**CHAPTER 9: THE BAKERY ON SHELL STREET**

Wren stared at the black screen.

She pressed the button on the side of the phone. Nothing. She pressed it again, harder. The screen stayed dark and dead in her hand, like a closed eye.

*My mother knows about the b—*

The baby.

His mother knew about the baby.

Wren's hands began to shake. She held the phone so tight that the edges hurt her palm.

*How?* she thought. *How could she know? I told no one. Only Mrs. Carter. Only Dr. Lin.*

And then she knew.

Isabella. Isabella with the spare key in her hand and the vitamin bottle held up to the light. Isabella, with her soft voice saying, *I'll wait until the gala.*

She hadn't waited at all.

Wren closed her eyes. She saw Eleanor Vance's face, cold and perfect, the way it looked at dinner when she ordered the maids to search her room. She thought of the lawyers Isabella had talked about. *Eleanor has the best lawyers in the city.*

In the novel, the Vance family took everything from Celeste. Her house. Her money. Her name.

Now there was one more thing to take.

Wren put both hands over her stomach and bent forward in her seat, as if she could hide the baby with her own body.

*No,* she thought. *No. They will not touch you. I don't care how many lawyers they have. I don't care how much money. They will have to go through me first.*

"Honey? You all right?"

The old woman with the red hat was looking at her from across the aisle, worried.

Wren sat up and wiped her face fast. "I'm fine. Just tired."

The old woman did not look like she believed it. But she nodded kindly and let it go.

Wren turned to the window. Outside, the gray fields were gone. Now there were hills, and between the hills, far away, a thin line of dark blue.

The sea.

---

It was raining when the bus pulled into Port Haven.

It was not a soft rain. It was a cold, hard, sideways rain that came in from the water and went straight through her thin coat. Wren stepped down onto the wet sidewalk with her small bag, and in two minutes she was soaked.

The old woman with the red hat waved at her through the bus window. Then the bus pulled away, and Wren was alone.

She looked around.

Port Haven was small. Very small. One main street ran down a hill toward the harbor. The houses were old and painted in faded colors, blue and yellow and white. Fishing boats bumped against the dock. Seagulls cried overhead. Everything smelled of salt and wet wood.

It was nothing like the city. Nothing like the Vance house, with its marble floors and gold lamps.

Wren should have hated it.

Instead, standing there in the rain, she felt something loosen in her chest for the first time in three days.

*No one here knows me,* she thought. *No one here has read the book.*

She pulled her coat tighter and started walking.

---

The first motel was at the top of the hill. A tired man sat behind the desk, watching a small TV.

"Forty a night," he said. "I need an ID and a card."

"I can pay cash."

"Still need an ID, lady. Rules."

Wren thanked him and walked out.

The second motel was by the harbor. A woman with long red nails looked Wren up and down, at her wet hair and her small bag and the silk dress under her coat.

"ID," the woman said.

"I'd like to pay cash. For a week. Maybe two."

"No ID, no room." The woman went back to her magazine. "We don't want trouble here."

Wren walked out into the rain again.

There was no third motel.

She stood under the edge of a shop roof, out of the worst of the wind, and tried to think. She could not show anyone an ID. Her ID said *Celeste Vance*. The moment anyone typed that name into a computer, she might as well call Eleanor herself.

*I could go back to the bus station,* she thought. *Sleep on a bench. Find something tomorrow.*

But she was so cold. Her feet hurt. Her stomach was empty, and the baby needed food. Dr. Lin had said she was too thin.

She closed her eyes for a second, just to rest.

And that was when she smelled it.

Bread.

Warm bread. Fresh, golden, just-baked bread, with butter and something sweet, like cinnamon. The smell came floating through the rain from somewhere close, wrapping around her like a blanket.

Wren opened her eyes and followed it.

---

The bakery stood on a narrow side street called Shell Street. It was a small blue building with a white door and a big front window, fogged up from the warmth inside. Through the glass, Wren could see wooden shelves full of round loaves and sweet rolls.

A painted sign hung over the door. *BELL'S BAKERY.*

And in the corner of the window was a smaller sign, handwritten in black marker on a piece of card.

*ROOM FOR RENT. ASK INSIDE.*

Wren stood in the rain and read it three times.

Then she pushed open the door.

A little bell rang above her head. Warm air hit her face, so warm it almost hurt. The shop was empty, except for a woman behind the counter who was pulling a tray of rolls out of a big oven.

The woman was in her fifties, short and solid, with gray hair tied up in a messy knot and flour on her cheeks. She set the tray down and looked at Wren over the top of her glasses.

It was not a friendly look.

It was a look that saw everything. The wet hair. The shaking hands. The small bag. The fine silk dress that did not belong in a place like this.

"We close in ten minutes," the woman said.

"I'm here about the room," Wren said. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted.

The woman didn't answer right away. She wiped her hands slowly on a towel.

"Room's upstairs. One bed, one window, one small bathroom. Gets cold at night. Two hundred a month." She paused. "And I don't rent to people who bring trouble."

"I won't bring trouble."

"Everybody says that." The woman folded the towel. "What's your name?"

Wren took a breath. "Willow."

"Willow what?"

"Just Willow."

The woman raised one eyebrow. She looked at Wren's face for a long moment, and then her eyes dropped to Wren's left hand.

Wren knew what she was looking at. The thin pale line on her finger, where a gold ring had sat for three years. She tried to hide it, but it was too late.

"Running from a man?" the woman asked quietly.

Wren's throat went tight. She could lie. She could make up a story.

But she was too tired to lie.

"From a whole family," she said.

The bakery went very quiet. The only sound was the rain on the window and the soft tick of the cooling oven.

Then the woman sighed. A long, deep sigh, like someone putting down a heavy bag.

"Sit down before you fall down," she said. "You look like a drowned cat."

---

Her name was Nora Bell.

She was a widow. Her husband, Tom, had been a fisherman. He went out on his boat eleven years ago and never came back. Since then, Nora had run the bakery alone. She woke up at four every morning to make the bread, and she went to bed at nine every night, and in between she worked.

She told Wren all of this while she put a big bowl of hot soup and a thick slice of buttered bread on the table in front of her.

"Eat," Nora said. "All of it. Then we talk."

Wren ate. She tried to be polite, but she was so hungry that she finished the soup in two minutes. Nora said nothing. She just filled the bowl again.

When Wren was done, Nora sat down across from her and folded her floury arms.

"So," she said. "Can you pay?"

"Yes. Cash."

"Can you work?"

Wren looked up. "Work?"

"I don't care what you're running from. That's your business." Nora's eyes were sharp but not unkind. "But I can tell you're not from here. Soft hands. Fancy dress. You talk like a girl who's been to good schools." She tilted her head. "What can you do?"

Wren almost laughed. *I can count,* she thought. *In my old life, I was a junior accountant. I worked in a small gray office and stared at numbers all day. That's all I ever was.*

"I'm good with numbers," she said. "Money. Accounts. That kind of thing."

Something changed in Nora's face.

"Numbers," she repeated slowly.

"Yes."

Nora got up without a word. She went into a small back room and came out with a big cardboard box. She dropped it on the table with a heavy thump. It was full of papers. Bills, receipts, notebooks, envelopes, all mixed together like a nest.

"My Tom did all this," Nora said, a little sadly. "When he was gone, I tried. But I'm a baker, not a bookkeeper. Every month the money goes out, and every month there's less of it, and I don't know why." She pushed the box across the table. "You sort this out for me, and you can have the room free for one month. After that, we'll see."

Wren looked at the messy box. Then at Nora's tired face.

*Free for a month,* she thought. *Somewhere warm. Somewhere no one asks for my name.*

"Deal," she said.

---

The room upstairs was small and plain. One bed with a thick quilt. One window looking out over the gray, rolling sea. One little bathroom with a cracked mirror.

To Wren, it looked like a palace.

She changed into dry clothes. She put the ultrasound picture on the windowsill, propped up against the glass, so the tiny bean could look out at the sea too.

Then she sat on the bed with Nora's box and started to work.

Hours passed. The rain slowed and then stopped. The moon came out over the water. Downstairs, Nora locked the shop and went to bed.

Wren didn't notice any of it. She was lost in the numbers, the way she used to be in her old life. Flour bills. Sugar bills. Electric bills. Rent. She sorted them into piles on the quilt. She wrote everything down in a small notebook. Line after line. Month after month.

And slowly, a pattern appeared.

Wren frowned. She checked it again. Then she went back through the last six months. Then the last year. Then the year before that.

By the time she looked up, it was almost two in the morning.

Her heart was beating very fast.

She picked up the notebook and went quietly down the stairs. There was a light under Nora's door at the end of the hall. Wren knocked softly.

The door opened. Nora stood there in a long nightgown, her gray hair loose around her shoulders, her glasses in her hand.

"Willow? What's wrong? Are you sick?"

"No." Wren held up the notebook. Her hand was not quite steady. "Nora, I found out why you're losing money."

Nora blinked. "Already?"

Wren took a deep breath.

"Nora... someone has been stealing from you. Every single month." She swallowed hard. "For two years."