Beyond the Orange Moon (Mathews Family Book 2)

by Adrienne Frances

  “Uh, well,” Charlie began, not knowing if he should be insulted, “I’m not a doctor, no. I own a commercial construction company: L and M Building, Incorporated.”

  “Ah, I see your signs around,” she said, which made him feel a little better. She didn’t look impressed, but she at least seemed satisfied. “It looks like you have a lot of business.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Charlie answered.

  “Well, even though I’ve not been told about you, maybe you can be the one to talk some sense into my daughter,” Ms. Dalton said, shaking her head. “Anything to get her out of that damn café.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie asked with a raised brow. “She’s been doing really well with the cupcake orders. They’re really popular at the café.”

  “Don’t talk to me about those ridiculous cupcakes. That’s not a job.” Ms. Dalton scoffed and waved her hand. “Did she tell you that she was on her way to being a nurse?”

  Charlie thought about that for a minute. He obviously didn’t know everything there was to know about her, but this seemed kind of important.

  “I see by your expression that she didn’t tell you that.”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “Well, she was. Our entire family, myself included, are all nurses. It’s what we do. Anyway, Lucy excelled in the program. She was on her way to graduating and landing a job at Paradise Valley—that’s where it all happened.”

  Charlie stilled. He had never wanted to hear about that hospital again. “I’m sorry. Where what happened?”

  Ms. Dalton frowned and clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “She was doing her externship on the labor and delivery floor of Paradise Valley. Do you know where that is?”

  Charlie’s stomach turned. “I’m familiar with it.”

  “Anyway, it’s one of the state’s best units.”

  “What happened?”

  “Frankly, she watched a woman die right after she gave birth. It was horrific. And to add to it, the father handed Lucy the baby when the mother began to crash. She ended up holding the poor baby while its mother died. She heard the father scream in agony … it was terrible.”

  No fucking way. Charlie leapt to his feet. “When?” he asked, the ringing in his ears blocking out the frantic sound of his voice.

  Ms. Dalton seemed to be lost in her own thoughts. “It’s what we do, though. We see these things and we just have to keep going. My daughter just needs to see the good that nurses do and get on with what she’s supposed to be doing with her life.”

  “Could you please tell me when this was?” Charlie asked, shaking. There was no way. It was too much of a coincidence.

  She snapped out of it and looked up at him with confusion in her eyes. “A year ago, March.”

  With those simple words, every ounce of oxygen in his body was suddenly knocked out of him. The blood drained from his veins as the realization took hold of his entire being.

  Lucy was the nurse.

  Lucy had held Jackson while Meredith died.

  How did he not remember? How did he not see it?

  That night had been a blur. The adrenaline, the grief … all of it. There had been too much happening and he had been too traumatized to remember anyone from that day, apparently even if he came face-to-face with them. Hell, even Meredith’s doctor had no face. They were the people he had completely blocked out because they were the people who represented the worst moment of his life.

  But, now, all he could see was Lucy and her wide, fearful eyes. It was all so clear.

  “I have to go,” he said. It was all he could say; the door was the only thing in his vision. He had to get out of there now.

  “What?” Lucy’s mother asked, confusion in her voice.

  Charlie couldn’t have formed another word if he’d wanted to. He raced to the door and picked up his shoes. He couldn’t even be there long enough to put them on his bare feet. He grabbed his keys from the ledge by the door and left.

  Within seconds, he was in his truck. He sat there for a minute, wondering if that had really just happened.

  Everything made sense now. Her reluctance for moving in with him, the crying … all the fucking crying.

  How could she do this? Did she know?

  She knew.

  “Goddammit!” he yelled, and punched the steering wheel.

  * * *

  “All clean and smelling better.” Lucy came out of the bathroom with a beige towel wrapped around her, rubbing her wet hair with a smaller towel. “Ready?” she asked, and turned the corner.

  Charlie was nowhere to be found, but her mother sat in his place. “What are you doing here?” Lucy asked, and noticed that Charlie’s laptop was on still on her coffee table. “Where’s Charlie?”

  “Charlie? The man you’re dating? The man you failed to tell me anything about?” Her mother pulled her eyebrows together and glared at Lucy. “He left.”

  “Is he coming back?” Lucy asked, ignoring the accusations and dirty looks being flung her way.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Lucy ran the hand towel through her hair. “Why? Were you rude?”

  “No,” Barbara said, and shook her head. She shot Lucy a hard look. “How do you know him?”

  “Why?” Little by little, the air seemed to leave Lucy’s lungs. She collapsed on the couch next to her mother. “Why did he leave, Mom?” she whispered, fear shooting up her spine.

  Barbara clucked her tongue and crossed her arms. “I told him about how you used to be in the nursing program. He was surprised that he didn’t know that. Then he asked why you left and I told him. He ran out of here as fast as he could, which leads me back to my question: how do you know him, Lucy?”

  Lucy rose to her feet. “What did you do?”

  “What did I do? Lucy, what did you do?”

  “Oh my God. No, no, no!” She was shaking so badly that her teeth were chattering.

  Barbara got to her feet and pointed at Lucy. “Tell me, Lucy Marina Dalton, that that man is not the father from the hospital! Have you completely lost your mind?”

  “I have to find him,” she said in a panic. “I have to explain.”

  “You leave that man alone! How could you bring a widower—a man with a child to care for—into your own warped sense of grief from that day? He wasn’t your way to feel better, Lucy!”

  “Just stop! That’s not what I was doing!” She ran into her bedroom and began to find something to put on.

  She had to find him.

  Oh, he must hate her so much.

  Barbara followed Lucy into her bedroom. “This is the last straw,” she said, pointing again. “I’m finished with this garbage!”

  “Mom, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this right now,” Lucy said, and pushed past her mother. “This isn’t about you and it’s none of your business.”

  Lucy threw the door to her apartment open and found Grace on the other side with her key in her hand. “Hi,” Grace said wearily, and looked from Lucy to Barbara. “Bad time?”

  “Oh, good!” Lucy exclaimed. “Here’s the other half of my support group. Please, ladies, feel free to talk about how horrible I am amongst yourselves.”

  She knew that was terrible. She was well aware of how unfair and cruel she sounded.

  She was falling apart again and lashing out at the same two people she had been lashing out at for the past year. And, once again, they had done nothing to deserve it.

  But she just couldn’t make herself turn around and make amends. Not yet.

  Charlie wouldn’t answer her calls or texts. She drove everywhere: to his jobsite, his house, and even the gym. For hours, she covered every inch of Phoenix and Scottsdale. At one point, she was sobbing so hard that she had to pull over and get herself together. As the night went on, her eyes were so swollen that she had almost cried them shut.

  On her way back from Phoenix, she was about to give up when she saw what looked like Charlie’s truck sitting in the parking lot of a Catholic c
emetery. Without thinking, she turned into the lot and pulled up next to the truck with his company’s logo on the side.

  He was visiting his wife’s grave.

  Lucy sat in her car and waited for him to emerge. She couldn’t have this conversation over Meredith’s grave. She had already disrespected that beautiful woman enough. She would wait for him in her car; she would wait all night if she had to.

  After an hour, when the sky was completely black, Charlie stepped through the stone archway that led into the cemetery. He looked so tired under the lights of the parking lot. His hair was a mess, a sure sign he had been running his hands through it in frustration.

  Oh, Charlie.

  With his green eyes full of nothing but anger, he froze the minute he saw her car.

  “Just … don’t leave,” she said as she got out of the car. She put her hands out to stop him. “Please, just hear what I have to say. I … I have to explain this.”

  He nodded slowly and crossed his arms, waiting for her to speak.

  Now she just needed to figure out what to say. With all the driving she’d been doing, she really hadn’t thought of how she would explain it to him. But, now, here he was; she’d finally found him. And all she wanted to do was wrap her arms around his waist and tell him how much she loved him.

  “Were you visiting Meredith’s grave?” she asked.

  “Don’t say her name to me.”

  “Charlie,” she sobbed.

  “You don’t get to do that, Lucy,” he said coldly. “You’re not going to sit here and cry to me.”

  He was a stranger. The man who had held her and wanted to plan his life with her was gone, replaced by the man she had betrayed.

  “Okay,” she said, and tried to calm down before speaking. “I …”

  “I have to go get my son, so”—he looked at his phone—“make this quick.”

  “Okay,” she said, and felt the words “my son” right in her gut. That was his intention. He was hurting and wanted to hurt her right back. “You have to understand, Charlie. That day … the day Meredith passed away … it was the worst thing I’d ever experienced.”

  Charlie looked down and chuckled. It was a sarcastic laugh that she felt under her skin.

  “I know it was worse for you. I’m not saying that my pain was more than yours.” She looked down at her fingers, which were wound tightly together.

  “I should hope not.”

  “I never wanted to be a nurse. I just did what my mom expected. But it all changed that night.” She glanced up at him to make sure she had his attention. “I was talking to her and thinking about how beautiful she was and then everything happened. I held Jack. Listening to you was the worst part. It ripped my heart in two.”

  Struggling at the memory, Charlie cast his eyes down to the ground.

  “I left right after that. I just walked out the door. It changed my life.” She looked down and realized that she was now hugging herself. She hated even thinking about that day; it was torture. “I didn’t get out of bed for months. I was so depressed. I couldn’t get Jack out of my head; Meredith’s smile was etched in my memory … and you, Charlie. All I wanted to know was how you were. I couldn’t stand what happened to you and Jack.”

  Charlie looked at her, his eyes cold. “Get to the part where you found me.”

  She took a deep, shaky breath and tilted her head to the side. “You found me,” she whispered.

  “So, the park was just a coincidence?”

  “I swear that it was. At first.” Lucy wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. “I’d already been going there for months to clear my head. Then, I saw you and Jack and I was just lost for words. You looked content, I guess, and it made me feel better. I didn’t think that it was wrong to keep going. I loved watching how happy Jack was. It helped me more than I can even tell you. That little boy …” She had to stop talking. Just thinking of Jackson was too much.

  “That little boy is my son. I let you into his life—into our life.” He took a step forward, his entire body trembling. “I loved you with everything I had. Do you know what that meant for me? Do you know how much I struggled to get there with you?”

  Taking a step toward him, she placed her hand over her stinging heart. “Yes, I do and I’m so thankful …”

  “No, you don’t. You didn’t lose anything the night my wife died. I lost—my son lost!” He raked a hand through his hair and spun around, giving her his back. “Fuck!”

  “Charlie, please understand.”

  He whipped back around. “Help me understand, Lucy. For starters, explain the part where you lied to me every day while I fell in love with you.”

  “I didn’t know how to get it out, Charlie! Every time I even got close to telling you, I couldn’t. I never planned on falling in love with you. We couldn’t stay away from each other, though, and I guess I just chose to be a … a coward.”

  “That is the only thing I can agree with here. You are a coward.” He shook his head, staring at her with narrowed eyes. “You should’ve told me, Lucy. You should have said something the moment I even looked your way.”

  “And what would you have done? You wouldn’t want me because I would only be a reminder of the day you lost your wife. I would have lost you either way.”

  “You think I need a reminder of that day? That day is in my head every second! I can’t even look at my son without thinking of it!” He shot her an exasperated look and shook his head. “You’re missing the whole point, Lucy. Do you know what it took for me to just let go and be with you?”

  She exhaled a shaky breath and closed her eyes, remembering his struggle at just being near her. “Yes, I do.”

  “The guilt alone kept me up at night. I had to come to terms with being with another woman when I once swore to my wife in front of everyone we loved that it would only be her forever. Then I had to figure out if I was brave enough to put myself out there and love someone, knowing that I could lose that person, too. I had so much to get over, but I did it … for you. I needed one thing from you—just one thing—and that was honesty. I trusted you, but you couldn’t trust me and now I feel like I don’t even know who you are.”

  There was nothing else to say. He wasn’t going to understand. “Please, can we, please, just get past this?”

  He chewed on the inside of his cheek and stared at the ground for what felt like an eternity. He finally raised his head and looked at her with angry green eyes.

  “No,” he said simply, and walked to his truck.

  After she watched him drive away, her trembling legs gave out from beneath her and she crumpled to the ground. The rough cement cut into her palms as she sat there sobbing, heaving for the air he’d pushed out of her.

  She lost him.

  She lost them both.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Feeling his mother’s eyes on every move he made, Charlie packed Jackson’s bag. He didn’t want to talk about it. All he wanted to do was get everyone up to speed so that he could make sure that no one said Lucy’s name or “Bee” in Jackson’s presence. He wanted her to simply vanish from his son’s mind.

  It had been almost a week since he’d seen her—since he left her standing in the parking lot of the cemetery. His bedroom had gone back to its normal state of dark and empty, and it haunted him each time he went in there. He’d thrown everything of Lucy’s into a bag and taken it to her apartment when he knew she would be at work. If he could have, he would’ve packed up the beautiful smell of her and sent it away with her belongings. That still lingered in his room, though, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  His brothers had all handled it exactly the way he’d hoped. A simple, “That sucks” was all he wanted to hear, which is exactly what they gave him. His mother and sister, on the other hand, wouldn’t let him off so easily.

  “So, okay, let me get this straight,” Linda began. “She was the nurse’s aide who you handed Jack to when Meredith was showing
signs of trouble?”

  Charlie sighed. “That’s what I said, right?”

  Linda sipped her coffee and looked out the window. “And she knew it was you the whole time and kept that from you?”

  “Yep,” Charlie said, annoyed. This wasn’t a difficult story to understand. It was pretty cut and dried, actually: he let her in; she deceived him. The end.

  Dylan had been sitting silent at the kitchen table, listening to Charlie’s quick version of events. Given her newfound desire to meddle, he was surprised that she hadn’t spoken up yet.

  “Hmm,” was all Linda said, and continued to stare out the window. “I can’t say that I blame her. I wouldn’t want to share that memory.”

  Frustrated, Charlie threw a sippy cup into the diaper bag and dragged the zipper closed. “Now that everyone’s up to speed on my love life, drop it. I just want to go on like I never met her and get her out of Jack’s mind.”

  When neither his mother nor his sister responded, he narrowed his eyes. “Do you think you two can manage that?”

  “I don’t think you’re giving us much of a choice,” Dylan finally said.

  “No, I’m really not,” he responded. “Let’s just move on.”

  “Move on,” Linda said, and took another sip of her coffee. “That’s an interesting phrase.”

  Charlie raised an eyebrow. He set the diaper bag down on the kitchen table and folded his arms across his chest. There would be more, so he just waited.

  “What’s next beyond this, my darling son? Are you going to put that ring back on your finger? Is that your idea of moving on?”

  Charlie looked down at his mother’s hand. It had been eleven years since his father had died, and there was her wedding ring, right where his father had left it.

  “That’s different,” she said, and covered her left hand.

  “How?” he asked, incredulously. “How in the world could that possibly be different?”

  “It’s not different, Mom,” Dylan intervened. “It’s exactly the same.”