My fist is growing weak as I continue knocking on Charlotte’s door. I know she’s home. I’m also aware it’s close to midnight. I pull out my phone and send another text, pleading for her to answer.
I’m not giving up until she does. I need to talk to her. I’ve been trying to avoid calling her in case her volume is up since I don’t want to wake Lana this late at night, but she’s leaving me no choice.
My finger hovers over the call button just as I see the hall light illuminate through the foggy glass. I hear footsteps. Please don’t be Lana. The door opens sluggishly and Charlotte is standing in front of me in a ratty white robe, her hair tousled everywhere and her eyes half-lidded and also full of confusion. She hasn’t yet given me the opportunity to see her without make-up and now I don’t understand why. Every one of her features is lighter, more natural, flushed—beautiful.
“Hunter, it’s midnight,” she yawns.
“I know, but I need to talk to you,” I state the obvious.
“Can’t it wait until morning? I was asleep,” she says, slowly coming to the realization of what she looks like. Her fingers press through the roots of her hair, smoothing out the snarls as she pulls her robe closed a little tighter across her chest.
I step forward, forcing her to step back, allowing me in. “She knew Ellie. Ellie promised her the heart. The woman from the letters was the woman I ran into at the gardens. That’s crazy, right?”
“What?” Charlotte says through a hazy groan. “I don’t follow.” Annoyance sets in, as I need her to keep up right now. I need her to help me figure this all out.
“She knew her, Charlotte. I didn’t know her, but Ellie knew her. Ellie told her she would give this woman her heart if it survived her brain. What sense does that make?” My voice is growing in volume and Charlotte’s attention locks on the stairwell.
“Please keep your voice down so Lana doesn’t wake up.” Her words come out in soft caws. I shouldn’t have woken her. I need to get a grip.
“I’m sorry,” is all I can offer. With my voice lowered, I calmly explain everything again—Ari being the heart recipient and also the woman in the gardens. As I’m explaining, I keep wondering if Ellie wanted Ari and me to meet. None of this can be coincidental. I don’t believe in that crap, especially since Ellie can’t send me any of those soul-gripping whimsical messages through the wind and shit. There has to be more than what Ari admitted to me. I need to know the rest.
Charlotte’s hand reaches for my arm and she pulls me toward the couch as we both sit down. “You have to calm down.” Her hand rests on my back as she traces her fingertips in small circles below my shoulder.
I take a deep breath, one I’ve needed to take for hours. “I know this all sounds ridiculous,” I explain.
“It’s not ridiculous. I would want to know who she is if I were in your shoes, too,” she says.
“You would?” I look up at her, needing the validation in her eyes, telling me I’m not completely insane.
“Of course,” she says, but there is no validation in her eyes. Instead, there’s a distant look. “Hunter…”
“I shouldn’t have woken you. I just—you’re the one I wanted to talk to.”
“You’re making this so damn hard,” she says, sinking farther into the couch. “Hunt, this really isn’t the best time to have this conversation but since you’re here…”
“What?” I ask, my voice sounding as worn out as I feel. What is she about to say?
“I don’t know if I can follow you on this path you're heading down. I do want to be here for you, understand you, and support you, but this is incredibly difficult with your fluctuating moods and behavior. I mean, you couldn’t even tell me you were going to meet this woman tonight. I feel hurt by that, I guess.” It completely slipped my mind between all of my racing thoughts of Ari that I didn’t tell Charlotte I was meeting her tonight. Nice move, Hunter. “Whether this is innocent or not with her, I just wish you had been honest with me today—tonight.” She drops her head into her hands, releasing a heavy sigh, a non-forgiving sigh. I fucked up tonight. I deserve this. “I just—I’m not sure what you need from me right now, but I don’t know if I can handle it. I’ve been through my fair share of crap—nothing compared to you—but I don’t want things to be like this. So confusing, hard.”
“I didn’t mean to make things hard on you,” I tell her. She is the last person I would want to make things hard for.
“I know.” Her elbows fall to her knees and she hunches over, clearly exhausted. I watch, waiting for her thoughts to subside. “Hunt, I just don’t think your heart and/or mind are in the right place for us right now,” she says with tears filling her eyes.
She’s breaking up with me and I can’t think of anything to say. I do want this—her. Things have hardly had a chance to begin with us and now they’re ending and it’s my fault. “So that’s it. You’re done with me?”
“Things have been really fun. I love being with you, and Olive of course, but something feels like it’s missing. There’s a void—and it’s starting to hurt me. I can only imagine it will get harder—worse over time—as I fall for you more than I already have. So this is me protecting myself.” She places her hand over my bouncing knee and squeezes gently. “I don’t want it to be like this, but you need to figure some things out.”
“Charlotte, I want to be with you. I need to be with you.” The words come out far easier now than they did a month or two ago. I’ve really grown attached to her, to the point where she feels like a crucial part of my life, a part that feels normal with her in it. I didn’t even know I could find anything remotely close to normal before I met her, and I don’t want to lose that. “I should have been honest with you today. I was wrong and I messed up,” I tell her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “Please don’t do this.”
“Hunt, you made it clear that you need to explore this newfound part of your life and I want you to be able to do that. You clearly have a connection to this woman and for the chance that you want to explore that after reading her letters for five years, I want you to have that freedom. Olive has told me about the look in your eyes when you read one of her letters. She told me you have a special smile just for this woman’s words.” I want to argue with her and tell her she’s completely wrong but I’d be lying if I said I felt nothing toward Ari. And Charlotte’s right—it isn’t fair to her. “Take some time and figure out what you want. If by chance, you realize it’s me, I’ll be here. And if it’s her, I understand completely.”
“Charlotte, I do want you!” But I want to know more about Ari, too, and I’m seeing right now that I can’t have it both ways. I didn’t ask for things to be like this. It isn’t fair.
“Then that’s the way things will end up.”
“Don’t throw this fate shit at me, please,” I tell her. While I’m saying this, I hear Ari’s argumentative words about our predestined paths in life. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to figure out if Charlotte is my less chosen path…my road not taken, or if Ari is.
“I don’t believe in fate, Hunter. I believe in choices.”
I stand up, as this conversation has a defined end mark that I am trying to step over. “I’m sorry for waking you up so late.” This fucking sucks. I’m thirty years old and I’m being dumped by the first person I’ve allowed myself to have feelings for besides Ellie.
“Anytime, really. We’re friends, we’re neighbors, and our daughters are connected at the hip. We’re stuck with each other.” Kiss of death words. Her voice rattles with an uncomfortable laugh as she tugs at her robe again. “Hunt, we’re adults; we can work through this. I don’t want there to be awkwardness, okay?”
“I’ve seen you naked,” I add with a teasing smile, testing the waters.
“And I’ve seen you naked,” she says.
“Whatever.”
“If whatever is meant to be, it will be,” she responds.
I leave the conversation at that, quietly slipping out the door, unwilling to turn and look back at whatever emotion is written across her face. I know I’m the cause of her pain and confusion, and now mine, as well.
Thank God. Mom is asleep in the guest room and Olive is snoring away. I quietly pad across the floor barefoot, heading up the stairs, avoiding the spots that creak. Once inside my bedroom, I flip on the lights and slide open the closet doors, reaching up for the large brown box with Ellie’s name inked across the top.
I rest the box on my bed and open the flaps, exposing all of Ellie’s belongings that I could squeeze into this thing. I reach my hand down the right side until I touch the bottom, feeling around for the book I’m looking for. The moleskin fabric comes into contact with my fingertips and I slip it out carefully.
I’ve skimmed through her journal many times before, selfishly ruining whatever privacy she wanted while she was alive, but most everything I read were things I already knew, which is why I only skimmed the pages. The memories always seemed to hurt more than help. Now, though, I need to look harder for the parts of Ellie’s life she kept secret.
I get it. We all have secrets. We all have demons and we all have moments so personal that we can’t share them. I just never considered the parts she left out.
Turning page after page, I drag my finger down the center of Ellie’s beautiful words, the penmanship I always admired. I teased her that she was born to be a teacher, with her perfect handwriting. It’s the kind of script that is so clean and crisp no one would ever struggle to read it like most cursive writings.
As I begin to read, the words sink in and memories join them. I haven’t done this in a while so it feels fresh, as if the words were nightcaps to a perfect day I experienced only hours before. Ellie wrote in this journal once a month, recapping every important detail for the prior thirtyish days. She started this new journal the day we got married. She said it was a new chapter and deserved a new book.
My cheeks burn as I read her memories on the first night of our honeymoon, the inner thoughts she had while we commenced our marriage in Puerto Vallarta in front of our open porch doors, which overlooked nothing but the water, stars, and moon. The warmth around us felt like a cocoon shielding us from everything and everyone. It was only us that night, and I would give everything I have to be back in that moment with her.
The way she looked at me, as if all of her dreams had finally come true, made me understand the true meaning of life’s plan. Men don’t typically dream about their wedding day, but since the moment my hormones replaced the thoughts of Ellie only being a friend in my life, I had dreamt of that moment, in that bed, in that hotel room, on that night with her. Even though we had plenty of prior practice, that night felt like the first time all over again.
Flipping to the next page, I continue to read her poetic thoughts, stumbling over a certain line I know I never read before.
If only God had placed me on this earth to serve more purpose than just making a man slowly fall in love with me for seventeen years, I could promise him seventeen more years. ‘Till Death Do Us Part’ is a truth I will give my soul to for eternity, wherever that may be.
Ellie always had a way of talking in circles when she wrote, words that seemed to make little sense to me, though I knew there was always a deeper meaning behind what was delicately rolling off of her tongue via the tip of a pen. These written words, however, make sense to me now, but were her thoughts intuition or a secret? That’s what I don’t understand.
I skip forward several pages, finding another indented quote centered in the middle of the page.
A gift doesn’t always have to be tangible
It doesn’t always have to be enfolded with a bow
Occasionally it’s protected in blood and arrives without a label
While full of soul-rendering love, it can also produce sorrow
I offer this bequest
In the remains of my shadow
A gift that will surpass my last breath
I read the poem over and over, doing my best to make sense of it—the gift she’s speaking of—a gift covered in blood. Ellie, my Ellie, the one with a smile always carved into her perfect, rosy lips, never expressed a morbid thought. I want to be in denial of the thought that she might have known of an expiration date. Her parents would have known, and yet they have never shared a hint of expecting her untimely death. Would she have kept something like this to herself?
I’m afraid to read more. I’m afraid to search for more insightful rhymes that I can’t make sense of. I close the journal, hugging it against my chest tightly. “Ellie, what were you keeping from me?” I ask as I lie back against my pillow. Being alone in this cold bed that I have occupied myself for so long, it feels extra empty tonight.
Peering over to the nightstand, I see that it’s two in the morning, and the gears in my head are working harder than they do in the middle of the day. My pain has always been about missing her, sadness for what she lost and what Olive and I have lost out on, but now there’s a pain from wondering about what I never knew—what secrets she was keeping from me.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but when the bed shifts, I know it’s morning. After an endless night, the daylight is painful, filling my body with slight flu-like symptoms. Exhaustion has me pinned to the bed, unable to move other than lifting my eyelids as far as they will go.
Sunshine is filtering through my half-closed blinds and glowing through Olive’s blond curls. I take the moment to look in her eyes, admiring how blue they appear surrounded by the youthful bright whites encircling them. Why does my heart sometimes hurt when I look at her? A father should never feel pain when he looks at his daughter, but I do so often that I feel guilty.
“Are you okay?” Olive asks me softly while running her small hand across my forehead. “You don’t feel warm.” She lifts the covers and pulls them up to her neck, regardless of already being completely dressed from head to toe for school. “Grammy is taking me to the bus stop. She said you aren’t feeling well. Why are you still in your clothes from yesterday, Daddy?” I continue to watch her face move as she asks me all of her questions. “Why aren’t you answering me? Is something wrong with you?”
I pull my heavy arm out from behind my head and wrap it around her shoulders. “I’m just fine, Olive. I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Grammy said you aren’t well,” she continues. “I don’t want you to be sick, Daddy. I can ask Grammy to make you soup. Why do you look so sad?” Olive’s question falls short as her chin trembles and a tear falls from her eye. “Please don’t be sad.” Why is it I’m only good at making people cry?
I pull her against my chest, still having no words to make her feel better. I kiss her head and inhale the sweet scent of her watermelon shampoo. “I’m okay and I love you more than anything in this whole world. Do you understand that?”
“I love you more than the sun, the sky, the grass, the moon, and the stars. I love you so much it hurts, Daddy.” Her mature words sting my nerves, making me wonder how much she understands of what she said. It’s as if Ellie’s whirlwind lyrical thoughts were genetically laced within Olive’s DNA.
“I don’t want you to ever feel pain, Olive.”
“But sometimes—” she pauses, looking down at a piece of lint on the sheet, “When I look at you, I feel your pain.” Oh, God, what have I done?
“Do you want to stay home with me today?” I ask her.
She nods her head slightly as a small smile touches her lips and she lies down in the crook of my arm, nuzzling her head against my chest.
“Olive, we have to go,” Mom says from the hall.
“I’m keeping her home with me today,” I respond.
Mom walks into my room, her hands on her hips and an unsettled look on her face. “Hunter, you can’t keep her home for no reason. The school frowns upon that.” I squeeze Olive a little tighter. “Hunter, did something happen?”
I can only offer her a weak, pitiful smile. “What’s wrong with me, Mom?”
“Olive, sweetie, go downstairs and turn on the TV for a bit. I’ll let the school know you’ll be staying home today,” Mom directs her.
Normally, Olive would be elated to find out she’s staying home, but she’s upset, and it’s because of me. She takes her time climbing out of the bed and brushes by Mom at the door without another word.
Mom comes closer, sitting down at the edge of the bed. “I am very concerned about you,” she begins. “We need to find you some help.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I remind her. “What the hell is wrong with me? It has been five years and I’m no better today than I was that day at the hospital and now things are pretty much over with Charlotte, too.”
Mom runs the back of her fingers down the side of my face, making me realize this conversation is not one a grown adult has with his mother. I’m not a grown adult at this moment, though. I’m her little boy again. I’m losing it. I’ve lost it—my mind is gone. “Oh, sweetie,” Mom exhales. “They say it takes the same amount of time to get over a person as it took to fall in love with a person. You loved Ellie since you were five years old. That’s what’s wrong with you.”
“You’re saying I’m going to feel like this for another fifteen years?”
“Not this amount of pain, but some pain. For now, though, you need to talk to someone. This is affecting Olive now that she’s old enough to understand. We’ve had these talks, Hunter. You just keep pushing us away, and we can’t do anything to help you if you don’t want our help.”
Everything she is saying is true. I’ve acknowledged it all before but have ignored it for a long time. “Ellie was keeping a secret from me.”
Mom snaps up straight, her brows pulling in toward one another. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Ellie knew she was going to die. She told the woman from the letters—the woman I met last night. She knew Ellie, and Ellie had promised her heart to this woman.”
Mom looks as baffled as I felt last night. “I thought you were meeting with a client last night?”
“I lied.”
“You met that woman?” She closes her eyes and shakes her head, probably trying to clarify everything I’m saying. “She knew Ellie? Ellie knew she was going to die? Hunter, that makes no sense at all.” Redness webs across her cheeks as she stares through me. “I speak to Ellie’s parents all of the time and not once have they ever hinted at knowing this could have happened. Don’t you think that’s something they would have shared with us—with you?”
I shrug because I don’t have a good response. I’m questioning a lot right now and I wouldn’t put any kind of secret past Ellie’s parents.
“If this is true, they didn’t know, Hunter. I can tell you that much,” she continues. “Did that woman tell you any more than what you just said?”
“No, she said she didn’t feel right sharing Ellie’s secret.”
“Oh my.”