Chapter 4: Not for Sale
The call came on a Tuesday, right after Wren's shift ended.
"Celia Ward. I know yesterday was a lot. I'm not calling to argue. I'm asking for twenty minutes. Coffee, somewhere quiet. Your pick."
Wren almost said no. The word was right there. But then she thought about the dropped glass, the smash of it on the gallery floor, and curiosity won the small argument in her head.
"There's a place on Dearborn. The Perch. Four o'clock."
"I'll be there," Celia said, too quickly.
The Perch was a nothing café with fogged windows and a bell that never shut up. Wren arrived ten minutes late on purpose. Celia was already there, at the corner table, two cups on the wood and her coat folded over the chair.
"You didn't have to order for me," Wren said, sitting.
"Black coffee, no sugar. I asked your friend what the regulars drink." Celia's smile was small. "Rosa, was it? She's protective of you."
"She's protective of everyone she's decided is hers. Consider it a warning."
Celia nodded. Then she stopped smiling.
"I had a daughter," she said. "Twenty-five years ago. She died when she was three days old. That's the official version, anyway."
Wren's hand tightened around her cup. "The official version."
"There were questions. Things that didn't line up." Celia's fingers twisted a paper napkin into a rope. "The hospital records, the doctor's signature, my husband at the time. I asked for answers and I got a funeral instead. For twenty-five years I have told myself to let it go."
"Okay," Wren said slowly. "That's a sad story. But what does it have to do with me?"
Celia looked at her then, really looked, and there was something raw in her face that Wren had not seen at the gala.
"When I saw your birthmark, at the gala, I dropped my glass because for one second I couldn't breathe." Her voice went thin. "My daughter had one just like it. Same shoulder. Same shape. A butterfly."
The café bell jingled. Someone laughed too loud near the counter.
"That's not possible," she said. "Lots of people have birthmarks."
"Yes. Lots of people." Celia leaned forward. "I'm not asking you to believe anything. I'm asking for a cheek swab. Discreet. A private lab, no names on the paperwork if that's what you want. No strings, Wren. If it comes back negative, I walk away and you never hear from me again."
"No strings," Wren repeated.
"No strings."
Wren stood up so fast her chair screeched against the tile.
"I'm not a puzzle for you to solve," she said, and her voice came out sharper than she meant. "I don't care what you lost. You don't get to come into my life with a sad story and a cotton swab and decide I'm the answer."
"Wren, please," Celia said, half rising.
But Wren was already walking out, the bell clattering behind her, and she did not look back.
The apartment smelled like burnt popcorn and one of Rosa's cooking experiments when Wren got home. Rosa took one look at her face and muted the TV.
"Well," Rosa said. "That went well."
"She wants a DNA test." Wren dropped her bag by the door. "She had a daughter who died twenty-five years ago, and apparently my shoulder is a ghost. A cheek swab, she said. No strings."
Rosa was quiet for a moment, which was rare enough to be alarming.
"Okay," she said carefully. "Hear me out."
"No."
"Wren."
"No, Rosa. I know that tone. That's your 'I'm about to be reasonable' tone, and I hate it."
Rosa swung her legs off the couch and sat up straight.
"What if she's telling the truth?" she said.
Wren stared at her. "Excuse me?"
"What if she's telling the truth," Rosa said again, slower. "What if you are her daughter, and somebody stole you, and she spent twenty-five years grieving a baby that didn't die? Don't you want to know?"
"I know who I am."
"Do you? Because from where I'm sitting, you know who you were told you are. There's a difference."
Wren's throat tightened in a way she resented. She turned away and busied herself at the sink, rinsing a mug that was already clean.
"I'm scared, okay?" she said finally, to the faucet. "If it's negative, nothing changes, and I feel stupid for hoping. If it's positive, everything changes, and I don't know who I am anymore. Either way I lose."
The couch creaked behind her. Then Rosa's arm was around her shoulders, warm and solid, smelling faintly of diner grease and vanilla shampoo.
"You don't lose me," Rosa said. "Whatever that swab says, I'm still here. I'm still your roommate and your emergency contact and the person who eats the burnt popcorn. That part doesn't change."
Wren leaned into her, just for a second. "You'd better be right."
"I'm always right. Ask anyone." Rosa squeezed her shoulder. "Sleep on it. That's all I'm saying."
Wren slept on it. She dreamed about glass breaking.
The clinic was a beige room in a beige building on a street Wren had never noticed before. A nurse with kind eyes and a clipboard explained everything twice.
"Just a quick swab inside each cheek," the nurse said finally. "Ten seconds. Nothing to it."
It was, in fact, nothing. A cotton stick, a little twirl, a sealed envelope. Wren barely felt it. Strange, that something this small could matter this much.
Celia sat across the room the whole time, hands folded, not speaking. When the nurse stepped out to label the sample, Celia crossed to Wren and stopped a careful distance away.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "I know this wasn't easy. Whatever it says, thank you for coming."
Wren looked at her, this woman with the careful coat and the trembling hands, and found she had nothing left to say. She nodded once and walked out into the gray October afternoon.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.