George
Sniper was standing nearby when I got off the elevator, his head hung as he spoke on his cell phone. When he caught sight of me, he raised his head and quickly ended the call.
“Everything okay?” I asked as I met him.
His gaze cast away from me. “That was Anna. I have some bad news.”
I stopped in front of him and waited for him to lay the bad news on me.
“Mrs. Mercer,” he said. “She passed away this morning.”
My mouth dropped open. “Shit. Are you serious?”
Sniper ran a hand over his face as if to wipe away the sadness. “I really liked that old bird.”
I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer. Mrs. Mercer was the best of the best. Charlotte would be devastated when she found out. The Mercers meant the world to her. My mind went to Mr. Mercer. His wife was all he had left, and I knew he had to be crushed. He’d called everyday with the exception of yesterday. I knew he understood, but I still felt awful we weren’t there for him.
“He didn’t mention that she was so sick.”
“Probably figured you had enough on your plate and didn’t want to add to it. I’m sorry to have dropped that bad news on you, George.”
I clenched my fists as the anger surged. I was powerless against everything happening around me, and it was fucking infuriating.
“Did Anna have anything else to say?” I asked, determined to push through the anxiety I was feeling.
“She wanted an update on Charlotte, of course.”
As we walked toward Charlotte’s room, it occurred to me that I hadn’t asked him how things were going between he and Anna. Before Charlotte and I had left for New York, she’d filled me in on a conversation between her and Sniper that Anna had overheard. According to my wife, Sniper was in the dog house.
“How is everything?” I asked tentatively.
He let out a loud sigh as if exasperated and shrugged, knowing what I was really asking. “Not good. I don’t know what to do. I wish I’d never bloody said anything,” he griped. “The subject of marriage hadn’t ever come up before, then Anna overhears one dumb thing I say about it, and now she’s giving me an ultimatum.”
We stopped in front of Charlotte’s room, and I peered in through the small rectangular window. Marlena was standing with her back to us, a few feet from Charlotte’s bed. Something felt odd about the way she was standing, but she didn’t appear to be doing anything, so I refocused on Sniper. “Anna will come around,” I told him, giving him a pat on the back. “But if you know she’s not the one—as your friend, I’m telling you, if you care about her at all—you need to let her go. She deserves better than to be strung along.”
He crossed his arms and stared into Charlotte’s room. “I think she is the one,” he sighed. “I just don’t understand why marriage is the ultimate proof of that? A piece of paper isn’t going to make me more or less committed.”
I shrugged. “For you, maybe, but obviously she feels differently. It’s not just a piece of paper to her.”
He nodded weakly. “I just don’t know what to do, George.”
I was the last one who should be giving relationship advice, while my wife was fighting for her life on the other side of this door, and I’d have given anything to be in Sniper’s shoes at that moment, but when it came to Charlotte, the question had never been whether I wanted to marry her; it had always been whether she’d agree to marry me. For some reason, I thought of Mr. Mercer and what he must be going through at that moment.
“You know, Mr. Mercer married his wife the day after she turned eighteen.” I chuckled a little, remembering the gleam in the old man’s eyes as he told Charlotte and me the story over dinner one night. “They snuck two towns over because her father didn’t approve, but they were determined.” I glanced at Sniper and added, “He worked three jobs until he saved enough money to buy their house. He said he’d gladly do it again if that’s what it took to spend the rest of his life with her.”
“I didn’t know that about them,” Sniper admitted.
“Imagine life without Anna,” I told him. “Imagine a life where she belongs to someone else; loves someone else. If you can imagine even one day where she isn’t yours, and still see yourself being happy…” I turned from the window to meet his eyes “…then let her go. Because if she really is the one, there’s no way you’d be able to imagine a life without her.” I opened the door and stepped into Charlotte’s room, noticing he didn’t move to follow. I let the door swing closed while he remained where he was, arms crossed, his expression stoic.