Nevermor Read Free Page A

eventually give up.
    She had
succumbed to the curse of the fifteen-year-old girl – too pretty for her own
good, caught between being a child and woman, and because of that, no one
wanted to embrace her. The ones who did want to draw her in desired to
for reasons that she wasn’t willing to lay down her dignity for.
    For thirteen
years, she had been her mother’s daughter.  She had been taught what was proper
for a lady with morals and manners, was trained to be an efficient wife and
mother, as society dictated.  Her life hadn’t been all fun and games, but she
had been comfortable and safe with her family.  She’d expected her only trouble
to be preparing herself for suitors in the coming years, but the family had
fallen on hard times after Max was born.
    Her father had
lost his job over an adulterous scandal that had sent them all reeling.  The
family name had been dragged through the mud.  None of his old colleagues would
risk associating with him after that, and months passed without income.  Wren’s
mother had grown cold and distant toward them all, slipping away into unhealthy
bouts of depression.  Some days, she couldn’t even remember her daughter’s
name.  She neglected her baby as much as the rest of them, and Wren had taken
to raising the boy herself.  Her father couldn’t find another position and
turned to drinking.  Eventually the accounts were wiped, the family money gone,
and there was only one other option.
    Miss Nora paid a
small price for the children, who would bring money in to her from the factory
– unless she might sell them off for a higher price to someone willing to adopt .  Wren’s mother had hugged her and kissed her goodbye on the steps,
but Wren was convinced that her mother wasn’t really there inside that body. 
The woman had gone away a long time before that.
    Wren tried not
to think of her parents too much anymore.  She didn’t wonder where they were
now or what had become of them – if they had stayed together or whether their
marriage had fallen apart.  There was too much to worry over in her life as it
was, and all she knew was that she was not going to reverse it.
    She was stuck
here.  There was no way out.
    In the past, Wren
had kept her mind busy by trying to think of a way that she and her brothers
could leave the orphanage, maybe survive on their own somewhere that there was
fresh water and green fields.  Her mind would drift around like a bird flying
in the heavens, circling to keep a watchful eye, but once it settled again, she
always found that it was pointless to even consider.  If they weren’t at the
Home, they would be on the streets, among so many other children whose parents
couldn’t afford to keep them fed.  They would be forced into lives of crime –
would be thieves, dirty and flea-ridden, starving and destitute.  Henry might
have actually preferred that sort of life, but not Wren, and she didn’t want it
for her brothers either.
    Those ideas
eventually became impossible fantasies that she created to soften her
situation.  In one instance, she had dreamed that their parents abruptly came
back for them, shining and rich, to take them to an estate in the country where
the air was clean.  In another, a wealthy man would fall in love with her and
take her to be his wife, and he would let her brothers come along to his castle
by the sea.  Her more fanciful side had often imagined doing something a bit
more extreme, like sneaking on a train, or even a ship.  It would take them far
away, and somehow they would find a place to belong.  Maybe there was some
country across the ocean – or an island in the middle of it – where they could
go, free of the smog and the poverty, and live their lives in the sun.
    But she had to
remind herself that she was too old for fairytales like that.
    “Wren?”  Max was
calling for her attention from the bed next to hers.  There were no babies at
the Home anymore, and so all of the children were kept