by R. R. Banks
"I'll only stay as long as I need to," I reassured him. "As soon as my father's better, I'll be back. I don't want to be away from you any longer than I have to."
Micah wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. He kissed me hard as if reminding me of what was waiting for me here.
"I don't want you to be, either."
An hour later I had packed everything, said goodbye to Scout, and was on my way down the mountain with Micah. We reached the point in the access road that had been blocked by the tree and found that Madeline's car had been towed away and the tree itself had been chopped, so that the middle section was missing, creating just enough space for a truck to move through. A tree that size would take a tremendous amount of work to get out of the way and I was grateful for the effort a team had put into removing at least that section so that we could go down the road. I was nervous as we made our way down the mountain and away from the lodge. I worried that the further that we got away from the space that we had shared, the more things would change between us. I worried that the glitter would fade and by the time that we reached our hometown we would realize that things hadn't been as they had seemed.
When we got into my parents' neighborhood, however, I was still holding Micah's hand as tightly as I could and feeling him return the tightness each time I squeezed it.
"Thank you for dropping me off," I said.
"Of course," he said. "I wanted to make sure that you got here safely."
He looked up at the house as we pulled in front of it.
"This is where I lived when we were in high school," I told him.
"I wish that I had seen it then," he said.
"Me, too."
I took off my seatbelt and got out of the car, waiting as he walked around to meet me.
"Do you want me to go in with you?" he asked.
I nodded.
"I would. I know that you can't stay, but I want to have you with me as long as I can. And I want you to meet my family."
I felt my smile trembling as the thought occurred to me that this may be the only time that he was able to meet my father. All of the bitterness and anger that I had felt toward my parents sat heavily in my belly. I felt incredibly guilty for having those feelings towards them and for ever being angry or resentful toward my father. He had never been as aggressive as my mother. I couldn't imagine having him gone.
I held Micah's hand as we climbed the stairs to the front porch and I rang the doorbell. Even though this had been my home when I was younger, as soon as I moved out it started to feel distant. Every time that I came back here I felt like I was visiting and needed to announce my presence rather than just walking in. I expected one of the servants to open the door, but instead I saw my mother. The hint of a smile came to her lips for only a second and then her eyes flickered over to Micah.
"Who is this?" she asked.
"Can we come in?" I asked. "It's cold out here."
My mother seemed hesitant, but she eventually stepped aside and let us step into the house. She closed the door and turned another suspicious glare toward Micah.
"Who is this?" she asked again.
"This is the man I was telling you about," I said. "This is Micah Davis."
I didn't expect that she would recognize the name, but the darkness that rolled over her face as soon as I said it told me that she did. Her eyes narrowed and her back straightened.
"Micah Davis?" she growled. "What are you doing bringing a person like this into my home?"
My face fell, and I felt my heart start to pound in my chest.
"What do you mean a person like this?" I asked.
"Don't think I don't remember who he is," my mother snapped. "He's that boy who never learned his place in high school. He came from a disreputable family and had the nerve to walk into your school and steal the popularity and respect from boys who really deserved it. They never should have let someone like him on the football team or allowed him to take advantage of the same opportunities as the boys from the good families."
I couldn't believe what my mother was saying. I couldn't believe that she would stand there and look Micah directly in the eye as she said such horrible things about him.
"Stop it, Mother."
"Why should I?" she asked. "It's not like he doesn't know. He knows exactly who he is and what he did. It serves him right what he went through in college. He never belonged in the world of society anyway."
"You're right," Micah said. "I never belonged around people like you."
He turned toward me and ducked his head to kiss me goodbye. I wanted to ask him to stay, but I also didn't want to subject him to another minute in that house. He walked out, his shoulders square and his fists clenched by his side but in complete control of himself. I whipped around to face my mother.
"What's wrong with you?" I asked. "How dare you say things like that to him? Do you have any idea what he went through or what he's accomplished?"
"None of that matters," my mother said. "All that matters is the family that he was born into and the type of person his father was."
I wanted to point out just how hypocritical she was and how ridiculous she sounded, but I didn't have it in me. The anger and frustration that I was feeling move becoming like a dagger through my heart and I knew if I stood there with her for any longer I would never get to my father. I glared at her a final time and then started up the stairs towards my parents’ bedroom. I walked in the room to see my father lying in bed, blanket pulled up nearly to his chest.
"Daddy," I said.
It had been so long since I had called him that, but in that moment, it was the only thing that sounded appropriate.
"Charlotte," he said. "It's good to see you home. Your mother tells me that you were in some house on the mountain with a man. Are you alright? Did he do anything to you?"
"No," I said shaking my head. "He didn't do anything to me. He didn't kidnap me. I was there because I wanted to be. But now I'm here and I'll be here as long as you need me."
They were some of the most painful words that I had ever said.
Chapter Fifteen
Micah
I wanted to destroy things. I craved violence and vengeance like I never had in my life, and the feeling was unsettling. It was a part of me that I had kept buried deep within me my entire life, a part of me that I felt as though I had been born with and couldn't avoid, that I could control. There have been so few times in my entire life when I had felt that level of rage come forward toward another person. It had been there when I had seen my father attack my mother. It had been there when I had seen Daniel hurt Charlotte in the hall of the high school. It had been there to a lesser degree when I found out that Helen was sleeping with my best friend. Now it felt as though it were threatening to consume me and all I could do is struggle to keep it down.
I couldn't believe what Charlotte's mother had said about me. As soon as that thought came to my mind though, I knew that it was wrong. I could absolutely believe what she had said to me. It was exactly what all of the other guys had said that she felt and believed. It was exactly what would have happened in high school had I ever shown Charlotte even for a second that I was interested in her. It didn't matter to her that I was now a successful adult with wealth that far eclipsed hers many times over. All she saw when she looked at me was that same boy for whom she had so much disdain. Now I didn't even have Charlotte in my arms and I had to deal with the fact that she was there in that house with them. Her love for her father and her worry about him had convinced her to sacrifice her own comfort and happiness to make sure that she could be there for him. It was part of what I loved about her. But it was also what I hated about them.
The lodge felt desolate without her. It had always been empty. I had known from the moment that I started designing it that it would be home to me and to Scout, but to no one else. It was intended to be empty, but it never felt that way until Charlotte walked out of it. Now it seemed as though every inch of it was pressing down a
round me, making it harder to breathe. I wanted to hear her voice again. I wanted to see her sitting by the fire consuming the books as fast as she could or at the kitchen table nibbling her way through whatever she had prepared for the day. I wanted to see her sleep, peaceful and indescribably beautiful. I wanted to feel her skin and her breath on me. I needed her back here with me.
**********
Charlotte
"I can't believe you would say something like that. "
"You have to admit it's a strange story," Miranda said.
"I don't care what you think," I said. "You have no right to say that he did something wrong."
"He had you up in his house for two weeks," my sister said. "You didn't even call us to let us know that you were alright."
"And none of you even called to report me missing. None of you thought for a second that I could be in any type of danger, and now all of a sudden you are so worried about me?"
"You've done this before," she said.
"Mom said the same thing," I said. "What are you talking about?"
"Are you seriously going to pretend that you don't know?"
"I don't know."
“Daniel told us about how you and he got into an argument and you stormed out of his apartment and disappeared for a week while you were in college. He said that was why we didn't hear from you and that he spent the whole week desperately looking for you because he was so worried. He said that when he found you, you are in some strange man's apartment and had obviously been drinking and probably more.”
Spots danced in front of my eyes and I felt my fists clenched.
"You actually believe that? You actually believe that that happened? You think that if I was missing no one else would notice? He's supposedly so worried about me, but he doesn't even call my parents to let them know that I've just wandered off? Do you realize how asinine that sounds?"
"It's normal to protect yourself when you are in a dangerous situation by pretending that you're happy and that you're having a good time. It happens to a lot of kidnapping victims."
"I am not a kidnapping victim," I said, enunciating the words as carefully as I could to make sure that she heard each of them. "Micah rescued me. He is the only one who cared what happened to me during that storm and he's the one who kept me safe. If he had kidnapped me, do you really think that he would have brought me back here so easily?"
"You got the phone and you called Mom," she said. "He knew that there were now people who knew what had happened and where you were. It's not like he could just keep you and think that no one was going to notice that."
I shook my head.
"You're unbelievable," I said. "All of you are unbelievable. You don't understand and don't listen to me when I'm trying to tell you that I'm in a miserable and abusive relationship, but then when I find someone who actually loves me and who is wonderful to me, you're suddenly up in arms and think that I'm in some sort of danger. You're all being ridiculous. I wish that I had never come back."
I ran up the stairs toward the bedroom that I had slept in my entire life. It was one thing that I had to give my mother credit for. She had never changed it. Not even after I left home. Not even after I went to college and told her that I was starting my own life. Not even over the years that I had lived in my own apartment. This room it always remained exactly as it has been. It was my room and it always would be. I was nearly to it when I heard my father calling me. I walked into the study and found him sitting in one of the large leather chairs next to the window. The room reminded me of the library and Micah's lodge and my heart squeezed.
"Daddy," I said, "you shouldn't be out of bed."
I hoped that if I focused again on my father it would help to ease the pain that I was feeling. If I reminded myself of why I had walked away from Micah and justify every moment until I was able to be with him again.
"I'm all right," my father said. "All I'm doing is sitting here. What was all that yelling I heard?"
"It was nothing," I said.
"Don't lie to me, little girl. What's going on down there?"
"I was just having an argument with Miranda."
"About what?"
"I don't really want to talk about it, Daddy."
"Tell me," he said.
"She thinks that the man who saved me from the storm kidnapped me and mistreated me."
"Did he?"
"No. no, Daddy. Micah would never do anything like that. He's an incredible man and I love him."
"What about Daniel?"
I let out a long sigh and squeezed my eyes closed.
"I don't want to hear about Daniel anymore," I said. "That's over. It's been over. It will always be over. I don't love him. I don't want to be with him."
I started toward the door, but turned around just before walking out of it.
"Is there anything that I can get for you, Daddy?"
He shook his head.
"No."
**********
Micah
"Come back," I said. "I'll come get you now. Just come home."
"I wish I could," Charlotte said.
Her voice sounded different over the phone. It was thinner, losing some of the depth and sweetness that I loved to hear so much.
"What's stopping you?" I asked.
"My father is still sick," she said. "The doctors don't know what's wrong, I'm worried about leaving him."
"I understand. I know that you're worried about him and you don't want to leave him. But you sound miserable."
"I am miserable," she told me. "I miss you so much. I hate being here and being away from you everyday. I hate trying so hard to get along with my mother and my sisters and hearing the things that they say. I wish that they knew you."
"They don't need to know me," I said. "All that matters is that you know me."
"That's not all that matters," she said. "You don't deserve to have them talk about you the way that they do. They have no idea who you are. They've never known who you are. The worst part about it is that I expect this from my mother. I love her and there are times when she is really a good person, but one of her greatest flaws is the way that she looks at other people. It's a way for her to feel better about herself and to deflect the way people look at her. I've always known that about her. But I didn't expect it from Miranda."
"They just want to protect you" I said.
"You're the only one who has ever really protected me."
"When are you coming home?"
"As soon as I can."
I let the phone drop from my fingers onto the table in front of me and stared at it as it spun around lazily. Before that phone call it had been 3 days since I had spoken to Charlotte and it felt like far too much. I couldn't just sit around and wait for her any longer. I had walked away from her because of the way that her mother had talked about me, but I wasn't going to do it again. I wasn't going to let her have that control over me or over Charlotte. I was going to take matters into my own hands and make sure that the woman I loved knew where she belonged. I needed to make sure that she knew how much I truly cared about her and that I was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that we could have the future together that we both wanted. Even if that meant putting aside my anger and sitting down with her parents to tell them how much I love Charlotte, that I could take care of her, and that I wanted to spend my life doing anything that I needed to, to make their daughter happy.
I headed out of the house and toward town. Toward Charlotte.
I was nearly to Charlotte's parents’ house when I turned into the small parking lot in front of the florist. I realized that I had never brought Charlotte flowers and somehow that simple gesture seemed incredibly important, like it was something that I needed to do. I walked into the shop and began to explore the refrigerators full of blooms that lined the walls. There was something so incredibly strange and unnatural about seeing these flowers in their full, pristine condition just a matter of days before Christmas. I didn't see anything that see
med to fit Charlotte and decided that I should speak to the florist. I was heading toward the front counter when I heard a familiar voice. I paused, glancing around the edge of a display to see Charlotte's mother and a man walk-in. He was a taller, older version of the boy I had seen in the hallway with her so many years before and I knew instantly that it was Daniel.
"I can't tell you how happy this is making me," Charlotte's mother said.
"And you're sure you don't mind that it will be at your Christmas party?" Daniel asked.
"Of course not! What could be more perfect than a surprise proposal at Christmas? Everyone that Charlotte knows, and loves will be there, and she'll get to share this joyous moment with them."
I felt my stomach drop. He was going to propose to her.
"I've been looking forward to this for so long," Daniel said. "I can't wait to finally make her my wife."
"I'm just so glad that she finally saw the light and has forgiven you. I know this is been so hard for you, but she, I'm sure, is going to make it up to you. I'm just so thrilled. I know that this is all going to work out so perfectly."
The world around me seem to go red for an instant and my fingers tightened around the display in front of me until I could feel the metal cutting into my skin. Fury burned in my belly and I could taste bile rising up my throat and into my mouth. Charlotte had forgiven him. She had gone back to him and now she was going to marry him. She was no better than Helen. I had opened myself up to her. I had allowed myself to be vulnerable again and to feel things that I had pushed away for so long, and she betrayed me. I stalked down the aisle and out of the shop, not caring if either saw me. I just wanted to get back home to the lodge and pretend that the last few weeks hadn't even happened. I wanted to push through Christmas and let the new year ahead of me blur the memories that I had of Charlotte and of ever thinking that things could be different.
Chapter Sixteen
Charlotte
I tried to put down the phone before Miranda saw me holding it, but I knew by the look on her face that she had seen me. She had also seen me brush away the tear that sat on my cheek from yet again having the phone ring incessantly before going to voicemail.