Page 85

They waited another couple of minutes while she dabbed at her eyes and under her nose. When she lifted her head from Josie’s chest, Noah released them and scooted aside to give Wren more room. Josie waited for her to put some space between them but she didn’t, instead staying tucked under Josie’s arm, snuggled into her side. It didn’t just feel like a victory in their quest to win Wren’s trust or her affection. It felt like a miracle, the privilege of comforting this extraordinary girl who’d given meaning and purpose to their lives in ways they could never have imagined. The overwhelming surge of love Josie felt in that moment mended something inside her. Something that the cruelty and deprivation of her childhood had broken.

“Well, guess what?” Noah said. “We still love you. You’re not a terrible person.”

Wren looked at him skeptically.

“We do,” Josie said into her hair. “We still love you.”

Noah nodded. “A terrible person is a man who abandons his wife and family the day his youngest child turns eighteen and never looks back.”

“A terrible person is a woman who tries to cut a six-year-old’s face off,” Josie said. “Wren, you’re almost fifteen but you’re still a kid and you were a kid then, too. A kid who’d been through more than any kid should have to go through. You lost your mom, and then your dad got sick after you’d only just found him.”

Noah reached over and squeezed Wren’s hand. “You were being bullied by other kids who were mean and stupid and looking for your weak spots. Having a dad with a disfigurement made you an easy target.”

Wren shook her head. Her voice was small again. “That doesn’t make it right. I wished my dad was normal-looking.”

“Why?” Noah asked. “Why did you want him to be normal-looking?”

“I told you. So the girls at school would stop bullying me.”

Josie rubbed her arm. “What if they hadn’t bullied you?”

She shrugged. “Then I wouldn’t have cared but it was still selfish and terrible.”

“Is it selfish to feel sad and confused and angry when you’re being bullied?” Josie asked.

“No.”

“So you had thoughts you wish you hadn’t,” Noah said. “They had nothing to do with how much you loved your dad. You accepted and loved him just the way he was.”

Wren wiped away a couple of rogue tears that spilled from her eyes. “I did. I loved him so much. One time, I sketched him without his scars and it didn’t look like him, you know? It was weird.”

She sat up, pulling away from Josie. When she straightened her legs, her sketchbook flopped onto her lap. Butterflies erupted in Josie’s stomach when Wren’s fingers brushed the cover. In all the time she’d been with them, she’d never shown them one of her sketches. Their family and friends had had the privilege but not them. Once, when she’d taken Trout to the backyard so he could relieve himself, she’d left her sketchbook open on the kitchen table. They had gotten a glimpse of how incredibly talented she was but it had felt like a violation of her privacy. They had always wanted to earn this. They’d wanted her to show this part of her to them freely, because she wanted to.

Josie held her breath as Wren opened the book and started flipping through the pages until she found what she was looking for. On one page was Dex after he’d been burned. Wren had committed every scar to the page in loving detail. The skin on the left side of his face looked like it had been melted away, leaving a network of scars, ridged in some places, mottled in others. There was a bald spot behind his temple where the fire had burned his hair away. In its place was a thick patch of gnarled scar tissue. The rest of his scalp was healthy. Dark hair hung loose around his shoulders. He was smiling and there was no way to know that his left eye was glass.

On the other page was the same man but with no scars. Josie exhaled as Wren pointed to him. “That’s not my dad. I never knew that guy.”

Josie had known him before the fire. He’d been much younger then. Wren had likely seen photos of him before he was disfigured. She had captured him perfectly but aged him by almost twenty years.

Her fingers caressed the scarred Dex. “I knew this guy,” she whispered. “This guy was my dad, and he was the best.”

They all watched as her tears fell onto the page, smudging the ink. Josie wasn’t sure how much more her heart could take. She rubbed between Wren’s shoulder blades. “I hope you know that the only thing that matters is that you loved your dad and he knew that. Wren, he knew.”

Noah said, “When he died, he knew the two most important things that he needed to know. That you loved him and that you would be loved after he was gone because you were coming to live with us.”

Wren sniffled, still staring at the sketches. “I’m beginning to see why he chose you guys.”

Josie didn’t have to look at her husband to know he was mentally pumping his fist in the air, but he maintained his air of seriousness. “Yeah, well, you might want to reserve judgment because we still haven’t talked about the fact that you snuck out of the house.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We know,” Josie said. “We can discuss consequences later.”

They were all exhausted and emotionally drained. There would be plenty of time later to discuss how she’d scared them and everyone else who cared about her; how everyone in their lives had spent their Sunday searching frantically for her; how unsafe it was for her to go wandering through the woods alone, much less without her phone.

“For now,” said Noah, “tell us how you got out of the house without alerting any of the cameras.”

Wren closed her sketchbook. “You guys showed me how to disable the back door camera for the times when we’re all home and awake and Trout’s going in and out. I did it the last time I let him out. Then I waited till everyone was asleep and left through the back door. I’m sorry I left him in my room. Is he okay?”