The Place With No Wrens
Chapter 08 - The Place With No Wrens
Rose Wren was not in Briar Glen.
She was not in Cleveland either, not exactly.
The nurse, Marianne Cole, worked at a long-term residential clinic outside Lakewood, a brick place with maple trees in the courtyard and a name gentle enough to make families feel better about leaving people there. Willow House. It sounded like tea and quilts.
Lena learned on the drive that names could lie as well as people.
Mae drove because Lena’s hands would not stop shaking. Beatrice rode in the back seat, holding the red file folder on her lap like scripture. Marianne followed in her own car after giving a statement to the investigators. Madison’s memory card had been taken into evidence. Edna Vance had left the auditorium with her lawyer, and Cynthia had stayed behind, pale and silent, while her daughter cried into Natalie Reed’s borrowed sweater.
It should have felt like victory.
Instead, Lena felt hollow.
Mae kept glancing at her. “You don’t have to do this tonight.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Baby—”
“Don’t call me that right now.”
Mae nodded and looked back at the road.
Lena hated herself for the flinch in Mae’s face, but she could not soften yet. If she softened, everything might pour out of her and never stop.
Willow House smelled like disinfectant, cafeteria soup, and lavender air freshener trying too hard.
The woman at the front desk smiled until Marianne showed her badge and said, “We are here for Rose Wren.”
The smile faltered.
“We don’t have anyone by that name.”
Marianne’s expression did not change. “Try Rachel Warren.”
Lena’s stomach dropped.
Rachel Warren.
A name close enough to hide in plain sight. Close enough to mock.
The desk woman typed. Her face went careful. “Room 214.”
They rode the elevator in silence.
On the second floor, a television murmured from a common room. An old man laughed at something no one else seemed to hear. A nurse pushed a cart of folded towels. Life continued with the unbearable indifference of hallways.
Marianne stopped outside room 214.
“She has good days and bad days,” she said gently. “She came in under private funding seventeen years ago. The paperwork said traumatic stress, memory disturbance, no living family.”
Mae made a sound.
Lena looked at her. “No living family.”
Mae pressed a fist to her mouth.
“I swear to you, Lenora, I didn’t know.”
Lena wanted to believe her.
The worst part was that she did.
Marianne opened the door.
The room was small but clean, with a window facing the courtyard. A woman sat in a chair beside the glass, a blanket over her knees, silver-brown hair braided down one shoulder.
Lena stopped breathing.
Rose Wren was forty-five, not old, not young, not the ghost Lena had been carrying since yesterday. Her face was thinner than in the graduation photo, her hands lined, her eyes fixed on the winter trees outside.
But they were Lena’s eyes.
Mae whispered, “Rose.”
The woman turned.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Rose looked past Mae, past Beatrice, and found Lena.
Her lips parted.
The room seemed to hold its breath with her.
“Lenora,” she said.
Lena’s knees nearly gave.
Mae reached for her elbow, but Lena stepped forward alone.
“Do you know me?” she asked.
Rose smiled, and it was the saddest beautiful thing Lena had ever seen.
“I knew your face before you had one,” Rose said.
Lena cried then. Not loudly. Not like a movie. The tears came hot and silent, and she hated them and needed them.
Rose held out her hand.
Lena took it.
Her mother’s fingers were warm.
Mae began to sob behind them.
Rose looked at her. “Mae?”
“I’m sorry,” Mae said, stepping forward. “Rose, I’m so sorry. I thought—”
“I know.” Rose squeezed Lena’s hand. “They made everybody think things.”
Her words were clear, but slow, as if she had to pull each one from a deep drawer.
Beatrice wiped her eyes with a tissue and said, “You wrote to me.”
Rose nodded. “Sometimes I remember enough to write. Sometimes they take the letters.”
“Who?” Lena asked.
Rose’s gaze drifted toward the window.
“The woman with pearls.”
“Edna?”
Rose flinched.
The red lipstick in Lena’s pocket warmed.
Rose looked straight at it, though she could not see it.
“You have it,” she whispered.
Lena pulled it out.
Rose’s face changed. Fear first. Then wonder. Then grief.
“That one was my grandmother’s,” she said. “The one Madison used was mine.”
“How did Madison get it?”
Rose closed her eyes.
For a moment, Lena feared she had lost her.
Then Rose said, “Cynthia took it from me at the farmhouse.”
Mae shook her head. “Then why would she let Madison use it?”
Rose opened her eyes.
“Because she doesn’t understand it.”
Lena sat on the edge of the bed. “The mirror said Madison wrote the wrong name.”
Rose touched Lena’s cheek with trembling fingers.
“No,” she said softly. “The wrong girl.”
Lena frowned.
Rose’s eyes filled with a terror that had survived seventeen years in a locked room.
“They weren’t trying to wake your power,” she whispered. “They were trying to wake hers.”
The door behind them clicked shut.
Everyone turned.
May you like
Cynthia Vance stood in the doorway, face pale, pearls at her throat, Madison beside her with tears on her cheeks.
And in Madison’s hand was the other red lipstick.
