Carolina Wren

Chapter 49

Wren's POV

I've lost count of how many times I've had to move in my life. Twice with my dad, from one apartment to another. Then I moved in with Sheila and almost immediately we turned around and moved in with Jean because Sheila's boyfriend kicked her out when he realized she had a whole entire seven year old child he'd never heard about. That's pretty much how my life went—sometimes we lived on our own in low-income housing, sometimes we moved in with her boyfriend of the hour, sometimes we lived with her friends, but we were always moving. We didn't stay in the same place for long.

This neighborhood has been the nicest by far. It almost feels like we dropped the property values the moment we drove down the street the first time. Our house, Kota's house, Nathan's house... they're all mansions compared to where we've lived in the past. It's always surprised me that no matter where we move, the first few nights in a new house feel like stepping into a new world. Even as nice as this neighborhood is, the first few nights in a new place, I feel like I'm hyper aware of the most innocuous things. The smallest sounds, cars driving by on the street, the way the shadows move on the walls, the noise the air conditioner makes just as it kicks on—it's all different and unsettling.

Not that it makes any difference. Tracing the shadows on the walls in Nathan's room and jumping every time something new in the house starts to hum or not, sleep would probably evade me all the same. Sometimes I slept alright, and sometimes I'd stay awake until two in the morning despite my best efforts. But on nights like tonight, falling asleep at all was a miracle in itself and I've been having them more and more often.

I'm not sure when the last time I had a good night's sleep was. It didn't seem to matter when I went to bed or how tired I was, the moment my head hit the pillow every worry, every fear came crashing to the surface like a high-speed wreck. I couldn't toss and turn because it might wake up Juni and every once in a while, I had a toddler curled into my side. It was just me, the darkness, and thoughts that wouldn't go away.

As much as I hate to admit it, nights like this are where I understand why someone would chase the silence that drugs or alcohol could bring you. Just a few hours where my brain wasn't working on overdrive. Where I wasn't having to think about a future that I couldn't even begin to plan because I was on a 3D chess set and Sheila kept breaking the rules.

When Juni woke up at 2:30 AM for a bottle, I hadn't had a moment of sleep. I'd gone to bed with her after her 10 PM feed and I'd heard Nathan turn the TV off not long afterwards. "We're going to have to be extra quiet," I whispered to her as we made our way out into the hall. As we went past, I gently opened the door to the boys' room to check on them. Dylan's dark brown hair was sticking up in a hundred different directions, his mouth open, and his cheek smashed against his pillow. Keegan was starfished across his entire bed, fingers in his mouth. Neither of them so much as twitched with awareness as I slowly closed the door.

Glancing into the living room, Nathan was spread out on the couch, one elbow bent with an arm across his head, the other dragging the ground, and the same throw blanket they'd tucked me in with earlier draped across his legs. There was a boyishness to it, an innocence. I rarely stopped to think of what their lives had been like before me. Much like North, it was hard to picture the muscled, confident Nathan ever being a victim but there was a bitterness in my veins as I looked at the boy still hiding inside of him.

He said his dad abused him. His mother left him, knowing what his father was like. They did those things to someone who had been as soft as he looked now. And his dad is still around sometimes.

Shaking off the storm of swirling feelings I'm too physically and emotionally tired to pull apart and identify, I carry Juni into the kitchen. Only the light over the oven gets flicked on in the hopes that I won't wake up Nathan. It's bad enough that he gave up his bed for us, he doesn't need to sacrifice his sleep.