Page 54 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Thirty-Eight

“How did it go?” I ask Wren as she gets in the passenger seat and buckles her seatbelt.

“Fine.”

“ Fine ,” I mock as I back out of the space in front of the therapist’s office. “You wanna talk about it?”

She shrugs.

“You tell her you took up hard drugs and started hanging out with the demon spawn of Jessica Letts?”

“Can you not?”

“Can you not?” I echo in a namby-pamby voice.

We’re quiet for a full angry violin song, her snapping the rubber band on her wrist the entire time.

Finally: “We talked about what my mom did. So that was fun.”

I turn the blinker to change lanes. “Moms are a barrel of laughs, aren’t they?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see her pinch the sleeves of her sweater.

“It’s like I feel guilty for her,” she continues.

“She killed someone. Sometimes when I think about her it’s all I think about her.

Like the bad thing is all she is. And—” Her gaze swings out the passenger window and she lets out a sigh.

“Sometimes I wonder if I could have done something to stop it. Stop her.”

I slam on the brakes right in the middle of the road, cars honking as they swerve around us.

“No.” My voice comes out angrier than I expect. “This is not on you, Wren. Ever.” She says nothing. “Your mom made her own choices. She’s her own person. What she did or didn’t do is not ever ever on you. Got it?”

“You blame yourself for your brother and dad.” Her gaze shifts back to me as cars continue to swerve around us. “It’s not that different, right?”

Her words hover in the Bronco, violins ripping through the speakers as my pulse rams at the back of my throat.

I do blame myself, but it’s different. It has to be.

Right? At once I’m twenty and begging Zeb to get help, him telling me I’m overreacting.

He never once listened to a word I said about him using. Never once tried to get help.

“And,” she continues, blowing out a breath, “I think about the girl that died and her family. I wonder if they hate me.”

Through my spinning thoughts, my mind goes to the article in Ford’s folder, which has been totally off my radar. Ford knows the family, he has to. Emmeline Hill, I remember the name but absolutely can’t place it.

“My dad knows the mom—he told me. She works in a nursery.”

A nursery.

Emmeline Hill.

That’s a lot of sevens.

How the hell did I miss that?

I floor the gas, jerk the wheel, and make an illegal U-turn, causing a minivan to stop in the middle of the road.

“I thought we were going to pick out tile for the backsplash,” Wren mumbles.

“Change of plans.”

At Blue Ridge Blooms, she looks at me when I turn off the Bronco. “Plants?”

“Humor me.”

She rolls her eyes but does what I say.

The late October air is cool, borderline cold when the wind blows, and even in my thickest blazer, it chills me to my bones.

There are only two other vehicles in the parking lot, one I recognize.

We wander through a storefront filled with bags of soil, seeds, bird feeders, and birdseed to a greenhouse that’s unseasonably warm.

Across the rows of potted plants I spot Mel, watering some ferns with a hose.

She sees me, shocked expression flittering across her face before she waves .

“I must have pissed someone off in my last life to require me to see you more than once in a month,” Mel says with a wry grin as she tugs her gardening gloves off and tucks them into a green apron tied around her waist. She looks at Wren. “And I see you’ve started taking hostages.”

“If it wouldn’t drive you to drink, Mel, I’d tell you to fuck off.”

She chuckles and eyes Wren again.

“This is Wren,” I tell her. Wren’s mouth curves into a small smile but she stays quiet. “Callahan,” I tack on.

Mel looks at me, then does a double take. “I see.”

“Wren,” I say, looking at her and feeling my own heart ache with what I’m about to hit her with. “Your mom killed Mel’s daughter.”

Wren blanches before her face fills with emotion. But it’s not me she’s looking at, it’s Mel. They stare at each other, saying nothing, no doubt trying to digest what those words mean to each of them.

Wren straightens and lifts her chin as if fortifying herself to speak. When she opens her mouth, instead of words, it’s a loud sob that escapes her.

“I’m so sorry,” she cries, tears streaming down her face, every single one of them hammering a dent in my heart. She jams her palms in her eyes, another apology coming out barely discernable.

Mel, without missing a beat, wraps her arms around her and takes her into her chest, acting every bit of the mother she is as tears form in her own eyes. “Sweetheart, you have nothing to apologize for.” She rubs a palm across Wren’s back. “Nothing in the world. ”

They seem to stand like this for a year, a tangled-up mess of cried apologies and arms. When they pull apart, they both wipe their eyes.

I realize I’m intruding.

“I’m going to go look at bird feeders so you two can talk for a bit. Gotta stay on your dad’s good side so I can get in his pants, you know?”

They grimace and I grin, leaving them as they sit on a metal bench between rows of plants.

Thirty minutes later, Wren gets in the Bronco with a bird feeder that holds jelly and orange wedges as Mel and I stand on the sidewalk.

“Never took you for an Emmeline,” I tell her with a sideways look.

Mel chuckles softly. “Your delivery could’ve used some work,” she says. “But she’s got a heart like Ford. Thank you for this. Ghosts come in all forms but haunt us just the same.”

“I knew you had a weakness for good girls raised by bad women.” I give her a cheeky grin before turning my attention to Wren through the windshield.

“She’s carrying a lot of hurts—a lot of guilt that shouldn’t even be hers to begin with—I thought seeing you would help.

Make her realize that she doesn’t have to be what her mom did.

That her rocky start doesn’t mean a rocky future. ”

She makes an agreeable grunt.

“Scotty,” she calls as I walk to the driver’s side of the Bronco; I glance at her. “You and she aren’t so different. You should take your own advice. Might do you some good.”