
"I'm sorry I didn't come back," she said.
Evelyn set the address book aside. "I know."
"I was alive. I could've called. At some point I knew my name. I remembered enough. I was frightened and ashamed and I kept walking away."
Evelyn's eyes filled, but she didn't interrupt.
"After the fire I stayed with people who said they'd help me," Wren continued. "I worked in kitchens. I slept where they told me. Some were kind. Some weren't. I lost my papers more than once. I stopped trusting people who asked questions. Later I slept outside because at least outside I could leave. I kept thinking I would go back once I looked normal. Then I didn't look normal, and it felt too late."
"I was angry," Evelyn admitted. "For a few minutes today, I'm still angry that I lost ten years with you. I don't want you to have to carry that anger, but I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't there."
Wren's fingers trembled. "I can understand that."
"Can you let me be angry and still be glad you're alive?"
"I think so."
They sat until Evelyn made tea. It was too strong, and neither of them said anything about it.
On the walk home Wren passed a shop window filled with expensive coats. She looked at her reflection, at the growing hair and the pale scar near her temple. For once she didn't turn away. She remembered a woman calling out in smoke, and she couldn't tell if the voice was an instruction or a goodbye.
At the corner, she took out her phone and called Ms. Ortiz. She asked about beginning the counseling referral and about whether the clinic could recommend a support group for people who had lived without stable housing. Then she asked whether there was a way to volunteer at the place where she'd once gone for dry socks.
"There may be," Ms. Ortiz said. "But you don't owe us labor because we helped you."
May you like
"I know."
Wren stepped into the crosswalk. "I want to be somewhere people can see me," she said. "Just not all at once."
