Chapter Seven: Old Habits
Iris left before dinner, and did not answer her phone for two full days afterward, and Wren spent both of those days trying not to read too much into it, and failing completely.
That was Tuesday and Wednesday. First, there was Sunday, the good day, the day that had felt, walking out of Port Ivy General with her father and her sister both, like the whole family had finally been stitched back together in one triumphant afternoon.
They had gone, all four of them, Walter still trailing his IV pole down to the hospital cafeteria because he refused, absolutely refused, to let his first meal with his whole family in eight years be a hospital tray, and they had eaten stale sandwiches at a sticky plastic table and laughed, actually laughed, about small things, about Ruth Okafor's decades-long feud with the previous owner of the diner next to the shop, about the fox voice Walter still, apparently, could do on command, which he proved by doing it right there in the cafeteria until a nurse walking past gave him a look that only made Iris laugh harder.
It had felt, for those two hours, like something Wren had almost forgotten her family was capable of being.
Then Iris had driven back to Ashford, because she had a shift Monday morning she couldn't miss, and had hugged Wren tight at the parking lot and said, "This doesn't fix everything, you know. I'm glad I came. But I need some space to figure out what I actually want now, not just what feels good in one emotional afternoon," and Wren had nodded like she understood completely, though privately she had hoped, foolishly, that one honest hospital room morning really might be enough to fix eight years all at once.
By Tuesday, her father had gone quiet again, not the old wounded silence exactly, but something adjacent to it, distracted, his phone in his hand more than usual, and when Wren asked what was wrong he said, "Nothing, just work things," in the exact tone he used when it was absolutely not just work things.
She found out what it actually was on Wednesday afternoon, when she stopped by Callahan and Sons after school for the first time in three years, drawn there by an impulse she couldn't fully name, wanting to see the shop that had started all of this with her own eyes instead of only in memory.
The brass bell over the door rang the way it always had, and Ruth Okafor looked up from the register with a smile that faltered slightly when she saw Wren's face, the particular smile of someone deciding, in real time, how much to say.
"He's in the back," Ruth said. "Your dad. Been in there an hour with the ledgers, and I don't like the look on his face, if I'm honest."
Wren found Daniel in the back room, the same back room where he'd once stood at Christmas eight years ago and heard his own father call his wife a distraction, sitting at the old rolltop desk with a stack of papers in front of him and an expression she hadn't seen since the worst weeks after her mother died.
"Dad?"
He looked up, and for a moment he seemed to consider saying nothing, the old reflex, and then, visibly, decided against it, as though the hospital room had taught him something he was determined not to unlearn quite so quickly.
"The shop's in trouble," he said. "Real trouble. Your grandfather's been keeping the books himself for years, wouldn't let anyone else near them, and I think, I think he's been so focused on not asking for help from anyone, especially not from me, that he let things slide further than he realized. There's a balloon payment due on the building loan in six weeks that the shop simply cannot cover. If we don't find a way to cover it, the bank takes the building."
"Grandpa's bookshop? The one his own father started?"
"That one." Daniel rubbed his face with both hands. "And he's still in the hospital, Wren, he's not strong enough to fight this himself, and Ruth can't run the numbers, she's never been the finances side of it, and I."
He stopped.
"You what?"
"I don't know if I have any right to walk back into that shop and start making decisions about its future," Daniel said quietly. "I walked away from it eight years ago. I chose a different life. It feels strange, presumptuous even, to show up now, after one good morning in a hospital room, and act like I've earned a say in whether it survives."
Wren felt something familiar and frustrating rise in her chest, the same old pattern reasserting itself, the pride dressed up as humility, the retreat dressed up as respect.
"Dad. That's the same room again."
"What?"
"The one room house. The thing Mom used to say. You're doing it right now, you're finding a new reason to stay small and separate instead of just walking in and helping, because helping means admitting you care more than your pride wants to let you admit."
Her father looked at her for a long moment, something working behind his eyes, and then, slowly, he let out a breath that seemed to deflate some of the tension from his shoulders.
"You're your mother's daughter," he said, not for the first time, but this time it didn't sound like an accusation, it sounded almost grateful. "All right. You're right. I'll go see him tomorrow, and I'll ask him to let me look at the books properly, and we'll figure out together whether there's any way to save this place."
"And Iris?"
Daniel's face went careful again, in a different way. "I don't know if it's my place to ask her to be part of saving the shop. She left this town, Wren. She built a whole life somewhere else, on purpose, and I don't want to pull her back into a family crisis and make her feel like she only gets welcomed home when we need something from her."
Wren thought about that for a moment, turning it over, and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she agreed with him, at least in part.
"Maybe don't ask her to save the shop," she said slowly. "But maybe let her know it's happening. Because if the shop closes and nobody told her, and she finds out after the fact, I think that might hurt worse than being asked and having the choice to say no."
Her father considered this, and nodded, slow and thoughtful. "That's fair. That's a good distinction, actually. I'll tell her. Whatever she decides to do with it is hers to decide."
That night, Wren texted Iris, not about the shop, since that was her father's news to share and not hers, but simply, Hey. Thinking about you. Hope Ashford's treating you okay this week, and was surprised, and pleased, and a little wary all at once, when a reply came back within minutes instead of after days of silence.
Ashford's fine. Still thinking about Sunday, honestly. It was good. I just don't want to pretend one good day undoes eight years, does that make sense?
It makes total sense, Wren typed back. Nobody's asking you to pretend that. We're all just glad you're still talking to us at all.
There was a pause, the three dots appearing and disappearing the way they had that first night in the hospital lounge, and then: Dad called me an hour ago. Told me about the shop. I didn't expect that, that he'd tell me instead of just handling it without me. That actually meant something.
Wren smiled at her phone in the dark of her room, feeling something small and cautious and hopeful settle into place, and thought that maybe her father had, after all, learned something real from that hospital room, something about the difference between protecting people from your problems and simply trusting them enough to let them choose for themselves whether to help carry the weight.
She had no idea yet that the balloon payment, and the family's scramble to save the only thing that had ever truly held four generations of Callahans in the same place, was about to become the very thing that finally, fully, brought her whole scattered family back under one roof, or how close it would come to falling apart again before it did.