Chapter 2 Ghosts In Familiar Places

The stairs to the apartment above the bookstore creaked in the way old houses do—complaining, honest, a little wounded. Wren climbed them with the duffel slung over one shoulder, the weight of tools and plaster and the furtive, too-large bundle of her life settling against her ribs. The door opened before she could fumble for her keys; Mrs. Chen was already there, apron on, hands dusted with flour and kindness.

"Oh, good," Mrs. Chen said, bright as a lamp. She had a rhythm to her speech, quick and practical. "You found it. Come in, come in. Let me take that bag before you drop something valuable."

"Everything in here is valuable," Wren said, a little laugh escaping because it was both true and a lie. "Or broken."

Mrs. Chen pinched Wren's cheek with a grandmother's familiarity and led her into the tiny kitchen. "You always did like a mess when you moved." Her eyes softened when she looked at Wren. "You look tired, child. Sit. Tea."

Wren set the duffel down and let the air out of her shoulders. The apartment smelled of paper and dust and the faint, sweet residue of whatever cinnamon Mrs. Chen had been baking. The living room was smaller than she remembered; the couch had always creaked, but now the space felt narrower, as if the years had pushed the walls a little closer. A thin shaft of light from the street window skated across the hardwood and landed on the sill where Wren could see, in the distance, the museum's dark roofline—a familiar silhouette she hadn't realized she'd missed until it appeared again.

Mrs. Chen fussed with a kettle as if preparing it could stitch time. "How long will you be up here?" she asked, pouring before Wren could answer.

"Long enough," Wren said. The words were bland, true, and small. "Until… Ruth needs me less, and the museum needs me more."

Mrs. Chen hummed, approving and direct. "He came back five years ago. Changed everything." She said. Wren felt something shift under her ribs—a small, sharp animal—at the sound of it. "You're going to have to show your face around town, you know. Folks talk."

Wren picked at a loose thread on the arm of the chair, her eyes fixed on nothing. "I know,"

"You don't look like the same Wren who left," Mrs. Chen said, studying her. "You look like someone who knows how to hold a hummingbird and how to let it go without crushing it."

Wren's fingers unconsciously moved to the inside of her wrist, touching the small hummingbird tattoo she had, the black lines raised where ink had once been quick and new. It had been the only thing she kept from that night ten years ago—small, private, a memory inked into her skin. She rubbed it, a nervous habit as the kettle hissed.

"Let me walk you up to your room," Mrs. Chen said, changing the subject as if she were sweeping crumbs. "You must be aching to set up. I saved the best spots on those shelves for you."

The "room" was an honest box of space: a narrow bed pushed against the wall, a small desk with a lamp, half a bookshelf, and a single window that faced the museum like a neighbor who couldn't be ignored. Wren set the duffel on the floor and unzipped it. The sound of zippers scraped through the apartment like a metronome.

"Tools first," she muttered to herself, pulling out a roll of scalpels wrapped in cloth, the weight of them familiar and grounding. She unrolled them and lined them on the desk with the care of a ritual. Needles, fine brushes, pins in a small tin, jars of adhesives labeled in her tidy hand, a spool of silver wire. Each item had its own place, each one a letter in the language she'd learned to speak when words failed her.

Mrs. Chen peeked in, brow arched. "You still have the same hands," she observed. "Long-fingered like a pianist. Still stained, I bet."

Wren held up her hands. "Stained," she said, and smiled despite herself. She turned a brush in her fingers, felt the grooves where it fit along her palm like a memory. "It feels good to have them steady again."

"You always were steady," Mrs. Chen answered, as if stating something everyone should already know. "Don't let this place shrink you, Wren. Small towns keep history like they keep their yarn—wrapped tight. But sometimes you can make something new from old threads."

Wren unpacked slowly, each piece opening a small window into the path that led her back. Unwrapping a little magnifying loupe carried her back to afternoons leaning over a workbench while Jonah and she argued about whether the light was east or west. Pulling out a tiny jar of feather glue reminded her of cold rooms and the careful, meticulous silence of restoration. Each object tugged at a memory—some warm, some sharp.

"Do you want me to put things away for you?" Mrs. Chen asked. She'd already begun setting a small plate of scones on the table, steam curling like a promise. "You're shaking a little."

"I'm fine," Wren lied, and put the scalpel roll in the drawer. Her hands trembled, not with cold but with the strain of unspooling a life she'd kept coiled for so long. She set a small wooden box on the shelf and, with a care that bordered on reverent, slid a face-down framed photograph into it. The glass was cool under her fingers. She'd kept that photo face-down since she'd left—the edges worn from being hidden. She didn't want anyone to see the picture yet; not Mrs. Chen, not the town, not even herself in full light.

Mrs. Chen noticed and didn't pry. "Photos are heavy," she said, as if speaking of anchors. "They hold more than faces. Leave it there until you're ready."

Wren's breath hitched because the photograph was one of the things that could undo her. She had never told Mrs. Chen everything. Not the town nor Jonah. It was a folded map of regret.

"Do you want to meet the new neighbors?" Mrs. Chen asked, tilting her head toward the window where a man across the street—tall, bundle of coats, carrying an armful of boxes—moved like someone making a new house out of small possessions. "No, forget me. You can meet them later. Keep to yourself for now. The first week is always the hardest."

Wren wrapped her fingers around the warm mug and let the scone steam fog her glasses for a moment. The apartment felt like a cocoon she was meant to stitch open. She wanted to set up a lamp on the desk and begin a specimen, a safe, small project—something with wings she could reattach and eyes she could remake. The idea of fixing a bird felt like a rehearsal for fixing everything else: herself, Ruth, perhaps even the thing with Jonah that had snapped.

"The view's good," Mrs. Chen said, nodding at the window. "You can watch the museum from there and pretend it's a big boat anchored outside your window. Or a lighthouse—depends on the mood."

Wren squinted at the silhouette of the museum, its Victorian peaks a stern, familiar face. Up close, it looked like an old man who refused to soften. For a beat, she allowed herself to remember the smell of cedar sawdust, the click of Jonah's pen on his desk, the way he looked at artifacts like they had voices.

"Do you think he'll see me?" she asked, the question fragile and ridiculous all at once.

Mrs. Chen paused, the kettle between her hands like a tool assessing a problem. "If he's out and about, maybe. But he tends to keep late hours. Or early. Depends on the mood he's in. He likes the quiet. You know Jonah—methodical. He likes order."

Wren laughed, a small sound that didn't reach her eyes. "He always liked order," she said. "Sometimes he even liked being the order."

"And sometimes," Mrs. Chen added, stirring her tea, "he liked breaking it. People who love museums know how to break rules quietly."

They sat and talked—Mrs. Chen asks about the boxes, Wren answering in clipped, honest bursts. The conversation tilted between practicalities and the small, intimate facts of Wren's past: where she'd worked, what specimens she'd restored, how long she'd been gone. Mrs. Chen filled the gaps in with stories of the town—the school plays and the bakery's new recipe, and who still remembered Wren's father's stories.

When Mrs. Chen's voice softened, Wren felt something behind her ribs loosen. "You should go to the museum tomorrow," Mrs. Chen said, voice low. "Not to hide, but to do what you do. Your hands will remember before your heart does."

Wren chewed her scone in thought. It tasted like sugar and something steadier. "I'll go in the morning," she said, and the sentence felt like a small promise.

Night began to gather in the corners of the room. Wren stacked jars and bottles on the shelf, lined brushes by size, placed the tiny pins in a tin, and set it on the desk where light would catch them in the morning. The framed photo she kept face-down, tucked into the wooden box like a secret. She moved through the motions of arranging her life back into place with the slow concentration of someone learning a language again– familiar, yet distant, as if each step required translation.

She stood by the window at the end, hands in the pockets of her jacket, looking out at the museum bathed in the dim streetlight, the edges soft and familiar. The town was settling down—lights clicking on in houses like beacons. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked and then stopped. The air smelled faintly of woodsmoke and the metallic note of coming thaw.

A small, persistent prickle ran up the back of Wren's neck. It was that old, foolish feeling she had had as a child when certain looks from neighbors had meant long afternoons under scrutiny. She turned slowly, expecting perhaps a curtain stirred by wind or a neighbor's shadow, but the room held only Mrs. Chen folding a towel by the sink.

"You're quiet," Mrs. Chen observed, looking up with that steady, searching glance that had seen generations come and go in Cascade. "Something on your mind?"

Wren hesitated. Her breath fogged the glass. "Just… the air. Makes me think of being watched."

Mrs. Chen gave a soft noise—part warning, part comfort. "People watch. It's how towns keep themselves honest. But don't let them make you small."

Wren moved closer to the window, flattened her palm to the glass, and looked at her reflection—eyes tired but set, the hummingbird tattoo a dark whisper under her sleeve—and beyond it the museum's silhouette. For a long moment, she let herself stand there, fingers splayed, imagining the workbench she'd wake to tomorrow, the tools she'd touch, the birds she'd coax back into shape.

Then the feeling rose again, sharper and colder, a pressure at the base of her skull like someone breathing the same air. She blinked, and the reflection in the glass looked back at her—familiar, unremarkable. She told herself it was nothing: a trick of light, a town's long memory.

But the prickle didn't fade. It threaded through her, impossible to ignore. Something in the view across the street—a dark rectangle, a shadow at the museum's window—caught the corner of her vision like a moth at glass.

Wren's stomach turned, not from fear exactly but from the heavy, intimate knowledge that some pasts don't simply wait to be told. They take up space, and they watch while you try to repair what you once broke. The hairs along her forearm rose.

She pressed her forehead to the cold glass and whispered, more to herself than to Mrs. Chen, "I can fix things."

She waited.

And then, very clearly, very quietly, the sensation of eyes on her sharpened until it felt as if the room itself had a heartbeat.