PART THREE
Chapter Sixteen
Ollie
What had she just said?
I blinked, certain I’d heard her wrong.
I was the girl you saved that night.
I cracked a smile, even though I wasn’t amused. “Ha ha,” I said. “You’re funny.”
But Wren wasn’t smiling back; she had a somber, almost sad expression on her face. “It’s not a joke,” she said. “I wouldn’t joke around about something like that. It really was me.”
I had thought about her before, the faceless girl who I had seen but hadn’t, whose face I couldn’t recall if my life depended on it. I never imagined that I’d see her again, though I had wondered if she found out what had happened that night, after she managed to get away. What she thought. If she had felt any guilt, which I hoped she did not because my actions were not her fault.
And now here was Wren, telling me she was that girl. Was that even possible? Maybe she had read about it in the newspaper or heard it on the news. People did that sort of thing sometimes. Well, a certain type of person. A crazy person seeking fame. Not that she would get much fame from this.
“I’m really sorry to be telling you this now,” she said. “I know how odd it must seem.”
“It does,” I managed to say. “It does seem strange that you’re telling me now, instead of, say, when we first met. I mean, that seems like it’d be kind of important.”
“I felt like that at first, too. I actually didn’t realize who you were at first, when you came into the restaurant. We’d been talking, and then it dawned on me, and it freaked me out, so I went into the kitchen, but when I came back out you had left.”
I thought back, vague recollections of the day surfacing in my mind. She had disappeared abruptly. And then I’d left.
“I probably would have told you then, if you were still there. But then again, maybe not because it’s not really something I’d announce to the whole restaurant, you know?”
I nodded, still not believing her. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m telling you now because I want you to know that you’re not this shitty person that you seem to think you are. That you shouldn’t go anywhere else, unless you want to, not because you think other people don’t want you around. Because that’s not true. I want you around. And if you hadn’t been around that night, who knows what would have happened.”
We were both quiet for a minute. I was waiting for her to say that she was joking, even though it sure as hell wasn’t that funny. And maybe she was waiting for me to say that I believed her.
Except I didn’t.
“I can tell you still don’t believe me,” she said. “Which I guess is understandable. But I wouldn’t make this up just to mess with you. I wouldn’t. What can I say to make you believe that it was me? It was at the Watering Hole, in the parking lot. He had me up against a car. I actually don’t remember a whole lot from the night. A lot of it is a blur. And, to be honest, I try not to think about it too often.” She paused and looked at me. “You were wearing a pink shirt. I remember that.”
That pink shirt, the one my mother had gotten me for my birthday, that she’d given me before I’d gone out that night. What the hell had happened to that shirt? Not that I’d want it back even if I knew where it was.
“You’re right,” I said. “I was wearing that shirt. My mother had given it to me as a birthday present. My eighteenth birthday.” It sounded like a lifetime ago, and in a way, it was, because I was a different person now than that kid who sat with his cancer-stricken mother and blew out candles on a cake she’d labored all day to make.
“We were both in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Wren said sadly. “I always wanted to tell you how sorry I was.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
She laughed, a bitter sound. “But of course I do! I ruined your life. You spent seven years in prison because of me.”
“It wasn’t because of you. Please don’t think that. It really depends on how you look at it. We were both in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe not, because if it hadn’t happened, would we have even met each other?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either. And the thing is, the past is in the past; there’s nothing we can do to change it.”
She reached over and took my hand. “It means a lot to hear you say that. I don’t know if I’d be able to be as gracious if it were me in your position. I’d probably be pissed. I mean, I am pissed—at myself, mostly, for getting into that situation to begin with.”
“It’s not like you wanted to. And I was able to help. I do wish that he hadn’t died. I was never planning on that.”
“I know you weren’t. Which is partly why I’ve always felt so guilty about it. You just went out that night, minding your own business, not planning on any of that shit happening.”
I squeezed her hand. “Listen,” I said. “I want you to stop thinking like that. I did what I did, and honestly, I’d pretty much do the same thing all over again. I wouldn’t hit him so many times, and he wouldn’t have died, but that’s about the only thing I’d change. He was trying to do something to you that he shouldn’t have.”
“Well, I do appreciate you saying that.”
“It’s ‘cause I mean it. And you know what?” I asked. “You did make me feel better. Thank you.”