I tapped my pen on the desk. “How did she take the news about the adoption?”
“Holly was shaken. She felt like the narrative she’d been told her entire life was a fabrication, and she started questioning everything. She located the adoption agency, but it had closed down. It was like it existed one day, and the next, it didn’t.”
“What’s the name of the agency?”
“Cherished Connections. It was in San Luis Obispo.”
“Where are the adoption papers now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Other than you, who else did Holly talk to about the adoption?”
Wren gave the question some thought. “She contacted Celia’s closest friends, the people her mother trusted most. None of them knew about the adoption.”
“Can you give me some names?”
Wren glanced out the window as if trying to remember. “Let me think … Okay, there’s a woman named Chelle who went to school with Celia, and then another woman she used to work with a long time ago named Roxy. Sorry, I don’t know either of their last names.”
“That’s all right. You’re doing great.”
“Oh, and there’s something else you should know. In the last week of her life, Holly thought someone was following her. The first time, she was standing outside the adoption agency. Then it happened again when she was leaving Roxy’s house.”
“Did she ever see anyone?”
She shook her head. “It was more of a hunch, a sense that someone kept their eyes on her. She couldn’t prove it, but she wondered if word had begun to spread around town that she was searching for her biological parents.”
A tear trailed down Wren’s cheek, and she flicked it away.
I opened a desk drawer, removing a tissue and handing it to her.
“When Holly told me she thought she was being followed, I begged her to leave town and return to school,” Wren said. “She said she couldn’t yet. She needed me, and I should have been by her side. If I had been, maybe she’d still be alive.”
The tears kept coming, and she rested her hands in her lap, going quiet.
“You couldn’t have known what was going to happen,” I said.
“Yeah, but I should have been a better friend, and I wasn’t. There’s nothing I can do about the past, but there is something I can do about the future. That’s why I’m here.”
Wren’s cell phone buzzed.
She glanced at it, reading the text message that popped up on the screen.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s just my boyfriend checking in.”
“Have the two of you been dating long?”
“Since we were thirteen. We’re supposed to be getting married next year. Holly was helping me with the arrangements. But now …”
Her voice cracked, and she lifted the tissue to her nose.
“I know how hard this must be for you, to come here and talk about what happened.”
“It was something I needed to do.”
“Have you spoken to the police?”
