Page 93 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“Oh no. No, we’ll sell them once they’re weaned. Of course, there is a wee little one your grandpa has his eye on. She’s wrapping herself around his little finger. So I wouldn’t doubt if one of them escapes being sold.”
Wren laughed.
So did her grandma.
There was a moment of silence. Wren paced in front of the lodge’s entrance. She shot another staffer a smile as the person passed by and lifted a hand in a wave. She toed a dandelion in the grass.
“Arwen, what’s going on? What do you need?”
Her grandmother was perceptive.
Wren squatted down to finger the dandelion. “So, I had a few questions. About my birth.”
“Your birth?” There was honest confusion in the older woman’s voice. “All right. I’m not sure what I can offer. We weren’t around when you were born.”
“Well, Mom had me here in Wisconsin, right?”
“No, they were living in California. Your father was teaching at the university. They moved to Wisconsin ... ohhhhh, I think about a month after you were born?”
“Oh.” That was news to her. She’d known about California in her parents’ past, and even that Pippin had attended his early years of school there. But she’d not known it was where she’d been born. “My birth records would be in California, then.”
“What do you need your birth records for? Getting married?” There was a teasing lilt to her grandmother’s voice.
“Funny.” Wren mustered a smile, even though her grandmother couldn’t see her.
“Well, honey, just submit a request to the California Department of Health. They can reissue a certified copy, and then you’ll be all set. I’m sure things were lost or forgotten after your mom passed away.” Grandma’s voice broke for a moment. She collected herself. “I wish I could help you more. We just weren’t that close to your father and so ... things were distant then, as they are now.”
“Were you around when Pippin was born?” The twelve-year gap between them made Wren wonder if things had ever been different before she’d been born and before her mom had experienced miscarriages.
Grandma was quiet a moment and then, “We were. Your parents met here in Oklahoma, you know, where your mother was raised. But shortly after Pippin was born, your father earned his position at the university. It was his dream. I knew their move to California would put distance between us, but I didn’t expect it to be distance in more than just miles.”
Wren picked the dandelion and spun it between her finger and thumb. “Did they just get busy?”
“Yes?” Grandma responded as if she were questioning her own memories. “Tristan never wanted anything as much as he wanted to become a professor at a place of higher education. Your mother—she simply wanted to be a mother. With Pippin, she completely lost herself in him, but then came the miscarriages ... and I was far enough away. I wasn’t there for her.”
Wren waited, sensing there was more.
Grandma cleared her throat over the phone. Wren heard water running in the background, then the sound of a glass being filled. “I wanted to fly out to California after the sixth miscarriage. Well, I wanted to after the first, but your mom insisted it wasn’t necessary. By the sixth, Pippin was already eleven, and I think your mom was afraid I’d try to talk her out of trying again. She was probably right. Six? Six miscarriages take their toll on a woman’s body. Her hormones, her mental capabilities, all of it. And people don’t understand how traumatic one miscarriage is, let alone sequential ones.”
“But then I came along and saved the day.” Wren heard the lackluster humor in her voice.
Grandma chuckled. “When your mother called me to let me know about you, you were already four days old! A total surprise to your grandfather and I! We had no idea, but she told us she didn’t want us to worry and be burdened anymore, so she and yourfather had agreed to keep the pregnancy quiet until a child was born healthy. Pippin even got on the phone and told us all about you. He was excited—well, as excited as Pippin ever gets.”
“And then they moved a month after?” Wren studied the dandelion. She’d read somewhere that dandelions weren’t actually weeds but flowers. It was a random thought. Maybe a deflection against the growing wariness in her gut.
“Yes. They did. Your father took a new position at a smaller private college there in Wisconsin and then, as you know, when you were in grade school, he moved you all to the Bible camp.”
So her father had downgraded. Each position he took held a lesser educational integrity—or at least according to how Wren knew her father would interpret them. “Why did Dad want to leave his dream position at a California university for a private school in Wisconsin?”
Grandma half snorted into the phone. “Now you’re asking the million-dollar question we’ve asked for years. It doesn’t matter, though. In spite of not seeing you all nearly as often as we wanted to while you were growing up, Tristan has done well.”
Wren snapped the flower off the dandelion’s stem. Unlike Grandma’s generous impression of Wren’s father, Wren knew him better. Her father wouldn’t simply forgo the prestige of a position without the draw of another equal or better opportunity. He might be in charge of an entire camp’s biblical education department, but that wasn’t even his PhD wheelhouse. He prided himself in his intellectual prowess of English literature, his specialized expertise of Tolkien ... but a Bible camp in the sequestered Northwoods of Wisconsin? It didn’t lend itself to his own natural interests.
“Thanks, Grandma,” Wren concluded as suspicions danced in her mind.
“You bet. Oh, and honey?”
“Yeah?”
