Last Girl Ghosted(50)

Here I begin to weep, a deep, ugly sadness welling up, a tsunami of emotion. Every loss evokes the loss that formed me. I know the slick walled abyss of losing someone, losing everyone, even myself. Which is maybe why you’re the first person I’ve risked loving in a long, long time.

Yes, I loved you. Still, I love you. It’s not a switch that gets turned off.

I let it all out, great heaving sobs. The flow becomes an eddy; I’m caught there awhile. Then it releases me. I breathe, feel cleansed as the sobs subside.

When my name echoes on the wind, at first I think it’s my imagination, just the call of a bird, or something carrying from far away as sometimes happens in the woods at night. Sound bounces around and winds up in all kinds of weird places.

“Wren! Wren Greenwood!”

Not the name I was given. But the name I gave myself. But maybe that makes it more real than the name my mother gave me. It’s the name of the person in the story I tell myself about myself. The girl who was born from ashes and formed herself from what remained.

“Wren Greenwood!”

The voice comes from the direction of the graveyard, back where I need to be, in the opposite direction of the person I was chasing. Who is it? Who knows I’m here?

“Wren Greenwood!”

It’s a stupid name. A name that a child would make up. Of course, that’s the truth of it. I was a child when I gave myself that name, cobbling together pieces of myself to make a patched-up whole. A rag doll stitched back together.

I pull myself to standing, spent emotionally and physically, and walk in the direction of the voice. The night has grown frigid, and after the heat of exertion I am shivering, sweat having dampened my clothes, my butt wet from sitting on the forest floor. I’m ready to go back to the inn and sleep. For a week.

A figure moves toward me, this one real, the white glow of a flashlight bobbing up and down. I turn to look back behind me in the direction where the dark form disappeared, but there’s no one, nothing.

When he calls my name again, he’s close enough that I can recognize his voice.

In the story of my life, I’m not often surprised. I’ve lived through too many twists and turns of my own, heard too many tales of woe from those reaching out to Dear Birdie. Sometimes I think I know people and the way of things too well. I ache for unpredictability.

But I am surprised when the man comes close and drops his light.

Bailey Kirk.

“What the hell?” I say, some uncomfortable combination of angry, embarrassed, and relieved. “Are you following me?”

“Are you hurt?” he asks. He touches his own cheek, in empathy for the lash he must see on mine. “You’re bleeding.”

His voice is soft, a little breathless from the trek out here. He shines the light in my direction, and I shield my eyes, must be a wreck—face bleeding, leaves in my hair, jeans dirty at the knees.

Yes, I want to tell him. I’m hurt in about a hundred different ways.

He shines his flashlight around, scattering the darkness that has fallen around us. Then back to me. He moves in close, puts his hand on my arm.

“Are you okay?” he asks. His eyes search my face, as he puts his thumb to my eyes, wipes away tears. Something about his heat, his strength. When he pulls me in, I let him. I sink into him, let him wrap me up in strong arms. Finally, embarrassed, I pull away, stare down at the ground.

“Wren, what are you thinking? Coming out here alone?”

Just like a man, right? Imagining that he knows best what should and shouldn’t be done. About to deliver some lecture.

“I could ask you the same,” I say.

I can’t read his expression. He looks past me into the darkness, and I turn to look, as well. Still nothing but winter trees, the ground starting to glow with the rising moon.

Into the silence between us, I admit, “I saw someone. Maybe. I thought—”

I’m going to stop talking because it sounds too much like what I told him the other day. I saw a man in the building across the street and I gave chase, and then he was gone. No one else had seen him—not Bailey Kirk, not the many office workers at their desks. Just me.

In fact, no one has ever seen you, have they, Adam? Not even Jax. I wasn’t ready to introduce you to my friends, my life. I didn’t want to tell you about Dear Birdie. But I didn’t want to lie about it either. And now you’re gone from my life, and no one else has ever laid eyes on you.

“Yeah,” he says in answer to my first question, I guess. “I’m following you. I followed you here.”

“Why?”

Stupid question, right? He thinks I’m looking for you, or that you’re going to come back for me with some nefarious intent. He’s right about me. Maybe he’s right about you. Either way, and I don’t plan to admit this, I’m glad to see Bailey Kirk. I don’t want to be alone in this dark place anymore, chasing shadows into nothing, feeling my way out.

“Because that’s what detectives do,” he says, holding out his arm. “We follow. It’s usually pretty dull. A lot of times, we just sit and wait, and nothing ever happens. So far that’s not the case with you. You’re keeping me busy.”

In spite of myself, I take the help he’s offered, grab on to him. We start moving back in the direction of my car. I’m limping a little, my knee aching from the fall.