A Heart of Time (8 page)

“Thank you for coming,” I tell her, honestly. “She’s getting a CT scan, but she is still unconscious.” Charlotte’s arms remain around my neck as she whimpers into my ear. The sympathy-coated knife I usually feel stabbing into my chest when someone is trying to “
make me feel better
” is more like a senseless dull puncture this time and I have no energy to put up my protective wall. Instead, I close my eyes and try to ignore everything around me but the sensation of Charlotte’s arms encircling my neck, and for the first time, I don’t force myself to imagine Ellie on the other side of this embrace. For the first time, I feel a comfort I haven’t imagined ever feeling again. But it’s uncontrollable, and leaning into Charlotte, I allow it. I allow it because I am in such desperate need of consolation that I suddenly feel dehydrated from the drought of affection that I now realize I desire. I think I need Charlotte to quench my thirst for closeness.

Surrendering all restraint, my arms find their way around Charlotte’s slim waist and I pull her down to my lap, burying my head into her shoulder. “Why?” I groan.

“She won’t let anything happen to her,” Charlotte whispers into my ear.

“Who?” I reply, knowing what I want to hear, but also understanding that no one thinks the way I do.

“What is your wife’s name? You haven’t told me.”

You haven’t asked
. “Eleanor. Ellie.”

“Eleanor Cole,” she repeats her name in only a breath of a whisper, one that makes Ellie’s name sound as if it, too, were nothing more than a ghost. Following a sharp breath and a shaky exhale, Charlotte softly utters, “Ellie is yours and Olive’s angel. She won’t let anything happen to either of you. I believe that.”

My arms tighten around her as her scent infiltrates my senses. The scent I have refused to inhale in fear of loving it—seeps through the sealed cracks of my cold heart. The fight I have fought to keep an emotional distance from Charlotte has been lost.
Flowers.
She smells like the vanilla from a Clematis. I inhale as much as my lungs will allow, surprised at how much I’m able to breathe in at once. For years, my lungs have felt deflated, as if I were unable to fill myself with enough oxygen, but right now, I can breath freely.

The momentary relief in my chest is quickly clouded over as the doctor comes through the door. He doesn’t draw out his words or thoughts, or even look at me with any type of concerned grimace as he likely conjures up the appropriate words needed to reach down into a person’s throat and rip a heart out of its chest cavity. Again. Charlotte moves from my lap over to the chair, as if she senses the space I desperately need.

“Charlotte Drake,” the doctor says, interrupting the information he needs to give me right this second. “How unusual to see you around here again. It’s been a couple of years, has it not?”

“How is Olive?” Charlotte yields the focus back to where it should be.

The doctor breaks his momentary shift of attention from Charlotte back to me. “It’s a moderate concussion, but she woke up right in the middle of the CT scan,” he says with a soft chuckle. “She’s quite a spitfire, huh?” The release of agony, fear, and all other emotions pulls me from my seat and over to the doctor where I restrain myself from lunging at him with open arms.

“Is—is she going to be okay?” I stammer.

“She’s going to be just fine, Mr. Cole.” He looks down at his chart and back up at me. “I want to keep her overnight for more observation, however. We’re still waiting for a couple more test results, but I’m sure everything will come back as I expect.”

“I’m staying with her,” I tell him, demandingly.

“And that’s completely fine.” The doctor turns back for the door. “We’ll have her settled in a room within the next few minutes and you can go be with her. It was nice to see you again, Charlotte.” He waves from over his head, disappearing into the haze I’m staring toward.

When the door closes, I turn back to Charlotte, who appears to be sending someone a message on her phone. “Just asking Rosy—” one of the bus stop moms, “—to grab Lana from the bus.”

“You don’t have to stay,” I tell her. I’m used to being alone and internalizing my fears and pains, relying on no one but myself to move forward from one moment to the next.

“I know I don’t.” She holds her phone up, watching the screen for a few seconds before placing it back down onto her lap. “Lana will be picked up, so I’m all yours if you want, but I can go, too. Whichever you need right now.”

I don’t get it. I don’t understand what this is. “Why? Why do you continuously want to be around me? I hardly know how to form a smile, let alone release a joke worthy of laughing over. I push you away. I’m not a very good friend, and quite frankly, I’m an asshole to you more often than not. So why, Charlotte?” There has to be a logical reason for this outpouring of undeserved kindness.

She lifts her chin and narrows her eyes as a faint smile takes form over her lips. “This may sound a little cocky, but I’m an excellent judge of character. I like to think I have an ability to look into a person’s eyes and know exactly who they are inside. Everything you portray on the outside is a mask so no one knows who you truly are or what you’re feeling.”

I feel like laughing, not because it’s funny, but because I want to tell her what she sees is what she gets. There is no difference from the coldness I show on my face to the chill that has permanently frozen my heart into stone. “Inside, there is a hopeless, lost soul with no direction. That’s what is inside. So if that is what you’re seeing, it still doesn’t answer my question as to why you would want to be friends with someone like me.” I’m not sure I want to hear her answer. I’m not sure I know how to pry open the lid of my lonely world to make room for someone who cares about me.

“I’m aware,” she says. “I don’t want to fix you, and I don’t want you to change,” she says, looking away from me and down to her candy-red chucks. “So don’t go thinking that either.” She only breaks eye contact when something is stirring inside of her or when she’s uncomfortable saying what she’s trying to say. “You are this incredibly strong person who takes weeds and turns them into beautiful flowers—literally.” She laughs and looks back up at me, her cheeks now a little pink. “Look, Hunter, I don’t have an honest answer, but there’s a pull I feel toward you and I’ve followed my gut. Like I said, I don’t wish for you to change every time I see you. I only wish for you to gain the ability to heal. I know I won’t be any help in that department, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be around you as it happens. Because, whether you want to or not, you are going to heal.” With a smirk, she goes on to say, “We’re also neighbors so we’re sort of stuck with each other. We might as well make the best of it.”

Normally, I’d feel anger when someone tells me this pain won’t last forever. I think I might actually be a glutton for the pain I won’t let fade. I hold onto it like a lifeline, but as Olive grows older and more aware of who I am, I think I might have to allow some of my pain to ease, even if only for her sake.

“Okay,” I tell her. “Fair enough.” I guess. I’m not sure what I just agreed to, though.

Nurse Caroline comes back out and nods her head for me to follow. I walk past Charlotte, who is looking at me and waiting for a decision I’m supposed to make on whether or not I want her to stay. The person who I’ve been—who I might still be—would tell her goodbye and thank you. However, I might be sick of being
that
person. I reach my hand out to her, close my eyes, and take another deep breath.
This is the right thing to do. For me.

Charlotte swallows hard and loud enough for me to hear then takes my hand and stands up to join me. Her hand is warm, soft, small—perfect, compelling me to interlace my fingers with hers and squeeze a little tighter, all while fighting the stabbing pain running through my nerves. On second thought, maybe it’s not pain; maybe it’s that comfort thing again. How could a person be so lost that a feeling of pain and comfort could be confused with one other?

As we walk down the hall, Charlotte’s free hand wraps around my arm, her body pressed against the side of mine, and the closer we get to Olive’s room, the less my chest aches. I consider releasing Charlotte’s hand before walking into Olive’s room, but I don’t.

“Daddy! Charlotte!” Olive squeaks. She immediately does what I knew she would do and peers down to our interlocked fingers and smiles—that smile, the one that takes over her entire face.
Just like Ellie’s
.

Our hands separate as I run to Olive’s side, kneeling so I can bring myself as close to her little face as possible. “You scared me so much, Olive. I was so worried about you.” I wrap my arm around her and hold her tightly until she groans and squirms from my grip.

“I’m okay,” she says, as assuring as ever. She’s always “okay.”

“What were you doing up on top of the play set?” I ask, looking into her apologetic eyes.

She doesn’t blink as she stalls on a response, and her look has me questioning whether she doesn’t remember or just doesn’t want to tell me. After a long minute, a soft sigh expels from her lips as she says, “Someone asked me where mom was and the top of the playset was the closest I could get to her.” Just as I think I’m going to be okay, her explanation devastates me.

When Olive asks me where heaven is, I have always told her heaven is in the clouds because for now at five, it’s easy to understand. When I first told her this, she responded with confusion, telling me she can’t touch the clouds; therefore, she couldn’t touch Ellie. I told her if she reached high enough and closed her eyes, she could feel the clouds, as well as Ellie.
This is my fault.
“You told me if I reached high enough—”

“I know what I told you, sweetie, but I was wrong. I—”

Charlotte steps beside me and kneels down too. “Olive,” she says, her voice soothing and warm. “If you close your eyes, no matter where you are standing, you can feel your mom—in heaven. You don’t need to climb up high in order to reach her—” Charlotte pauses as the sound of breath hiccups in her throat, proving a difficulty in offering Olive this sound advice. Her breaths even out and a smile returns to her lips as she continues, “because your mom is right here.” Charlotte presses on Olive’s chest, over her heart. “Close your eyes, honey.”

Olive closes her eyes but opens one slightly to look at us both, skeptically. “Now what?” she giggles.

“You have to keep your eyes closed and imagine what your mom looks like, what her skin might feel like, and what her voice sounds like.” Charlotte’s words morph from sweet to soothing, serious, and believable, a combination that makes Olive relax into the bed and close both eyes.

I watch as Charlotte continues to talk about Ellie as if she knew her, and I watch as a smile tugs at Olive’s lips in response. The connection between the two of them right now is almost too overwhelming to take in. I haven’t seen Olive this calm and peaceful, no matter what the occasion.

“I think I can feel her,” Olive says in a whisper. “Mom’s voice sounds like a pretty song, and her skin feels like a flower’s petal. She looks like me, but bigger I guess.” Olive’s smile grows wider and her cheeks turn a little rosier. “She really loves me, doesn’t she?”

“More than you could ever imagine,” I tell her, feeling my throat swell into its familiar knot.

“She loves you too, Daddy.”

CHAPTER SIX

DECEMBER

-One Month Later
-

“Can I please
go out and play with Lana?” Olive begs. I’ve kept her inside for the past couple of weeks, not wanting to take my eyes off of her for even a second after the scare she gave me.

“Hunter,” AJ shouts from the TV room. “Let the kid go out and play.” Sometimes, living with AJ is like living with an annoying wife—he’s constantly whining and he badgers me like the best of them. The funny part is, he doesn’t live with me, he just spends more time here than he does at his own house with Alexa, which I’m not sure I can blame him for. Although, Alexa is here with him today—she’s here with AJ every Sunday morning for “Family Breakfast”.

“Breakfast is going to be ready in just a few minutes,” I holler out to both of them.

“Grammy and Grampy just pulled in!” Olive yells from outside the front door.
What is she doing out there?
I poke my head around the corner as raw eggs drip from the whisk in my hand.

“Olive, get in the house! Why are you wearing snow pants and boots?”

“I want to go play in the leaves with Lana,” she whines.

“Okay, first, we don’t need snow pants and boots to play in the leaves, and second, you’re wearing a summer dress over it. Third, your grandparents just got here.”

“You’re a stick in the mud,” Alexa says to me as she finds Olive in the living room. “Olive, you look fabulous in that outfit. Come here and let me do your hair.” I return to the eggs and waffles, my Sunday morning ritual. The coffee maker is in full swing and I have everything under control.

“Come on over for breakfast, there’s plenty!” I hear mom’s voice shouting from the driveway. I don’t know who’s she’s inviting, but I’m going to assume it’s Charlotte. “No, don’t be silly! Come on over. I brought coffee cake and muffins!” Silence commences but only for a few seconds. “Okay. Sure, dear, I’ll ask him.”

The door swings open and Dad’s crowing at Olive in his Cookie Monster voice, “Where’s my little princess?”

The squeals coming from Olive make me laugh. She lives for Sunday mornings with the entire family. There’s something about a full house that makes Olive feel on top of the world, and that is the reason I continue to do this every week, regardless of how much work it is. I can’t give Olive a normal family, but I can give her a family full of love.

“Sweetie, what are you wearing?” Mom asks Olive.
I knew that was coming
.

“I saw it in Vogue,” she answers. I close my eyes and shake my head.
Alexa is such an amazing influence on her...

“Very funny,” Mom says. “Hunter, dear.” Mom’s voice grows louder the closer she comes to the kitchen. Finding me at the stove, her hands cup around my shoulders as she presses up on her toes to place a kiss on my cheek. “Hi, sweetheart. I brought a few things this morning.”

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hunter, I invited Charlotte over. She was bringing in groceries from her car so I figured I would extend the invitation, but she didn’t want to impose. Would you mind if she joins us?” I smile, only for the fact that I asked Charlotte a few days ago and she declined due to awkwardness. I haven’t officially introduced her to the rest of my family yet since AJ was enough of an explanation, but thanks to AJ, Mom knows all about her.

“That would be nice,” I tell her.

“Are you two,” she clears her throat. I look over at her, feeling a rush of heat run through my cheeks. Mom and I have never talked about relationships or women at all for that matter. Ellie grew up in our life and everything fell into place at the appropriate times so “the talk” was never necessary. Looking at her now with her raised brows, I feel the need to tell her not to ask.

Instead, I say, “Are we what?”

She slaps her hand on my back. “Oh, Hunter, you know what I mean.”

“We’re friends,” I remind her for the fifteenth time in the past month. We are friends—friends who look at each other the way friends don’t look at each other. Friends who hug much longer than friends should hug when saying goodbye at the end of a late night chat session on one of our couches. Friends who haven’t dared to take things one step further in fear of losing the only friend each of us has. I have fallen for my friend…and I don’t know what to do about that.

“Hunter, I know how you feel about my prying into your personal life, and I have truly tried my hardest over the past couple of years not to push you,” This is true; instead, she has planted little tiny bugs in AJ’s ear, knowing he can’t keep a damn thing to himself. She’s even tried her hand with Olive. They’ve both ratted Mom out, but she doesn’t know this. “I just think that woman is darling and she has a little girl Olive’s age.”

“You have never met her,” I remind Mom.

“But I would love to.”

“Then go invite her in,” I laugh. “It’ll certainly make Olive’s morning.”

“Did you say my name?” Olive says, turning in to the kitchen with four ponytails lining the center of her head from front to back, shaping a perfect mohawk.

“Really, Alexa?” I yell.

“You’re welcome,” she says. Mom rolls her eyes, feeling the same way about Alexa as I do.

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to go extend your invitation to Charlotte.” Normally, I would be too concerned to send Mom across the street to talk to anyone I’m associated with, but I have warned Charlotte about Mom. Nothing could come as a surprise, I would hope.

I finish up the waffles and bring out the paper plates and napkins just as I hear Mom and Charlotte laughing as they walk in to the house. “Lana, I hear that you and Olive are best friends. Is that right?” Mom asks.

“Bestest friends in the whole wide world,” Lana says.

“Well, she saved you a spot at the table in the dining room. Why don’t you go on in and see her so your Mom and I can keep talking?” Without so much as an agreement, I hear Lana flying through the living room, followed by a shriek from Olive. The amount of noise two little girls can make is incredible.

One by one, I shuffle the filled plates into the dining room, and Charlotte is quick to meet me in the kitchen to help with the distribution. “I’m glad you came,” I tell her.

“How could I say no to your mom?” she says quietly with a crooked grin.

“I don’t know. I figured the same way you said no to me.” I nudge her playfully in the shoulder as she sweeps past me with a jug of OJ and two coffee mugs.

I’m in the process of rinsing off the frying pan when Charlotte returns for more. She wraps her arm around my back and presses her cheek into the side of my shoulder.
It feels nice
. “Your family is really great. With my parents always traveling, I haven’t felt this welcome anywhere in a long time,” she says. Learning about Charlotte over the past couple of months has been a process of slowly breaking down a barrier she has tried very hard to keep in place. While she is usually one without a filter, her past is a different story—one that seems like it’s buried in a place only she knows. I guess we sort of have that in common.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Mom says, walking in with a now empty jug of OJ. The look on Mom’s face is almost menacing like she’s plotting out my future with Charlotte right this very second. I know she means well but I don’t know how to break it to her that a future is an unlikely definition of what comes after today—it’s something I refuse to consider or think about. If I don’t think about a tomorrow, I won’t end up heartbroken when I find myself in another empty world full of only yesterdays.

“Nope, we were just coming out to join everyone,” I tell her, pulling away from Charlotte and taking the jug from her hands. “Go on out, I’ll refill this and be right there.” Mom kindly places her arm around Charlotte and guides her back toward the dining room.

When I hear the growing chatter, a moment of contentment fills me from within, bringing along a feeling of something
right
, something unfamiliar, and something I think I kind of like. Warmth soothes the inside of my chest and I’m nervous to feel the way I do. From the second Charlotte walked into the house today, I haven’t thought about Ellie or the fact that Sunday morning brunch was a thing our families did together for years until she passed.

The only meals I share with Ellie’s parents now are the forced ones that they plan so they can see Olive once a month. They look at me like I killed their daughter, like I planted a destructive seed in her uterus and took away everything they loved. Sometimes they look at Olive the same way and I want to hurt them and make them feel an ounce of what they make me feel. Though, as much as I hate living with the loss of my wife, I don’t know what it’s like to lose a daughter and I will not judge them for their behavior toward me, but I don’t understand how they can do the same to Olive, their granddaughter, and the only piece of Ellie they have left.

“Hunter,” Mom calls. “The food is getting cold.” I put down the dishrag and dry my hands on the sides of my pants. The sight I’m greeted with when I walk in to the dining room can only be described as happiness. However, I’m quickly faced with a reality I’ve been too closed off to realize. As everyone’s focus moves to my face, the smiles disappear, and my heart sinks a little. I’m making everyone around me feel the way I feel—my misery, my self-loathing pity. The silence accompanies the straight faces as I take my seat between Charlotte and Olive.

“Did I say something wrong?” I ask, knowing I haven’t said anything at all. “You were all smiling until the second I walked in.” I need to hear the truth. Am I that bad? Does Charlotte feel this way too? Olive?

“You aren’t the happiest person,” Alexa chimes in first. “It’s hard to be happy around you sometimes because I think we all feel guilty that you can’t be happy along with us.” Mom and Dad both nod their heads in agreement, probably grateful, for once, that Alexa had the courage to say something…something they were also feeling but didn’t know how to say out loud. Olive is stifling a laugh with her hand cupped over her mouth, proving she doesn’t understand what Alexa is talking about, thankfully. And Charlotte, she’s looking at me the way I don’t want her to look at me, like she just came to a conclusion I might have been trying to hide from her.

I draw in a deep breath, hoping to clear out some of the pain in my chest, but strangely, the extra air only makes me feel more suffocated. I can bail right now and make a scene, I can ignore everything Alexa just said, or I can tell her the truth. Making a decision that surprises even me, I blurt out, “You’re right.”
She is right.
“I’m sorry for what I have put you all through over the past five years.” How many times can I say this to all of them before it loses its meaning?

In the support groups I used to attend, I witnessed some people healing quicker than others. Some widows began to date only months after their spouse’s death, while some swore off the thought of a new partner entirely. I was part of the latter group for a long time, but the fog has cleared enough for me to see a little further ahead and I see a long road, a long life, one in which I’m not sure I want to remain alone, in a constant state of misery. Then again, I’m not sure I ever made the decision to be miserable; I just haven’t been able to figure out how not to be. Sometimes I feel like I’m banging on a glass window, trying to get the attention of everyone I love, but they don’t hear me. I feel like we have this conversation way too often and I really wish they could have let it go today with Charlotte here.

“Do you know how many times you have said this?” Dad says. “The number of times you have apologized makes this one a little less meaningful, Son.”
This.
This is not something I wanted Charlotte to be a part of, and by the looks of it, I can sense she feels the same way.

“My best friend lost her husband,” Charlotte states like a peace offering. “Believe it or not, Hunter is doing far better than she was doing five years after his death.”

“Oh dear, I am so sorry,” Mom pipes in. “I can’t imagine what she must have gone through, the poor thing.”
Yes you can! Hello? You’ve watched me go through it.

“Well, sure you can, Mrs. Cole.” Charlotte lets out a long sigh before placing her napkin down over her lap. “It’s pretty similar to what Hunter has experienced; however, my friend doesn’t have any children, which made it easier for her to slide down a slippery slope—one that included drugs, alcohol, and other things that are not appropriate to discuss at the table.” Charlotte wraps her hand around her coffee mug, squeezing it as if it were a stress relief. “I know I only met Hunter a couple of months ago, but I think he’s doing great, considering.” I feel odd being talked about as if I weren’t sitting here, but I feel flattered that Charlotte stuck up for me to my family. What she just did takes balls.