by Hannah Ford
“I’ll leave his toys and things out here,” Jared said. “Would you like me to walk him before I go?”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, scratching the dog behind the ears. “I can take care of it.”
“Very well, miss. Please let me know if you need anything.”
I heard the front door open and close as Jared left the apartment. I reached out and grabbed my cell phone, dialed Noah.
“Hello,” he said when he answered, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Do you like him?”
“I love him. The question is, do you love him?” The dog was pushing his nose under my hand, demanding that I pet him. I couldn’t imagine how Noah would feel when the dog was doing that to him while he tried to work. I stifled a giggle.
“I love whatever makes you happy,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“I’ll see you tonight,” I agreed.
“Charlotte?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I flushed with pleasure as I ended the call.
Noah was right.
Force, Professor Worthington, Mikayla – that was all in our past. It was time to start moving on with our lives.
***
Two weeks passed, and as every day, every hour, every minute went by, the horror of what had happened began to fade from my mind.
I named the dog Docket, and we fell into a comfortable routine. I still hadn’t gone back to school, and so every morning we would wake up after Noah went to work, and spend the morning walking around the city, sitting in the park, me sipping coffee and Docket watching birds.
He was a good dog – he listened for the most part, although he could be a little zealous. He was rambunctious and excitable, like a bull in a china shop, knocking things over with his tail and his paws.
It was on one of our morning walks that we ran into Julia.
She was walking across the park holding a sheaf of papers.
I’d had a couple of texts with her, just letting her know that I wouldn’t be coming back to our apartment, and I’d arranged a time with her for Jared to go and get the rest of my things, but other than that, we hadn’t spoken.
She looked good, her hair pulled back in a dancer’s bun, her lithe frame dressed in a grey pants suit with a light pink shell underneath.
My first instinct was to avoid her, but she saw me at the same time I saw her, and we did that awkward thing where we weren’t sure what to do.
Finally, she walked over to me.
“Hey,” she said shyly.
“Hi.”
Docket began wagging his tail, his whole body shaking with excitement. Julia bent down to pet him, and he jumped up, putting his front paws on her legs. “Docket!” I scolded.
But Julia didn’t mind. She kneeled down in the grass and he immediately turned over, waiting for Julia to rub his belly.
“Oh, Julia,” I said as the grass stained her knees. “Your pants.”
“It’s okay,” she said, her hand moving through Docket’s fur. “I’m done with my meeting.” She glanced up at me shyly, hesitating. “I had an appointment at an adoption agency,” she said. “I’m thinking… I might be putting the baby up for adoption.”
“Oh,” I said. “And Josh is…”
“He’s fine with it.” She stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees. “We broke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “Really?”
“No, not really,” I said.
She tilted her head. “I heard about what happened to you. And to Noah. Are you okay?”
“I’m getting there.”
“Good.”
She stood there awkwardly, until finally I said, “We should get together some time. Have coffee.”
“Yeah, definitely,” she said. “I’ll text you.”
It was the kind of thing that people said, but I knew neither one of us really meant it. We wouldn’t text. We wouldn’t get together for coffee. We would become part of each other’s past, an inconsequential part, actually, the way people did when there was nothing holding them together except for circumstance.
“Take care of yourself, Julia.”
“You too, Charlotte.”
I watched her walk away.
Then I got up and went home.
***
There was another letter waiting for me when I got there.
From Professor Worthington.
Something about it, coupled with the fact that I’d just run into Julia, made my stomach flip.
I opened it.
It was more of the same, he loved me, blah blah blah. But this time, he mentioned Mikayla.
I know you want to know about her, Charlotte. You want to know where she is. I can help you.
I pushed the letter back into the envelope.
This time, instead of a sick feeling bubbling up inside of me, I was angry.
I wanted him to stop contacting me.
I wanted him to stop.
I was going to see Noah.
I was going to tell him about the letters.
And I was going to let him take care of it.
***
I left Docket at home, snoozing comfortably on our bed, and walked to Noah’s office, my heart pounding the whole time.
I’d been trying to move on, I really had.
But if these letters continued to come, that would be impossible.
Noah would stop them.
He would call the jail or file an injunction or a restraining order or whatever it was people did in situations like these.
When I got to his floor, the receptionist buzzed me right in.
But this time, when I reached Noah’s office, I could soft voices wafting through the closed door.
He must have been having a meeting. I hesitated, not sure what I should do. It was silly of me to show up here unannounced, just assuming that he would be free. Noah was a busy man.
I was about to leave, to maybe wait in the lobby or call him and let him know I was there, when I heard a laugh.
A woman’s laugh.
“It’s fine,” a female voice said. “You can get to the paperwork whenever you get a chance.”
It was a familiar voice, but it took me a second to place it.
Clementine.
Clementine was in Noah’s office.
I raised my fist to the door and knocked.
“I’m in a meeting,” Noah barked.
“It’s me,” I said, hating the way my voice sounded, weak and needy.
“Charlotte?” Noah asked when he opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to… I came to tell you something.”
He opened the door all the way and I stepped inside. Clementine was sitting in the chair in front of Noah’s desk, her legs crossed in front of her, her posture relaxed and confident, like she owned the place. She was wearing a sleeveless white dress that hit just above her knee, with a narrow black belt that emphasized her tiny waist.
“Hello, Charlotte,” she said when she saw me. “Noah and I were just going over the particulars for the new office space. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Beautiful.”
She gathered up her papers, then slid out of the office. She tapped Noah on the chest with the sheaf of papers as she walked by. “Fax the signatures when you have them.”
“Will do.”
Once the door closed behind her, I turned to Noah.
“What was she doing here?” I asked. I was trying to keep my voice light, but I could hear the jealousy laced underneath it. Stop it, Charlotte, I told myself. There is nothing to get upset about.
“She was getting me the final paperwork for the new space.”
“What does she have to do with it?”
“I didn’t mention that I’m leasing it from her?” He said it so nonchalantly, without a care in the world.
“I thought you bought it. For us.”
“I did buy it. I am buying it. But buying a property takes time, Charlotte. So I’m leasing it for the first month, after which time it will be mine.”
“Ours,” I said softly.
“What?”
“It will be ours,” I said.
“Yes.” He looked at me. “Clementine is not a threat to you, Charlotte.”
“Who said I was threatened by her?”
“Your behavior is indicative of someone who feels threatened.”
“I’m not threatened,” I said. “I just wish you had told me, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t important.”
“It wasn’t important to you,” I countered.
His phone rang then, and he crossed the room and answered it, even though we were in the middle of a discussion. “Cutler,” he barked into the phone. “Who? Yes, put him through.”
His eyes flicked up to me, his jaw tightening, almost if whoever was on the other end of the phone had something to do with me. But who could be calling Noah about me?
“Yes,” he said as he listened. “Yes…..yes… I understand. I assume it will be taken care of immediately? Thank you.”
He hung up the phone.
He stayed silent for a moment, then leaned over his desk and gripped the edge, his knuckles turning white. A cold sliver of icy fear slid up my spine, a premonition that I wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to say.
“Where are they?” he demanded.
“What?”
“The letters,” he said. “Where are they?”
“What letters?”
“Dammit, Charlotte,” he said, slamming his fist down on the desk, his eyes blazing with fury. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“What the hell was I thinking about what?”
“About getting letters from Colin Worthington and not telling me?”
My stomach flipped like a pancake onto a hot griddle, sizzling with anxiety. “That’s what I came here to tell you.”
“How long?” he demanded.
I swallowed and averted my eyes from his. “The first one came two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks ago?” he raged. “Jesus, Charlotte, you have no idea what kind of position you are putting yourself in.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “That’s why I came here. I wanted to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you want to tell me?”
“So you could help me!”
“Help you what, Charlotte?”
“Help me to stop them,” I said, but even as I was saying the words, I wasn’t sure they were true.
“You could have stopped them yourself,” Noah said, a vein in his forehead throbbing. “You didn’t need me for that. You could have called the warden, you could have called the jail and told them you didn’t want to receive letters from him anymore. And yet you didn’t. Why didn’t you do that, Charlotte?”
The room was starting to swim, and I took a seat in the chair Clementine had just vacated. “I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know?”
He was right, of course.
I could have stopped the letters. It would have taken two seconds to make a call to the jail. They would have put me on Professor Worthington’s do not contact list. No prison was going to let an inmate have unwanted contact with one of his victims. So then why hadn’t I done it?
“Noah,” I said slowly, trying to form my jumbled thoughts into a coherent sentence. “Do you think it’s weird that I haven’t been back to school?”
“What?” he asked, seemingly thrown by the change in topic. “No, I don’t think it’s weird, Charlotte. You have been through an extreme trauma.”
“But two weeks.” I shook my head. “I’m slipping behind. It might be impossible to catch up.”
“I’ll call them,” he said. “I’ll talk to them.”
My hands tightened around the arms of the chair I was sitting in. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t want you to call them. I don’t want you to make a call and fix everything, Noah.”
“Then what do you want, Charlotte?”
“I want you to talk to me!”
“I am talking to you!”
“No, I want to be able to talk to you about what happened at Force.” I twisted my hands in my lap. “There was a girl there, Noah. She needed my help. I can’t just forget about her.”
“This again,” Noah said, shaking his head. “Charlotte, you told the police about her. You did everything you could. She is not your responsibility.”
“Yes,” I said. “She is. She needed help and – ”
“Stop saying that!” He crossed the room to where I was and sat down in the chair across from me, pulled me forward so that we were facing each other. He grabbed me around the waist and slid me down the chair toward him until our legs were touching.
He leaned forward and took my face in his hands. “She is not your responsibility. But you are my responsibility. I won’t let anything happen to you, Charlotte. I will protect you this time, no matter what the cost. If that means you getting angry with me because I am going to stop you from doing certain things, well, then, so be it.”
“This time?” I asked.
He looked away, but I could see the pain on his face.
“Is that what you think?” I pressed. “That you didn’t protect me?” I shook my head. “You did protect me, Noah. If it weren’t for you, I would be dead. But I need to be able to talk about things, I need to be able to process them. I need to be able to figure out exactly what it was that happened.”
“I’m doing the god damn best I can!”
“Well, I need more,” I said, the words slipping past my lips before I could stop them.
“I don’t know if I have more to give,” he said softly.
I opened my mouth to speak.
But then I realized there was nothing left to say.
I couldn’t believe that after all of this, after all of the strides we’d made, how close I’d felt to him, that we were right back here, in the exact same place we always ended up.
I got up and walked out.
He didn’t try to stop me.
***
I kept walking.
I walked and walked and walked, turning down random streets and weaving my way through the city.
I had no idea where I was going.
I walked for two hours.
Noah didn’t try to call me, didn’t try to text me.
I didn’t cry, or feel anger toward him.
All I felt was numb.
I was on the subway to the Bronx before I realized where exactly, it was I was going.
I needed to go and see him.
I needed to go and see Professor Worthington.
I needed some answers.
***
The jail was surprisingly easy to get into. I’d heard horror stories about people not being allowed in, about families being turned away at gates by surly guards while children cried and begged to see their mothers or fathers.
I was lucky enough to have shown up during visiting hours, even luckier that I’d been added to Professor Worthington’s visitor list. He’d listed me as his lawyer, which was probably the only reason I’d even been allowed to be added, but I wasn’t going to ask questions.
A uniformed officer led me into a tiny holding room, with a partition of glass that separated the prisoners from their visitors. The room was private, with only one chair.
It was disconcerting.
I’d been expecting lots of other people to be here talking to their loved ones, had been hoping for soft voices that drifted through the room and blunted the force of whatever it was that was about to happen.
I wanted to ask if there was another room, a busier one, but I didn’t want to give away the fact that I might not really be Professor Worthington’s lawyer. After all, wouldn’t a lawyer welcome the chance to be alone with her
client? I couldn’t risk getting kicked out.
I sat down on my side of the partition and pulled a tiny notebook out of my bag, set my cell phone down on the ledge in front of me. They hadn’t taken it from me, which I’d found odd, but perhaps they didn’t do that for lawyers.
The room was hot, muggy, the air heavy. I could feel a tiny bit of sweat starting at the curve of my back.
It seemed to take forever for them to bring him in.
When he finally appeared he was flanked by two guards, handcuffed, and wearing a dull grey prison jumpsuit.
His hair had been freshly washed, but his face was drawn. A huge bandage covered one of his eyes.
He sat down across from me, and the guards left the room, the heavy door shutting with an audible click behind them. I resisted the urge to scream after them, to insist they come back and protect me.
From what, I wasn’t sure. There was a plexi glass partition between me and the professor, and a camera attached to the ceiling blinked a red light, alerting us to the fact that someone was always watching.
It’s just practice, I told myself. If you’re going to be a defense lawyer someday, you’re going to have to get used to coming to prison and talking to your clients.
“Charlotte,” the professor said, and the sound of his voice filled me with the urge to wretch.
“Professor,” I said, nodding.
He smiled. “I knew you’d come.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Because I myself didn’t know I was coming until just a few minutes ago.”
He shook his head. “You were always going to come. Even before you got my letters, you were going to come.”
My hands balled in fists at my side, and I reminded myself I wasn’t here to get into a discussion about my motives for coming to see him, or about whether or not he had some sixth sense about what I was going to do.
“Where is she?” I asked, making sure to keep my voice calm.
“Where is who?”
“Mikayla.”
He sat back in his chair as far as he could. “She’s where all good girls go.”
“And where is that?”
“Charlooootttee,” he said, his voice sing- songy. “Why should I tell you anything? Why are you wasting time thinking about her? She is nothing. She is less than nothing. Don’t you understand that no one is even looking for her? No one even cares that she disappeared.”