“She was just concerned about you. And I am too.”
“I’m fine.”
Her gaze softens, and it makes humiliation flare in my stomach. I can imagine the two of them sitting together in this very spot, talking about me, about the ways I’m not living my life to their standards.
She starts to speak again, but I stand, my chair squealing against the hardwood. “I need to go.”
“Honey, wait.”
“No, I’m fine. I just—” To my horror, angry tears prick at the back of my eyes, and I turn away before my mom can see them. “I just need to go.”
I don’t wait for her to respond, and I’m out the door, the wind whipping at my face a moment later. I let myself into the truck as the first of my tears fall and yank it into reverse, backing out of the driveway.
But I don’t head back to the cabin.
I drive to Wren’s.
Wilder answers the door, clad only in a diaper, after my relentless pounding. Guilt pricks at me when I see his wide, toothy smile. He’s two, with his mom’s bright red hair. He looks just like she did when we were small. My first memory is with Wren. Us on Halloween, getting into the candy we got trick or treating as our parents drank cups of decaf at the table in my kitchen to warm up. There’s a picture of when they found us. Iwas dressed as Winnie the Pooh and she was a Hershey Kiss. It’s hanging on my fridge in the Airstream right now.
“Aunt Stevie,” he says, hisS’s hissing.
“Wilder,” I hear Wren yell from down the hall. “I told you not to answer the door.” She comes around the corner and smiles when she sees me, until she notices the look on my face. She crouches down to Wilder and says, “Why don’t you go to the playroom with Daddy and June. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
He nods and runs off, his chubby legs jiggling with the movement.
Wren opens the door wider, letting me in. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t move, the cool air doing nothing to chase away the anger burning inside me. “You went to my mom?”
I sound betrayed, but I don’t care. Iambetrayed.
Her face falls, and a sigh slips out of her. “Stevie, I’m worried about you.”
“Why?” I’m being too loud, on the verge of yelling, but I can’t make myself quiet down.
“You work too much. And when you’re not working, you're at your parent’s house, cleaning rain gutters or doing their laundry. Making them dinner. You haven’t gotten to do anything for yourself in months. A year. You don’t have any hobbies anymore, and you never make time for friends.”
“That’s rich.”
Her head rears back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re never available either. I’ve barely been able to spend any time with you in the last four years, Wren. Not since you got with Holden.”
She blinks rapidly, taken aback. “I have afamily. You have—” She cuts herself off, but the words linger in the air, unsaid.
I have no one.
The humiliation that creeped into me at my parents’ house flares now, burning hotter than a forest fire.
“I don’t need a husband or kids to live a fulfilled life, Wren.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know that.” She throws her arms up in the air. “But hell, Stevie, you need something. You need a life outside of your family.”
“Well, apparently, they’re all I have.”
Her jaw clicks. “I didn’t say that. I’m trying to say that your world has become so narrow, when it could be so big. I just want you to be happy.”
Embarrassment curdles in my stomach. Our whole lives, despite boyfriends or other friends, it was always me and Wren. More than friends. Soulmates. Sisters. I thought it was still like that. But now that she has a different life, she sees mine as somehow less.
