Charlotte
Ike and I took Meadow everywhere. We spent an afternoon on the beach building sand castles just so she could stomp on them and laugh with delight. We discovered she loved waffles with syrup, and that she loathed the dark. It wasn’t hard to understand the last one. She’d been in the dark for a long time. We were surprised that she slept. It was never for very long, and every time she woke, she’d cry out in panic. Ike would always be there, waiting to comfort her. At first, she wouldn’t let him touch her. Eventually, though, she let him scoop her up and hug her until she understood everything was okay. Moment by moment, I witnessed her bond with Ike strengthen; I watched as a scared little girl, who had trouble understanding the world around her, began to understand trust. I felt immense comfort and peace in that.
I didn’t know when, but I knew at some point, Marlena would reach out to me, or I’d feel something shift when they took me off life-support. I waited, keeping my mind open so that when it happened I’d be ready, and then I’d know the final chapter of my life had come to an end and I could rest easy.
I didn’t go back again to see George and my family. Though I tried to ignore it, something deep down inside me kept niggling at me, telling me I needed to reconsider, but whenever it crept out I quickly pushed it back.
Ike and I were laughing as we watched Meadow chase Rudy around the backyard of Grams’s house when the moment finally came; only it wasn’t me Marlena summoned, but Ike.
“I guess he’s not that big of a cock after all,” I joked with Ike. The rooster had a soft spot for the girl and didn’t mind playing along with her. It seemed Rudy would never be a fan of mine, but I was okay with that because he was good to Meadow.
Meadow crowed out, “Cock-a-doodle-doo,” and Ike imitated her, but then his laughter ebbed and he slouched to one side.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I gripped his shoulder in an effort to keep him upright.
“Marlena is summoning me,” he said, just before he collapsed, landing on his side.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
“Son-a-bit,” Meadow repeated loudly. I rolled my eyes and smacked my forehead. I really needed to get a grip on my mouth.
“Don’t say that,” I told her. I straightened Ike as best I could while Meadow watched, brow furrowed with skepticism and concern. She wasn’t sure if I was helping or hurting him. “He’ll be okay,” I promised. I needed to go and see what Marlena wanted, but I couldn’t just leave Meadow. I knew she couldn’t be hurt here, but I didn’t want her to get scared and wonder why we left her alone.
“Grams!” I called out, hoping she was in the house. A few seconds later, she appeared. “Marlena summoned Ike. I need to go check on him. Will you watch Meadow?”
“Of course I will, hon. I hope everything is alright.”
A moment of uncertainty hit me. I didn’t know why Marlena would call for Ike and not me, but I was going to find out. “I’ll be back. She’s really enjoying playing with Rudy.”
Kneeling down so I could make eye contact with her, I told Meadow, “I’ll be right back.”
I focused on Ike and found him in my hospital room with Marlena. The room was silent except for the beeping from the machines that were keeping my body alive. Marlena gazed out the large window into the dreary day, her arms crossed. Ike stood by the bed, staring down at my body. When he glanced up at me, uncertainty was thick in his eyes.
“Mr. Mercer just left. He said his goodbyes to you.”
My face felt numb. “Was he okay?”
Ike’s features contorted, and I knew it must not have been pretty. “He’s struggling. Losing his wife and you...it’s a lot.” I nodded, hating that Mr. Mercer was suffering and I wasn’t there to comfort him. This whole thing was so difficult I couldn’t even stand it. No matter what I did, someone would be hurt. I could tell Marlena knew my decision and was disappointed in it, but I didn’t really care. I wasn’t interested in being part of her exclusive club; not at the price of being trapped in a shell of myself. She thought I was taking the easy way out and, if I was being brutally honest with myself, I was—the other side offered me peace I hadn’t felt in years. But it wasn’t that simple. The thought of leaving George behind hurt like hell, but chaining him to a life that would make him a slave to my care was something I would never do to him.
“Marlena,” I said, needing to explain, but she didn’t budge. I hated how timid my voice was. This was my life. This was my decision. She’d been a great help to me and I was grateful to her for it. I couldn’t have gotten Click over to the other side without her, but that didn’t give her a right to judge me.
“Marlena,” I said again, this time my voice was strong, but she still didn’t respond. What the fuck? “So you’re just going to pretend you don’t hear me?”
There was a quick flash then Axel and Grams appeared in the room, both wearing expressions of discomfort as they held their stomachs.
Axel blinked a few times and looked around. “Holy shit, did she just bring us here?”
“The nausea will pass,” Ike told them as Grams held a hand to her forehead as if she might faint. “Take some deep breaths. Where is Meadow?”
“She was playing with Rudy.”
“I need to get back, Marlena,” Ike said to her back. “I don’t want her to realize she’s alone, or she might get scared.”
“Okay…everyone’s here,” I said, not bothering to hide my annoyance. “What now?”
“Oh, Charlotte,” Grams sniffled as she covered her mouth looking down at my body.
“It’s okay, Grams,” I assured her. “Please don’t cry.” Axel pulled her to him and hugged her with one arm as they stared at my body.
Marlena finally turned around and leaned back against the window. Her mouth set in a tight line as her eyes remained fixed on the floor for a moment longer. When her gaze lifted to mine, I saw the strain it was taking to hold so many souls on this side and my anger dissipated.
Finally she began, her voice measured, “I’m just gonna crack on with it.” She swept her gaze around the room, pausing briefly on each of the others as she went on, “I brought the lot of you here because you are the ones closest to Charlotte and have the benefit of seeing the bigger picture, and Charlotte needs to see the bigger picture, now more than ever.”
“I’m a big girl,” I said flippantly. “I can make my own decisions.”
“Marlena?” My Grams said her name, kindness and understanding in her tone. “That’s your name, right?”
Marlena nodded.
“Hon, Charlotte told us everything. She told us what a help you were to her, and I’m grateful to you for that. I know you want her to come back, and I have to admit as wonderful as it’s been to have her with us, I want that too. I want her to have a life so full and beautiful…”
“But…” Marlena helped.
“But the chances of her recovering and having a life of quality is unlikely.”
Marlena looked at me and tilted her head. “You think I brought you here to convince you to come back to this side...” her voice trailed off as she studied me. “Do you think I brought you here to help you choose what to do? Do you think I’m trying to make you want to choose life?”
“Yes,” I answered, suddenly unsure. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“No, love,” she said, shaking her head as her features softened slightly. “You made your choice long before you pulled that sweet girl to the other side, you just didn’t realize it when you did.”
Anger seized me. Why was she being so cryptic? “What are you saying, Marlena?”
“I’m saying I’ve seen how this all plays out.”
I narrowed my eyes. “As in, if I’ll live or die?”
She nodded yes. My heart thundered in my chest.
“What did you see?” Ike asked, his voice gruff. I didn’t like the fear I heard in his voice. We’d gone over everything so many times. We’d made a plan, and that plan involved me staying and taking care of Meadow with Ike. Now Marlena was possibly about to throw a wrench in it.
“It doesn’t matter,” I responded, hoping to ease his worry. “She said she’s not always right.”
Marlena frowned and shook her head, “No, I said what I see usually changes, but that’s irrelevant.”
“I want to know what you saw,” Ike growled, shocking me. Was he angry?
“Ike—”
“I want to know, too,” Grams added interrupting me.
Axel glanced at me, almost apologetically because he, too, wanted to know, and he felt like he was betraying me.
Turning my head, I looked away from Marlena.
“You need to see something first.” When Ike opened his mouth to object, she lifted a hand to stop him. “I promise I’m not dragging this out just for the fun of it. This isn’t something I can tell you, it’s something you have to see in order to understand.” She motioned for us to join her at the window.
Slowly, Ike, Grams, and Axel moved beside her and looked out the window. They were quiet a moment before Axel asked, “Who are they?”
“They’re all the people Charlotte’s helped cross over,” Ike explained, his voice quiet.
Grams turned back to me, her eyes filled with tears. “Charlotte, honey. Come see this.”
Great. Now Marlena had my Grams crying. Geez, she was an asshole. Axel and Ike made room as I stomped to the window. In the parking lot below, hundreds of faces stared up at me. There were so many, but I recognized every single one of them.
“You helped all these people, Charlotte,” Grams whispered through her tears as she gripped my arm, and I heard the pride and love in her voice.
And as I stared down, I couldn’t deny I felt some pride, too. Marlena was a master manipulator. Expert level in fact.
“Every single one of them would still be trapped if not for you, Charlotte. If your life had ended, who would have helped them?” Marlena asked.
“I’d still be trapped if not for you, Charlotte,” Ike noted. I met his gaze, begging him not to let Marlena turn him. I refused to believe she knew definitively how this would turn out. Not even she could know what I’d be waking up to, if I even could.
Ike squared his shoulders and turned to Marlena. “The souls she helped are her past, we’re talking about her future. You said she’d already made her decision by the time she brought Click over. How could she? She didn’t even know she was still alive before that.”
Marlena nodded and met my gaze. “Remember the ticking pocket watch?”
I frowned, “Of course, I gave it to a lost little boy. Why, what’s that got to do with anything?”
She turned her back to the window and shifted her gaze to the bed. Beside my body was the same little boy, and in his tiny hand was the pocket watch I’d given him.
“Did you bring him here?” Ike asked Marlena before I’d had a chance to consider how he ended up here.
She shook her head. “He came on his own. He followed Charlotte.”
He did?
“Do you know who he is?” I asked Marlena, desperate for an answer. “He won’t talk to me. I keep asking his name, but he won’t answer.”
She pulled a sucker from her pocket and unwrapped it. “He doesn’t know his name. He hasn’t been given one.”
“So…who is he?” Axel asked anxiously.
She rolled the sucker around in her mouth a few times before taking it out. “I’m sorry, having you all here at once is draining on me.” Taking a deep breath, she righted herself, then answered Axels’ question, “He’s your nephew.”
The room went silent as everyone took a moment to process what she was saying. I was Axel’s only sibling, which meant the boy would have to be my child. Frozen in place, I stared at him, unable to process and absorb what Marlena was saying.
“He has your eyes, Charlotte,” Grams murmured as she lifted her hand to her mouth.
Fisting my hands at my sides, I shook my head. “He was on the other side which means he’s dead. I have not had a child. He isn’t mine.”
Marlena laughed, the sound filled with insult. “You’re really not this stupid, are you, Charlotte?”
Whipping my head to her, I widened my eyes and opened my mouth to respond when Ike chimed in. “Well since this is your sideshow why don’t you explain it?” His tone was hostile. “I mean, yes were all dead and have eternity, but this shit is getting old. Say it. Say what you know.”
Marlena’s expression softened. “I knew this would be hardest for you, Ike. And I am sorry. It’s all here in front of you, the answer to all of this. It’s not that hard to put it together.”
Ike blinked a few times, his eyes glossing over as pain filled him. Shaking his head, he insisted, “No.”
“That’s your nephew, too, Ike.”
Looking to Axel, I found him with his eyes closed as if he were pained for Ike, maybe even for me. Next, I met Grams’s gaze. She wore the saddest smile I’d ever seen as she took my face in her hands. “A baby, Charlotte. You’re pregnant.”
I kept my gaze fixed on hers, holding my breath, reality swarming around me. My lip quivered as a tear slid down my cheek. I couldn’t make my mouth work to speak.
“Send me back,” Ike requested, his tone stern.
Pulling Grams’s hands from my cheeks, I spun around to face him, taking his hand. Immediately he jerked it away. “Ike,” I rasped, emotion thick in my throat. I had no idea what to say. Begging him not to go was selfish, but letting him leave seemed wrong, too.
“Now!” he boomed, his voice cracking as tears fell down his cheeks. I stared up at him, choking on how horrible I felt. I could feel his pain wrenching in my chest. Glancing back at Marlena, I nodded telling her to do it. When I turned back to face him, the last thing I saw was him holding his hands over his face before he vanished.
“Send me back. Let me check on him,” Axel insisted. Marlena didn’t hesitate.
As soon as he was gone, I fell to my knees and sobbed. The look on Ike’s face, the anguish in his eyes. “Shh, Charlotte,” Grams cooed. “We can’t fall apart right now. There will be a time to let it out, but now is not that time.” Helping me to my feet she hugged me. “Hold it together…a little longer, okay?”
Marlena faced the window again, while Grams and I stared at…my son. That felt foreign to think. My son. He was a handsome little thing, and now that I was really studying his face, he did have my eyes. He had George’s nose and chin and yes, even his hair. Even though my heart was breaking, I couldn’t help but smile through my tears. My gaze eventually fell to the pocket watch again, which now lay open in his tiny hand, and I heard it ticking.
“That was when you made your choice, Charlotte,” Marlena said from beside me.
I shook my head, not understanding. “How? I just wound it after it had stopped ticking.”
“And in doing so, you gave yourself—both of you—more time to live.”
“But he’s a little boy…not a baby. How—”
“He adapted. Probably saw other children and imitated them,” Marlena explained.
Wiping at my face, I groaned. “Always me choosing between McDermott men,” I half-joked, though nothing about it was funny.
Grams left my side and went to the boy, dropping to her knees and taking his face in her hands. “Your name is going to be Jennings after your grandfather,” she told him.
My brows rose as I snorted. “Is that so, Grams?”
“Well, why not? It’s a good strong name.” She continued to fuss over him as I stared.
“I don’t understand,” I mumbled to Marlena. “Did you know the entire time?”
“Just since last night,” she said. She pulled the sucker from her mouth and took a deep breath then met my gaze. Suddenly, the hospital room disappeared, and we were standing in the master bedroom of the house I shared with George, only something felt different.
“Are you happy, Charlotte?”
The sound of George’s voice drew my eyes to the bed where he was kneeling over me, rubbing my extremely pregnant belly as we talked about the baby we were going to have. I stumbled at the sight of what was obviously a vision of the future and turned to Marlena. “This is what you saw?”
“Remember me saying something usually comes along and changes what I see?” When I nodded, she continued, “Well, it works the other way, too. Sometimes, something happens to eliminate all the other possibilities.”
My bedroom disappeared and we were back in the hospital room where Grams was still fussing over her great-grandson, as if no time had passed. I slumped into the chair beside the bed, struggling to process what Marlena had shown me.
“And if I hadn’t wound the watch…” I trailed off, unable to finish the thought, as I met Marlena’s steady gaze.
“Then it would have played out very differently.”
I looked back at my body lying in the bed and let the scene I’d just seen replay in my mind. I hadn’t just been alive. I’d been me. That thought brought me back to the little boy—I still hadn’t fully grasped he was my son. “With my condition, the surgery and the drugs...how could he have survived that?”
“Miracles, love. They happen every day.” Before this moment I would have scoffed at her response, but she was right.
“Will he be okay?” I jutted my chin toward the boy.
“That, I’m afraid, isn’t something I can say for certain. At the moment, you both are healthy, but…”
“…but that could change if I don’t wake up soon.” I finished, remembering what the doctor had said about my body deteriorating. My eyes blurred with fresh tears. I was going to have to leave my family. I was going to have to leave Ike.
She nodded, taking a breath before she added, “It’s time to wake up, Charlotte.”
I bobbed my head, hearing her words, but not really absorbing them. “Thank you, Marlena.” Walking over to my son, I took his hand. “Stay with me,” I told him and then I took us back to the other side.