Five minutes. Five. Five more long minutes, and then I’ll take off. This day is going on forever. I look back down at the nails I’m supposed to be hammering but I’m unable to concentrate as I look back up at the clock again. Four minutes and thirty seconds. What if the bus driver gets there early for some reason? Olive wouldn’t know what to do. She’d be standing there alone, crying, wondering if I forgot about her after she had been gone for so long. Oh God. I can’t take this. I have to go.
“Dude, what are you doing? It’s only two!” AJ shouts in from the adjacent room.
“The bus could get there early.”
“An hour early? Doesn’t school get out at three? Because if that’s that case, I’m pretty sure it’s virtually impossible for the bus to get to the bus stop before Olive is actually dismissed from school. I have a point, don’t I? Yes, I have a point.”
“There could be traffic,” I try to reason; although reasoning with AJ is like reasoning with a stubborn five-year-old. Olive and AJ go head-to-head quite often and there is never a winner. Ever.
“We’re two blocks away, so...” AJ needs to add in. Then he looks up at me and stops mid-sentence. I’m pacing the uncarpeted living room, pressing my fingers through my hair, trying to make sense of my ridiculous apprehensions but there is no clarity coming along with my irrational worries. I’m just so uneasy being away from Olive. “I’m sorry, Hunt. You’re right,” AJ says, placing his hammer down and flipping the light off. “Let’s go get our little martini garnish.”
“Really?” I punch him in the shoulder. “I told you to quit calling her that now that she’s old enough to repeat shit. She’s going to tell someone at school.”
He snorts and rubs the spot on his arm that I punched. “I said it to you, not her.”
“Just knock it off, will you?” I snap, causing him to roll his eyes at me. If I ever had to describe him to someone, I could pretty much sum him up as the kid that was always in the principal’s office for doing something stupid, like pantsing a teacher or shooting a spitball into someone’s hair. Years later, AJ hasn’t changed. His brain hasn’t matured along with his twenty-eight-year-old body.
“Why were you so late this morning?” AJ asks. “Knocking boots with the old lady who brought you a pie last week? Oh, did she bring you her pie this week?”
Drowning in a fit of laughter, he regains his composure when I say, “Actually, my neighbor dropped in. She came over for coffee.”
AJ stops in front of me, preventing me from walking any further. “There was a chick in your house?”
I push him to the side and continue forward. “My neighbor. Not a chick,” although that was what I mentally referred to her as just a few hours ago.
“You said she, which makes her a chick. Is she married?” Why is that always his first question? Why did I bring this up to him at all?
“No, she’s not.”
“And she wanted to have coffee?”
“Yes, and it was just coffee. She didn’t pin me up against a wall and have her way with me.” Those were the thoughts I was avoiding the entire time, though, but AJ doesn’t have to know that.
“But I bet you’re thinking that would have been pretty fucking sweet, huh? What does she look like? Is she hot? Big tits? Nice ass? I need details, bro.” God, shut up. I close my eyes and pull in a struggling breath while ignoring each of his questions. “You would have said no, if she didn’t meet some, if not all, of those criteria,” he continues, despite my lack of encouragement. I can see his shit-eating grin in my peripheral vision, and I’m now absolutely sure that telling him about having coffee with Charlotte was a horrible mistake. Though, it was not as big of a mistake as bringing him to the bus stop where Charlotte is currently standing. “Bro.” AJ grips his hand around my shoulder and forces me to stop walking. “What’s gotten into you today? You’ve been doing well lately and it’s the first time I’ve seen you with that ‘rock-bottom’ look in on your face in a good while.”
“Today’s just hard. It’s been hard,” I say, keeping my eyes set on Charlotte.
“You know she didn’t just go off to college, right?” he asks.
“Yes, I know, AJ.” But it’s all a downward slope from here. First kindergarten...then the next thing I know she’ll be driving. She’ll be dating. She’ll be sneaking into gardens at night with some dude who wants to carve her damn name into a tree.
I try to continue walking, but his hand tightens around my shoulder. “Hunt, what is this chick’s name? Give me that at least.”
“Hey!” Charlotte yells over. It is forty-five minutes before the bus is supposed to arrive, so I guess I’m not the only crazy parent here. I turn to tell AJ that, but he is too busy taking quicker steps ahead of me toward Charlotte.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” AJ says. “I’m AJ, Hunt’s brother.” He points over to me and I place my head in my hand. How were the two of us cut from the same cloth? “Are you by any chance Hunter’s neighbor? The one who joined him for coffee this morning?” Peeking through my fingers, I watch as Charlotte slips a bookmark in between the pages of the book she was reading and stands up, facing AJ.
“Nope,” she grins. “We definitely haven’t met. I am your brother’s neighbor, and yes, I did have coffee with him this morning. Is that a problem?” Charlotte lifts her hand to shake his, but AJ finds it necessary to first turn around and cup his hand around his mouth, shouting through a whisper, “You don’t have to answer my questions. I answered them myself.” I love how he’s pretending to whisper, like any type of volume matters right now. If I look at AJ for another second, I might go after him with a swinging fist, so instead I look up at Charlotte, noticing she is not the slightest bit embarrassed by this horrible encounter.
“I’ve been around his type, plenty,” she says, leaning to the side so she can see me around AJ. “This isn’t new to me.” Her smile is sarcastic and adorable. Adorable? I didn’t know that word was even part of my vocabulary, aside from referring to Olive.
“We’re here early because Hunter was hoping you would be here early, too.” You have to be fucking kidding me. I’m going to knock him out.
“AJ, maybe you could sit down and stop talking. Or better yet, go back to the site and keep working,” I suggest.
“But I’d like to get to know your new neighbor.”
She gives me a quick wink and sits down beside AJ on the bench. “What would you like to know?” Charlotte complies.
“Well, I already know you’re single. But now I know you’re a single mom—I never would have guessed that, honestly. You live across the street from Hunter, so now I’m wondering when the two of you will cut to the chase and go out for dinner now that you’ve had coffee? I can watch the kids.” Still wanting to crawl out of my skin, I keep my eyes locked on this scene, waiting to hear what comes out of Charlotte’s mouth.
Thankfully, I don’t have to wait long because she stands up and walks over to me with a blank expression. “Your brother...” she begins. I like wherever this is going. I think. “Is a nutcase, and kind of funny. Why are you here so early?”
“Hey now!” AJ yells over. “We were in the middle of a very serious conversation.”
Charlotte turns around and gives him a look I can’t see, but then immediately turns back to face me. “Are you okay? Did you survive the brutal six hour wait?”
“I’m good. I just wanted to make sure I was here when the bus gets here. I know I probably sound crazy, but maybe not since you’re sitting here, too.”
The corners of her lips perks up. “Yeah, for the past year, I have come down to the bus stop an hour early and read, using this time as my daily late lunch break. At least I know I’ll never be late.”
“That’s fantastic. Hunter, you won’t have to stand here alone every day,” AJ interrupts again, with a cunning smirk I still want to punch.
“Really, you should get back to work so we’re not there until six, finishing up.” AJ doesn’t like to work past five, so I’m using the only weapon I can think of right now. He looks down at his watch and squints one eye, debating what choice is better—torturing me or getting out of work on time. “Alexa will kill you if you’re late tonight.” That should do it. It’s their anniversary. And when I say, “Kill” I mean she will make his life a living hell for an indefinite period of time.
“Shit,” he says. “Fine. You win this time, bro.” Win. What exactly am I winning? “It was a pleasure to meet you, Charlotte.” AJ tips his invisible hat and heads back down toward the job site.
Charlotte doesn’t respond. Instead, she immediately turns her attention back to me. “You have to go back to work after you get Olive?” Charlotte asks.
“Yeah, Olive is no stranger to carpentry. She’s been with me at every single job for the past five years.”
“What a lucky little girl,” she says, slipping her hands into her pockets and rolling back onto her heels. Charlotte looks up at the sun and squints from the brightness as she exhales a soft sigh. “Boy, you seem to have this single parent thing down pat.”
“What choice do I have?” It’s not the option I would have chosen. Ever. Watching Olive grow up without a mother, or any female influence for that matter, has made this single parent task even harder. What do I know about raising a little girl, or a teenage girl? Nothing.
“Let me take Olive home with me while you finish up at work. She and Lana can play for a bit. It’ll be a great way to finish the first day of school for both of them.”
I think about it for a brief second, but then I realize I haven’t seen my little girl in six hours and there’s no way in hell I’m not keeping her by my side for the rest of the day and night. “I appreciate the offer, but—“
“What am I saying?” she says, placing her hand up against the side of her cheek. “You haven’t seen that precious little face in hours.”
“Yes, that,” I chuckle awkwardly. Was I always this awkward around women? I can hardly remember, considering Ellie and I grew up together. We promised to marry each other when we were children.
The minutes with Charlotte pass with a series of short conversations about weather and the horrible grass seed our lawns were sodded with. The awkwardness between us begins to lessen, but with each second, as my comfort level increases, guilt seeps into to my veins—guilt for enjoying the company of another woman, and guilt for talking to a beautiful woman—which is now causing me to feel like I am somehow cheating on my dead wife. It’s okay to move on. It’s okay to do all of this. I’ve told myself this for years and through dozens of horrible first dates, but each time, I still question if it’s wrong.
Relief sets in when the bus creeps down the road. The thought of seeing Olive fills me with relief—the only little thing in this world who makes me feel like I’m alive and not walking among the dead. My daughter is the blanket I couldn’t give up as a child, and the bed I used to hide under during a thunderstorm. She’s the calm voice always telling me everything is going to be okay. Mostly, she is the voice I’ve longed to hear for five years—the voice I know I’ll never hear again. She is Ellie. Everything about her is Ellie. It’s as if Ellie created her entirely on her own without my help. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. She, alone, makes my life worth living.
As the wheels of the bus come to a screeching halt, my heart freezes. The doors crank open and I watch each child hop off the bus one by one until I see the blonde, springy ponytail I’ve been waiting for all day. “Daddy!” she yells, running toward me at warp speed. The pride highlighting her face melts everything inside of me. Her arms wrap around my legs, squeezing me as tightly as I want to squeeze her. Her embrace tells me she missed me as much as I have missed her today and I lift her up, holding her tighter, relishing in the warmth of her cheek against mine. I feel her tiny heart beating through her back as a small shudder escapes her mouth. “I missed you so much today. I was so worried about you being all alone.”
My world stops. My mind stops spinning, and my heart…my heart hurts. What have I done to her? “Why were you worried? You should never have to worry about me.” The words come out, but they feel stuck in my throat, like I’m trying to convince her of something different than what she has obviously grown accustomed to.
Pulling away, she takes my face in her hands and stares me straight in the eyes, just like Ellie always did when she wanted to get her point across. “Because you don’t like to be alone. You need me.” Her words are spoken through a wisdom no five-year-old should have. Those words define a parent who has no right taking care of a small child when he can clearly not always take care of himself.
“Olive,” I breathe out. “You need to listen to me.” Her lips purse together with a hint of the attitude I know is looming. “You do not ever need to worry about me. I have never liked being alone because I love being with you. And yes, you are a million percent correct: I will always, always need you, and I hope you will always need me too. Plus, I wasn’t alone today—I had Uncle AJ with me all day at work.”
“Oh, Daddy. You’re so good at avoiding the truth,” Olive responds. She is not five. I’m convinced of this. Rather than fight with the warrior of all fights, I pull her back in and her arms loop around my neck as she rests her head on my shoulder. “Whether you like to believe it or not, I was sent to you for a reason.” While there are many times when I feel like the use of her words surpasses her age, I’m beginning to question where she is getting these insightful statements from—or rather, who read them to her.
“Olive,” I sigh. “Who read your baby book to you?”
“Auntie Alexa,” she giggles. It has been a couple of years since I have opened Olive’s baby book. I used to read it to her every night, the parts that Ellie insisted on filling out before Olive was even born. A writer never has a shortage of words, and as an English teacher, it should never have surprised me how many letters she wrote to Olive in preparation for her life. There were nights when I would sit in Olive’s room after she had fallen asleep and read Ellie’s words under the glow of the moonlight, imagining the sound of her voice as if she were speaking the words into my ear. Some of the pages had stains from tears…tears of happiness she felt when dreaming of a life she was creating. I used to trace my finger over the soft, puckered spots on the paper, wishing I could wipe away another one of Ellie’s happy tears from her face rather than from a page in a baby book.
It got to the point where I couldn’t read it anymore. The pain it was causing me to imagine the words that had gone unspoken after Ellie’s death began to haunt me. I wanted to write the words for her—explain in great detail what Olive looked like, how the sound of her cry was nothing less than a soothing lullaby from heaven. I wanted to describe the incredible color of Olive’s eyes—how they are blue, but with greens, yellows and purples mixed in like a splash of watercolor. I should have been able to write about the time Olive looked up into the sky and said “Ma”. I know it was nothing more than baby babble, but to me it was a sign connecting our family.
It never fails, the second I place a pen down to the glossy paper in Olive’s baby book, the words seem to float above my head like a breeze, drifting just out of reach and causing me to forget how to put a sentence together. I’m not a writer. I’m a reader of a writer’s words and the only writer I have ever wanted to read words from can no longer breathe the air needed to form a syllable.
Olive slips herself out of my arms as we approach our driveway. “I’ll get the mail!” she shouts, running ahead. She whips open the door to the mailbox and pulls herself up on her tiptoes to reach whatever is inside. As she retrieves the mail, she looks at it quickly, flipping through it like she does every day. I’m not sure I understand the excitement of looking through mail, considering the amount of bills I receive, but for some reason she enjoys thumbing through it all. I can assume that might change some day when she has financial responsibilities. “Daddy, there’s a letter from that lady.”
Ellie. Her heart. I jog over to Olive and take the letter from her hand. Turning it over, I’m hopeful for a return address, but once again, disappointment sets in when I see that this continues to be a one-way message.
Olive stands in front of me, looking up, waiting to hear what the note says. Before I open it, I look back down at her pleading eyes. Does she feel what I feel? Does she yearn for a connection to the heart surviving my wife—her mother?
“Inside,” I tell her, pointing to the front door. “We only have a few minutes because I have to get back to work with Uncle AJ.”
“Not until you read it, Daddy,” she says, walking ahead toward the door.
We sit down on the couch as Olive peels her backpack and sweater off. She pulls her leg up and twists toward me, waiting with eagerness. We haven’t received a letter in a couple of months and I was beginning to wonder if things had gone wrong in this woman’s life. But as long as her heart is beating and she’s well enough to write this letter to me, it all has to be okay. I slide my finger under the flap of the envelope and tear it open slowly, keeping the envelope intact.
Whenever I pull one of these letters out, my stomach turns heavy and my chest tightens. I find it hard to swallow or conjure up an intelligent thought. This isn’t just a letter from a stranger. This is a letter from the person caring for the last of what is left of Ellie.
When I was a child, I remember Mom telling me that when a person dies, it is only their body that passes on because their soul remains intact forever. If a soul stays behind, wouldn’t it make sense for it to remain attached to the heart that created this soul? I know it’s a foolish way of thinking, but it makes sense to me. I know the body I fell in love with is gone, buried deep under the soil of this world, but the heart I watched grow with age, the heart that adapted to a greater love as life evolved, perhaps it is sheltering at least a part of her soul that remains. At least that’s how it seems from these letters I continue to receive.
My hands shake as I unfold the typewritten letter. “Daddy!” Olive snaps me out of my haze. “What does it say?”
I wish the letter were created with handwritten words, offering just one minuscule hint of who she is.
Dear Mr. Cole,
I stood on the cliff of a mountain today and took a breath of sweet summer air. I closed my eyes and felt warmth embrace her heart—it felt full, as if it were taking up all free space in the cavity of my chest. When I squatted down and stretched my arms over the ledge, the strength of her heart pounded harder and sped up as if it were knocking on my ribcage, reminding me of her presence. This heart is so alive. I am alive.
When I laid down along the stony rippled edge of the cliff, I placed my hands over her heart and stared up into the sky, feeling the brightness overwhelm me as if heaven were covering me with a blanket, and her heart calmed under my touch. I felt her. I felt her life living within me, and I am grateful. I am alive because of her, just as her heart is alive because of me. The connection was strong today and I knew I needed to send you this letter. I hope it offers you a bit of comfort through the pain that must follow you around like a dark shadow.
Take care,
Her Heart
Rather than soak up the beautiful words from this stranger who might be the most familiar person in my lonely world, I can only focus on the mountain, and the question of where this mountain is. I need to find it, in hopes of finally meeting this woman. Although, I shouldn’t be dumb enough to think she’s just sitting around some mountain waiting for me to show up.
“Maybe she was at that mountain Grampy took us to last year,” Olive says. Mountain. What mountain? I don’t know if this woman even lives in this state, or on this side of the country. I don’t know how she knows who I am, and I certainly don’t know who she is. I always thought the donation and recipient process was anonymous. I’ve contacted the hospital several times, pleading for information, but each time I have been led to another roadblock. I did find out that this particular donation wasn’t completely anonymous, but the recipient requested to keep her identity private. I’ve looked up the laws and it doesn’t add up. Any time I’ve tried to get somewhere by arguing this, I get nowhere. “We should go to that mountain.” There is no mountain in this town or the surrounding area. Olive snags the letter from my hand and turns it over. “Look, Daddy.” During the short second it takes for me to take the letter back and flip it over, I pray that there is contact information.
But there isn’t.
Instead, I find a drawing.
“That was mommy’s favorite,” Olive whispers. “She likes them, too.” The letter falls from my limp hand, and I watch it float like a feather to the ground.