"We were a house on fire. And instead of running, we sat in the living room and called it warmth."
Wren POV
The air in the car had teeth.
A silence so thick it pressed against my ribs like the edge of a blade. It gnawed at the space between us, at the unspoken words rotting on my tongue. I sat stiff in my seat, every exhale a risk, every shift of fabric too loud. My father might as well have been carved from stone, his hands tight on the wheel, his gaze fixed ahead, his mouth a flat, unyielding line.
This is how it ends, I thought. Not with screaming. Not with fire. But with nothing.
Thirty minutes to the airport. Thirty minutes of my father's silence like a blade pressed to my throat. The kind of quiet that isn't absence... it's violence in hibernation. Two hours on the plane. And not a single word.
He didn't look at me once. Not when the dawn bled across the tarmac. Not when the plane shuddered beneath us like a living thing in pain.
I might as well have been a ghost.
The flight attendant hovered by our seats, her smile polished, her eyes lingering a beat too long on my father. Likewise her fingers, pale and unmarked brush his sleeve as she took his menu. I didn't blame her. He was the kind of man people looked at, he drew eyes with his broad-shouldered, that sharp jaw softened just enough by his beard, his brown eyes so deep they swallowed the light. Despite the sliver threading through his dark hair and grief carving new lines around his mouth. He was beautiful in the way abandoned churches are beautiful. Full of ghosts and good intentions. Age had only made him more striking, like whiskey left to darken in oak.
Was this how it started with Jules? I wondered if Jules had looked at him like that the first time. If that's all it took to unravel a family. A glance. A smile. A moment of weakness in the dark, one hungry touch?
"Wren."
My name in his mouth was a foreign thing now. Cold. Distant. The way you might identify a stranger's body in a morgue. Yes, that's her. No I don't know her anymore. It was a winter wind. It hollowed me out.
I realized the attendant was waiting, her pen poised over her pad. I hadn't heard the question.
He didn't look at me as he ordered for us both. "Steak. Medium rare."
The steak arrived, Medium rare. Blood pooling like a confession beneath the meat. He pushed it towards me without meeting my eyes.
You still know this about me, I thought. You remember how I take my steak but forgot how to love me.
The knot in my throat almost choked me.
Saint Hollow smelled like rain and old money.
And there she was... my mother, a silhouette I'd know even in the dark. Her new lover's hand rested on the small of her back, possessive as a brand.
My mother stood at the arrivals gate, her newest boyfriend hovering at her shoulder like an afterthought. She was as radiant as ever, golden hair swept over one shoulder, lips painted the same dangerous red as her heels. But her smile didn't reach her eyes when she saw me.
I counted the cracks in the pavement as I walked toward them. One. Two. Three.
Enough to break a heart.
Enough to bury one.
"Mija," she said, like the word was a wound.
I wanted to collapse into her. I wanted to scream at her. Why did you leave? Why didn't you fight for me? Why does everyone give up?
Instead, I stood there, my duffel bag cutting into my shoulder, my other bags cluttered at my left, my father already stepping back.
"She's your responsibility now," he said.
Not goodbye. Not I love you.
Just... handing me off.
And then he turned and walked away.
And I...
I let him.
Because what else is there, when the people who are supposed to love you treat you like a burden?
You learn to carry yourself.
Even if it breaks you.
The car door slammed shut behind me with a sound like a coffin sealing.
I curled into the backseat, my duffel bag pressed against my side like the only ally I had left. My phone glowed in the dim light, Cassie's name flashing on the screen.
Cassie: Send pics!
I sent her a sticker of a grinning monkey with hollow eyes, its teeth too sharp, its eyes too knowing. The one that looked like it knew all the jokes were at our expense.
She replied instantly.
Cassie: Make sure you do!
I could still hear her sobs from last night's call ringing in my ears. Sobbed until her screen pixelated with tears, until my own grief felt small next to hers. Cassie had always felt pain like it was her own, she didn't just hold your pain; she swallowed it. Like she had a direct line to the raw, pulsing heart of every hurt in the world. The kind of girl who wept at dog commercials and underlined the saddest lines in library books so strangers might ache with her. She cried over fictional characters. Over sad songs. Over the way the light hit broken glass. And last night, she had wept for me like I was already a tragedy.
It made my chest ache.
"How are you, mija?"
My mother's voice was honey poured over shattered glass. Sweet, but you could still cut yourself on the edges. And it cut through the silence like a scalpel.
The question was a landmine. How are you? As if three years could be answered in a car ride. As if expulsion tasted like anything but ashes.
Her fingers hovered near my hair, silver now, not the chestnut brown she'd braided when I was small.... before pulling back.
"It's been years. You've grown so pretty, just like me. But why did you dye your beautiful brown hair silver?"
My fingers twitched toward my hair before I could stop them, twisting a strand around my finger, remembering the way the dye had burned my scalp last week. How the stylist had hesitated, asking "Are you sure?" as if color could undo DNA.
I was sure.
Silver. Not black, like my father's disapproval. Not blonde, like my mother's betrayal. Not red, like the fire I kept inside me.
Silver.
Silver was the edge of a knife.
A blade.
Something that couldn't be ignored.
"I love it, Mom," I said, and my voice was steel wrapped in silk.
She fell silent. In the rearview mirror, her boyfriend's eyes flicked to her, a question in the tight line of his mouth. I watched my mother's spine stiffen under that glance... a puppet sensing its strings.
Then my mother asked the question that hollowed me out. Her voice too light, too careful:
"Where do you want to go, mija? Where do you want to be now? Say it, and I'll obey. Our home... or Vermont?"
Our home.
The words were a knife twisted slow. The lie curdled between us.
There was no our anymore. There hadn't been for years. That house belonged to her and whatever man currently warmed her bed. Just a house full of someone else's shoes in the foyer, someone else's coffee cups in the sink. The room I'd once called mine was probably a gym now. Or an office. Or a shrine to some other daughter who didn't disappoint.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
The highway signs blurred past. Vermont: 27 miles.
I pressed my forehead to the cold glass and exhaled:
"Vermont,"
Because if I was going to drown, I'd rather do it in the place I was a complete stranger to. At least there, the ghosts knew my name.
My heart wrenched... Homes don't break. Only people do.