Page 32 of Seal My Fate

There’s silence. The drizzle of rain taps lightly on the cottage windows, and Wren’s face collapses, teary-eyed.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I hated knowing I was hurting them.”

“Not just them!” I yell. “What aboutme? You think I didn’t fall apart, too? I lost you, Wren. You were gone! And every minute of every day, my heart broke all over again thinking I’d never see you again, that I had let you down, that I should have known—”

My voice breaks, and I dissolve into loud, hiccupping sobs, wracked with the echo of that terrible guilt.

Wren moves close and puts her arms around me. I try to push her away, still mad, but she holds on tight. “I’m sorry, Tessie, I’m so, so sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t take it back,” I cry. “How could you do that to us? How could you do that tome?”

“I couldn’t see any other way,” Wren says, and when I look, I see that her expression is pleading. “You have to understand, I wasn’t thinking straight. After the attack, I was already spiraling, and then when the threats started… I was depressed and fucked-up, scared out of my mind, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought everything would just be easier if I disappeared. That you’d all be safer without me. And then once I did it, once I left that letter on the beach and walked away… I couldn’t take it back. No matter how much I wanted to. But I missed you too,” Wren says, crying as well. “Every day. I was alone, without my family, and all I could do was tell myself that it was worth it, to keep them from hurting you.”

My anger melts. How could I stay mad at her when she’s suffered so much, too? This past year was hell for her too: always keeping to the shadows, looking over her shoulder, divided from the people she loves. She’s not the one who truly deserves my wrath.

No, that’s better saved for the ones who are responsible for all this grief and pain.

Whoever kidnapped her. Whoever threatened me.

Whoever is trying to silence us about the Ashford Pharma trials.

I finally hug her back, cradling her slim frame. Too slim. Yet more evidence of all her stress and anxiety. “I know you thought it was for the best,” I whisper tearfully. “I just hate that it happened at all.”

“Me too…”

Finally, she releases me, sniffling. “Look at us,” she says, wiping her cheeks with a wry grin. “Nobody would think we’re fighting to expose a billion-dollar company.”

“Well, they underestimate us at their peril,” I crack, also trying to clean up my tears and snot. “Now, about those scones…”

Wren laughs. “They’ll be done in… ten more minutes,” she reports, checking the clock. “Do you want to be ambitious, and try to make some lemon curd, too?”

“That sounds like… Exactly the kind of quiet, uneventful plan we need.”

I splashcold water on my face, and join Wren with her sifting, stirring, and mixing. We make the curd, and take out the scones, which are onlyslightlymishappen and sunk.

“Not bad, for my first try,” Wren decides.

“They taste great,” I report, as we take our tea into the cozy living room and settle in by the fire. And finally, with all my anger and shock out of the way, and no more drama interrupting us, we just talk. For hours, about my investigations in Oxford trying to track down her attacker, and how she kept herself hidden during her months on the run.

“It turns out, it’s easy to get a fake ID,” she says, curled up on the other end of the floral couch. “I just hung out near the dorms at the University of Chicago, and pretended I needed a hookup to get into the bars. I got a whole bunch of them, too,” she adds. “I’d switch out every month, staying in cheap hostels, and working for cash under the table waitressing and bartending.”

“You… Tended bar?” I ask in disbelief. Wren barely stepped foot in the local watering holes during college, she was too busy studying, and pulling all-nighters at the lab.

“I know,” she grins. “But I’m a fast learner. I can mix a mean martini. I kept track of you online, on social media,” she adds. “And when I saw you’d gone to Oxford… Well, I had to get my hands on a fake passport, too. I knew you were doing something boneheaded, going back there.”

“That’s me,” I reply lightly. “Stubborn and fueled with a fiery vengeance to hunt down the man who attacked you.”

She gives me a smile. “Thank you,” Wren says softly. “For trying, at least. It’s been driving me crazy, too.”

“Your memory still hasn’t come back?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I can’t decide if it’s a blessing or a curse. What I remember is bad enough, and I know that’s not the half of it.”

The windowless cell. The shackles on her wrists and ankles.

The man with what looked like a serpent crown tattoo on his thigh.

I shiver. “It was bad enough when we thought it was some random psycho attacking you for kicks, but now… Someone did it for a reason. To silence and scare you.”

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