A Little Too Late

by Staci Hart

  “No,” I answered, grateful for the fact that he hadn’t tried to call again in equal measure to the hurt I felt that he hadn’t.

  “Do you think you will?”

  “No, I don’t.” I paused, flipping the dough, eyes on my hands. “It’s over. We said goodbye. And my only consolation is that it’s behind me. I don’t know if I could have withstood him if he hadn’t let me go, if he hadn’t given up.”

  “So if he put up a fight, you would bend?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  She made a noise. “I don’t believe that.”

  Hurt flashed through me. “No, I suppose I don’t really either. I miss him. I miss the children and Katie and … I just miss it all. For a moment, I made a life for myself, and I lost it almost in the same breath. But I’m home now; I fit here in a way I don’t fit anywhere else.”

  Annelise dried her hands, searching my face. “You didn’t fit with Charlie?”

  I didn’t meet her eyes. “I thought maybe I could. But I don’t belong there, Annelise. That life wasn’t mine, and it never could be. I wanted Charlie’s heart before he was free to give it to me, when it was still damaged, when it hadn’t yet healed.”

  “Only bad timing. Is that right?”

  “It was bad timing, but it was the right time. I think … I think he needed me. And I wish more than anything that things had been different, but they’re not. It’s no one’s fault.”

  “It’s all so final,” she said, “so desolate. How can you be so … I don’t know. Calm? Accepting? Don’t you want to fight? Don’t you want to try to change your fate?”

  Knead and fold, knead and fold, the dough cold and supple in my hands. “How can I fight something I can’t change? The things I want aren’t in my reach. If they were, they would be in my hands.”

  “Like the bakery?”

  “Yes,” I answered quietly. “Like the bakery.”

  She moved to my side, leaning back against the table to face me. “Hannah, I wish things were different.”

  “I know. So do I.”

  “It was all decided before we were even born. I almost wish it had been you, but I love it too.”

  “I know that, too. And so it’s inevitable. Do you understand? I can only take what’s offered.”

  “And Charlie’s not on offer?”

  I sighed. “He wants to be, but Annelise … his wife, she wants … she wants things she can’t have too. And she’ll hurt me to get to him. She’ll use the children to hurt him, hurt him even more than she already has. And I want to help him. I want to save him.”

  I laid my hands on the floured surface of the table and finally looked up.

  “Maybe it was hasty to leave so soon. Maybe I should have stayed. But after everything, when he accused me, when he said he didn’t know if he could trust me, I was too hurt to stay. It all tallied up, all the ways we couldn’t be together, and I left. And now, I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back, not when everything there is hard and unfamiliar and foreign. But I wish … I wish for a great many things that I’ll never have. And I only know that I belong here, not there.”

  Her eyes were sad and soft, her own wish to change things written on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “So am I.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “Well, for the time, I’ll fold dough and bake and hide here where it’s safe and warm, where I can heal. And then … then I don’t know. Teach maybe.”

  “Maybe you could teach Oma some manners.”

  I laughed. “It’s not possible. She lost them long before you or me.”

  Annelise’s brows rose. “You think she ever had them?”

  I shrugged. “Mama seems to think so.”

  “Has Oma cornered you to tell her about Charlie yet?”

  “I’ve somehow found a way to avoid her, but she’ll catch me at some point, I know it. She’s fast for an old lady.”

  “Very nimble. Maybe if you make sure she’s had plenty of wine at Sinterklaas, it’ll slow her down.”

  I laughed. “And me be responsible for her breaking a hip? No, thank you.”

  “Well, let me know if you want me to help run interference. I’m glad to get her good and drunk—or at the very least keep her occupied. Maybe I’ll even let her teach me to knit; she’s only been trying to convince me to learn since I was six.”

  “Oh God.” I chuckled. “You really do love me.”

  And she smiled, pulling me in for a hug. “I really do, Hannah. And I’m glad you’re home.”

  “So am I,” I said, wishing the words were true.

  Charlie

  What are you going to do about it, Charlie?

  The answer was anything. Everything. Whatever I could.

  It was the answer at my back as I walked into the hospital, a dozen speeches cycling through my anxious mind.

  When I stepped off the elevator, I scanned the hall for Mary without finding what I was looking for. The nurses at the station eyed me as I asked for her, promising me they’d page her. And so I took a seat and waited, not sure if she’d come.

  She did.

  Her back was straight and jaw set, her body tight and arms folded across her chest.

  I stood as she approached.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Can we talk? Somewhere private?”

  She watched me for a moment before nodding. “Come with me.”

  I followed her down the hallway, past the watchful eyes of the nurses, and to the empty on-call room.

  The door closed behind us, and we stood a few feet away from each other, neither of us speaking.

  She crossed her arms. “Well?”

  “What do you want from me?” I asked harder than I meant to.

  Her face tightened. “For starters, I want access to the kids.”

  “When you waive your rights to them, you can have that.”

  “You want me to give them up so I can have them?” she scoffed. “That’s ludicrous, Charlie.”

  “It’s not. How can I agree to let you see them when you’re unreliable, unstable? When you won’t follow the rules? If you want to see them, you’ve got to prove you’re not going to use them.”

  She glared at me across the space between us. “If you won’t give them to me, I’ll fight for them.”

  “Let me paint that picture for you,” I said, the words cold. “Let’s say you fight me, and let’s say you win. You’ll have them at least half of the time and completely on your own. Every bath and every meal, every bedtime story and every load of laundry. You don’t want that. Admit you don’t want that. You don’t want me or the kids or any of this. So, what do you want?”

  Her jaw flexed, her eyes shining. “I want my life back.”

  My anger flared. I raked my hand through my hair to give myself a second to temper it. “Mary, how the hell do you suggest you get it back? What do you want from me? What am I supposed to do? You took the kids without telling me. You showed up after months of silence and expect everything. You left us.”

  “You threw me out!”

  “Because you fucked my best friend! Jesus Christ, how am I the bad guy here?”

  “Well, you seemed to have moved on just fine. How’s your pretty nanny?”

  “She’s gone.” The words were hollow and desolate.

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t look so sad. I’m sure you can just hire another one, can’t you? Do you have to pay extra for blow jobs?”

  That flare of anger caught fire, stoked by a painful wind in my ribs, rushing through my veins with every beat of my heart, and I exploded. “You did this!” I screamed. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you see what you’ve done to me? You’ve ruined me. I’ve made mistakes, God knows I’ve made mistakes, but if you hadn’t treated me this way—lying, cheating, manipulating me, hurting me over and over again—if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be broken, suspicious, looking for ways she might have betrayed me. I wouldn’t have l
ost her if I’d been whole.”

  Mary stood very still, her eyes very wide, her lips parted slightly. “You love her.”

  “I love her, and I shouldn’t have let you dictate my future. I love her, and I should have trusted her. And I should have worked harder to keep her away from you. But I can’t change that any more than you can change the fact that you slept with Jack or that you abandoned us.” I paused, looking her over, catching my breath, and with honesty and surrender in my broken voice, I asked her again, “What do you want, Mary?”

  “I want to go back,” she said, the words trembling and worn.

  “Well, you can’t. You didn’t love me, and you don’t now. Our lives, that life you miss—that life was a lie.”

  “But that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to real.” Tears shone in her eyes, and she looked away. With a shaking breath, she sat on the edge of one of the beds. “I’m sorry. I’m fucked up, Charlie. I know I’m fucked up. When I left, I lost everything—my home, my husband, my family, my place. And, for all the time since then, I dealt with it by not dealing at all. I shut down. I worked. I ate. I slept. Until I saw her here with you, with Maven, in my place. And something in me snapped.”

  Her shoulders drooped, her face heavy with exhaustion, the fight washed out of her.

  “I went right back to the way I’d always been because I didn’t know what else to do, how else to fight. I wanted my old life back, and that was the moment I realized it. And every time you told me no, it only made me push harder.”

  I took a seat next to her, the bed dipping under my added weight. “I don’t want to tell you no. I don’t want to keep you from the kids. But I’m not going to give them to someone who will hurt them. I won’t.”

  “I know. That’s why they’re better off with you.”

  My chest tightened with exaltation and sorrow. “If you follow the rules, you can see them. You can see them sooner than later if you waive your rights. It’s the only way I’ll know you’re not going to fight me back. And I need you to let that old life go. Because there’s no going back—only forward. You’re the only one who can make the choice to let go so we can all move on.”

  Mary sighed. “The nanny said something when I saw her last, something I can’t stop thinking about. She said she didn’t want to hurt me, that none of you did. But I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to hurt her, and I can’t really tell you why.”

  “Do you still?”

  She thought about it, eyes on her hands clasped between her knees. “It didn’t make me happy, and it didn’t get me what I wanted. Like you said, there’s no going back, especially given the fact that you’re in love with your nanny.”

  “Hannah. She hasn’t been the nanny in a long while.”

  “And if I sign the waiver, if I follow your rules, I can see the kids?”

  “Anytime you want,” I promised and meant it.

  She nodded at the ground and met my eyes. “Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it.”

  So I did.

  24

  To Belong

  Hannah

  The night was cold with the smell of snow in the air, and our fireplace was crackling and warm. We all sat in the living room, the couches and chairs and floor space taken other than the middle of the room where the youngest of the family skipped around in circles. All of us sang, all fifteen of us—my entire family.

  It was December 5th, and Sinterklaas would come that night. We’d eaten until we were ready to burst and settled into the living room with coffee and cookies and singing. Any moment, the doorbell would ring—my uncle had already slipped out with the gifts to leave on the stoop. And then we would all open our presents and poems.

  My cousin started “The Wind Keeps Blowing,” and as my family sang in a chorus of voices, I felt tears sting my nose and eyes, my throat squeezing the words to a whisper, the familiarity of the moment and the longing in my heart a combination that swept me under.

  Through the trees, the wind keeps blowing,

  In our homes, we sense its might.

  Will the Holy Saint keep going?

  Will he make it through the night?

  Will he make it through the night?

  Yes, he overcomes the darkness,

  On his horse, so fierce and fast.

  When he learns we long for his presence,

  The Good Saint will come at last.

  The Good Saint will come at last.

  As our voices died, the doorbell rang. The children ran screaming for the door with all of us on their heels, and when Coen and Bas threw the door open, I stopped so suddenly, Johanna ran into me and Mama ran into her and Oma ran into her.

  Charlie stood on the step of the house looking tired and confused and hopeful, scanning the faces in the threshold until he found mine and held my eyes, sending a shock of relief through me in a beat of my heart.

  We all stared at Charlie with our mouths hanging open, and he stood there, staring back, all of us stunned silent.

  Until my brother broke the silence.

  “Who are you?” Bas asked, accusing.

  Charlie looked down at him. “I’m sorry … I, uh … do you speak English?”

  The twins turned back to look at us, completely dumbfounded.

  I found myself and stepped forward. “Charlie? What … what are you doing here?”

  He took a breath — I thought he might have been petrified for a moment from the shock.

  “Hannah, I …” He swallowed hard.

  “Go on and say it,” Oma said impatiently.

  We all turned to look at her, a few surprised laughs rolling through us.

  My mama turned to her. “Come on, Mama, everybody.” She directed the crowd back from the door, offering me an encouraging nod.

  I stepped out onto the stoop where I’d said goodbye to him a few days before, the stoop where he now stood with hopeful, worried eyes.

  “Charlie, what … how …” I stammered, unable to formulate sentences or coherent thought.

  “There’s too much to say. I had to come here and say it. I have to tell you what you mean to me without thousands of miles between us.”

  And when I looked into his eyes, I knew I was lost.

  “When Mary left, my life fell apart, and I found that everything I’d thought I’d known about who I was and what I wanted was a lie. When you walked into that broken life of mine, I learned that life could be so much more than it was. When I saw you with him, when he said what he said, I was too broken to see the truth when it mattered most. And when you left me, I knew I had to try to get you back.”

  “Charlie,” I breathed, “I—”

  “Please,” he begged, “don’t say no. Not yet.”

  I nodded, and he continued. “I don’t know how to tell you that you saved me. Because when I met you, I was a shadow, a shade of the man I’d once wanted to be. But you shone your light on me and showed me what I could be, what I wanted. You gave me the courage to reach out and take what I wanted, and I betrayed that gift by not standing by you. And I could give you a thousand excuses, but none of them would absolve me of the wrong I’ve done.

  “I don’t know how to tell you that I’m sorry. Because I should have believed every word you said. I knew in my heart that you would never lie, and I knew in the depths of my soul that you would never hurt me. But I’d used up all my trust on someone who abused it, and when you needed me, I abandoned you, just like I’d been abandoned. I hurt you just like I’d been hurt.

  “But what I do know is that I love you. I love you for the way you have filled my life with joy, for the kindness and grace you breathe into everything you do. I love you for showing me what kind of man I want to be—a man who could deserve someone like you. I love you, and I’m sorry. And if you’ll forgive me, I’ll spend every day and every breath proving it to you.”

  He took a step closer, his eyes full of love and adoration and hope. “I do trust you, Hannah. I was just hurt and afraid—afraid of losing you, afraid of loving
you. I was wrong, and you were right about everything except one thing. You do belong. You belong with me, and I belong to you. Home isn’t home, not without you.”

  He paused, and I breathed, and we looked into each other’s eyes in silence.

  “Kiss her, you fool!” Oma said eagerly, leaning out of the open window next to us.

  “Mama!” I heard my mother scold, grabbing her by the shoulders to pull her back in.

  But I laughed, tears in my eyes as Charlie smiled down at me.

  “I do love you, Hannah. I love you more than I knew I could. I need you more than I believed was possible. Come home. Please, come back to me.”

  I closed the small distance between us, touched his chest, looked into the depths of his eyes, not knowing what to say.

  He touched my cheek, held my face, pleading. “I only want to make you happy. I only want to give you all of me—my heart, my life, my love. Will you let me?”

  And the truth of my heart was all I could hear, all I could speak, just one word, a word I’d once wished for from his lips that he now wished from mine. And I gave it to him.

  I would give him anything.

  “Yes.”

  A relieved sound escaped him, a laugh or a sob that puffed against my lips just before he kissed them, sealing his promise, sealing my fate, searing his name on my heart.

  I barely heard the cheers of my family behind me, too lost in his arms and mouth and lips as we twisted together, still hanging on to each other as the kiss ended.

  He pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Forgive me.”

  “I do,” I whispered back. “I love you,” I said, that simple fact absolving us both.

  And he kissed me again with the promise of forever on his lips.

  Charlie

  Hannah in my arms was all I’d ever want for as long as I lived. I knew it then. I’d known it always.

  I reluctantly let her go, and she leaned into me as the door opened behind her.

  We turned to her chattering family.

  “Everyone,” Hannah said, “this is Charlie. Charlie, meet my family.”