Celia and Sophie crept up the stairs behind Ivy.Fear wrapped around Celia’s throat.
“Wren, you know how worried we are,” Ivy stammered, sounding more like a teenager than the forty-year-old woman before them.
Celia prayed that Ivy wouldn’t bring up the journals, that she wouldn’t refer to Wren’s illness in relation to their mother’s.Ivy stepped into Wren’s bedroom and stood in the corner, gazing out the window at the inn.The siding still needed painting, and the eaves required repair.But now that there were brand-new shutters, now that the porch no longer hung crookedly, now that all the glass in the windows had been fixed, it was starting to look less like a haunted house and more like a quaint New England inn.Celia felt a rush of euphoria.We did that together, she thought.Sophie and I.And now, Ivy’s children are helping us.The family’s back together again.She remembered how eager she’d been to flee Bluebell Cove, how frightened she’d been when the Smith family went after her.But now that she understood about her mother’s affair and her mother’s depression, now that she understood that the complications between their families went back at least a generation, she was less hard on herself.She’d been a teenager who’d wanted to prove something.She’d failed.
She’d lost so much time with her sisters.She hated that.
“Wren,” she breathed, walking into the room to sit at the edge of Wren’s bed.Wren looked thinner than the Barbie dolls they’d once played with together—Celia, too old for them, and Wren, eager to play with her eldest sister.“Wren, please.Will you consider letting us take you to the doctor?”
Wren shook her head.“I’ll be fine.I don’t want to go to the doctor.Please, don’t take me.”
Wren had sweated through her sheets, but she was shaking.It reminded Celia of their mother’s last month of life, how she hadn’t managed to get out of bed, how her sheets had had to be changed regularly because of her sweat, how her eyes had seemed unable to see them.There had been whispers about what was really wrong with her.In the years that followed, their father had been cagey about it, never willing to say what her illness had really been.The doctor said that he couldn’t have saved her.But Celia was newly obsessed with the idea that they might have been able to save her if only they’d allowed her to live the way she’d wanted to live.If only she’d been able to love the man she’d wanted to love.If only their father had managed to love her the way she’d needed to be loved.
It was all so complicated.It hollowed her heart out.
“I don’t have health insurance anyway,” Wren said, coughing into her hand.
“We’ll make it work,” Ivy assured her.“You don’t have to worry about that.Money is just money; we want you to be well.We want you to heal.”
Wren turned over and curled into a ball, as though she wanted to pretend her sisters weren’t there.
“Please, Wren,” Celia whispered.“We’ve already lost so much.”
This time, Wren’s voice came out like a howl.“You left, Celia.So don’t tell me about losing so much.You’re the one who first turned your back on us.I barely remember anything about you.”
It felt like a terrible smack, one that forced Celia out the door and down the stairs.Sophie was hot on her heels, her eyes widening as she threw her arms around Celia and held her until she stopped shaking.Upstairs, Ivy continued to beg Wren to go to the hospital.“Please, Wren.I was there for you.I was always there.Won’t you go to the doctor for me?Won’t you let me call the ambulance?Something?Please?”But Wren cursed her and told her that if she called the ambulance, she’d call a taxi to take her away, and they’d never see her again.
Celia couldn’t take it anymore.She went out on the porch, dropped to the steps, and sobbed into her thighs.Seeing Wren like that brought back endless memories of her mother.It reminded her of being ten, taking care of her little sisters, learning how the oven worked, asking Ivy if she’d done her homework, and watching her father’s shadow out of the corner of her eye.She wondered if her father had known about her mother’s affair.Had he made her life miserable as a way to punish her?
She knew that her mother hadn’t died on purpose, not really.She hadn’t died by suicide.She hadn’t abandoned them.But a part of her body had given up on her, whether she wanted it to or not.She hadn’t been able to fight through that disease.And she’d left her daughters damaged.She’d left their family splintered.And now that their father was gone, it felt harder and harder to repair their hearts.
Suddenly, Sophie dropped down beside Celia and put her head on her shoulder.Celia had half forgotten her daughter was there, the next generation of Harper, watching.Sophie whispered, “I’m starting to understand why you wanted to run away.”
Celia pulled her head back to get a better look at her daughter.“It wasn’t the right thing to do.I was scared.I thought I was too big and powerful and smart to be scared, but I was wrong.”Celia swallowed.“I’ve been so wrong about so many things over the years.”
Sophie wet her lips.“We’re all wrong.All the time.”
Celia blinked back tears and turned to look at the inn.She knew that her niece and nephew were handling their task all right.She could sense that things were ticking away nicely.They were committed to their paint job and eager to please.But today, Celia didn’t have the nerve to go inside the inn.She didn’t have the nerve to face her memories.
“I want to ask you a question,” she said now.
Sophie was quiet, listening.
“In your article, have you included any of the so-called ‘illicit’ business practices of the Smith Company?”Celia asked.
Sophie placed her hand over her mouth.“What are you talking about?”
Celia understood now that this was her destiny—that she had to work together with her daughter to unravel the sinister business at the dark heart of this town.She thought of Melody in the records’ office, who, she knew, still worked there.She thought of the files that were most certainly still piled high down there, a result of Melody’s anger at their mistreatment of her.
“Tell me everything,” Sophie said.
Celia’s ears rang.“I need to see your article first,” she said.“I need to see what we’re working with and how we can flesh it out to include everything else.”
Sophie gasped with excitement.Back on her feet, she started rattling off her problems with the article, how one-dimensional it felt.“Landon helped me as best as he could, but all the science stuff doesn’t feel easily graspable, you know?”Sophie said.“And I’ve been editing the thing like crazy and seeing so many problems in the text.I’ve been dying to ask you for help, but…”
“But you thought I didn’t care anymore,” Celia said.
Sophie grimaced.“I guess I said a lot of things to that effect.”
