A Heart of Time

by Shari J. Ryan

  I find myself short of breath as I step out of the truck. My knees are weak and if I weren’t trying my hardest not to fall over, I’d be kissing the pavement.

  What should be twenty-five steps to the front door seems as if it’s only three, and before I know it, my hand is gripped around the ice-cold handle. The slight gust of wind feels as though it’s holding the door in place but it’s actually just my muscles not working accordingly. The restaurant isn’t large and it’s diner style, which means the moment I step in, I will be faced with people looking at me—the reason for the door chiming.

  I hold my breath and yank the door open, stepping inside. Looking at several people sitting in booths, I notice none of them are seated alone. Maybe she brought someone with her...her mother, father, sister, or brother? I could be psycho, after all. Though, I don’t even know if she has any of those relatives. I know almost nothing about her. Maybe I would have been smart to bring someone, too—Charlotte. Maybe that would have been the right way to handle this. Too late now, though. Whatever, it isn’t like this a blind date. I just want to meet her. I just want to be near her heart.

  As I continue scanning my gaze up and down the row from left to right, no one is looking at me anymore, which means no one has cared enough to think I could be Hunter. Does she know what I look like? I suppose that wouldn’t surprise me since she knows where I live and what my name is. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out.

  I pull in another shuddered breath as a waitress with a black skirt and a white blouse approaches me. She’s young, maybe a teenager. Her hair is everywhere and there is sadness pooling in her dark lined eyes, telling me she’s got a story to tell. I’d like to distract myself with figuring her out but there are no time-outs or pauses in real life, so I won’t ask her if she’s okay while she’s asking me if I would like a table for one. The mere fact that I even notice sadness in others around me makes me realize how different I am today from the grieving Hunter who first met Charlotte at the bus stop just a few months ago.

  “Two, please,” a voice from behind me answers the question before I have the chance to open my mouth.

  “Right this way,” the waitress says, pivoting and heading down the narrow path toward the last empty table in the restaurant.

  I should turn around. I should face her. She knows who I am from behind and I don’t know who she is at all.

  Doing what any scared-shitless person would do, I follow the waitress without turning around. By the time we reach the table, the waitress has already placed the two menus down and told us to enjoy our meal. I slide into the nearest bench, which is rude. I’ve always been big on offering the lady the closest seat first, but I don’t have the balls to be a gentleman at this moment. My wife’s heart is four inches behind me—close enough to feel the breath being created from Ellie’s beating heart.

  The coward inside of me would like to run away and never face the outcome to this mystery, but I would have to face her in order to do that, too. I understand now why she has kept her identity secret all of these years. The moment I see her, know her, speak to her…everything will change.

  I close my eyes briefly as I feel the booth adjust slightly, telling me she is now seated across from me, staring at me, likely wondering what the hell is wrong with me as I sit here with my eyes pinned shut.

  I place my hands down on the table, gripping the plastic coating with the tips of my fingers. My heart is in my throat and I’m not sure I have what it takes to swallow until a hand—a soft, warm hand—falls gently on top of one of mine, and instantly, my eyes flicker open.

  My other hand finds my mouth, covering it with shock and awe. “You,” is all I manage.

  She nods with an unsure, small smile and responds, “Me.” With a gentle laugh, she says, “Robert Frost told me to take a different path today.”

  “You didn’t just move here from San Diego, did you?” The tense feeling in my muscles eases at the sound of her voice, “And I thought you didn’t believe any of that? As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, you called it, ‘bull’.”

  She expels a quiet huff and peers down to her lap. After a brief pause, she looks back up at me through her thick, dark lashes. “No, I lied about San Diego,” she says, “And I could have been wrong about Frost.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t figure out how to,” she says, breaking her gaze from mine.

  I seem to have an abundance of people in my life who don’t know how to tell me things…important things. “Hey, I have your wife’s heart,” I say, offering her the simple words that so easily could have been admitted when we first met. “That would have done the trick.”

  “Yeah, like that would be the appropriate way to do it and not weird at all,” she retorts, rolling her eyes. Her upper body slouches forward, allowing her dark hair to slip off the edges of her shoulders. Creating more silence, she unzips her coat, cautiously pulling each arm from her sleeves, revealing a v-neck black shirt that flirts with her collarbone. My focus is drawn to the very center of her chest where a perfectly straight scar plays peek-a-boo with the covering material. It is her.

  “I wanted to tell you but there’s something about running up to a total stranger and gutting him,” she says.

  We aren’t strangers.

  “Instead, you have written me anonymous letters for five years. Don’t you realize that has gutted me, too?” Maybe gutted isn’t the correct word but I’ve felt hollowed out each time I read more of her words. It has kept the pain alive for me. It has also kept Ellie alive for me. “And where was this mountain you wrote about?”

  “That was never my intention, Hunter. I promise you.” She presses her fingers through her hair, sweeping it away from her cheeks, and I take the moment to acknowledge Olive’s description of a Disney princess to be quite accurate. She’s flawless. “The mountain is up north. I like to take short road trips to think and be alone sometimes.”

  Checking off the answers to my questions, I continue, “Did you know I would be at the gardens that day? Those days?” I ask her, wondering how much Ari honestly knows about me.

  “No, I had no idea. That happened all on it’s own.” As if Ellie wanted us to meet. Nothing happens on its own. Everything is preplanned and destined to happen.

  “Wow,” I offer as an honest response.

  “I agree.” Ari places her hands down on top of the table; folding them together and interlocking all of her perfectly manicured fingers. “I know you have a girlfriend, or at least, I’m assuming so by what Olive said that day at the gardens. It is not my intention to cause any issues or ripples in your life and I hope I haven’t done so by asking you to meet me here tonight.” I don’t think it’s necessary to admit the trouble this has actually caused because I’m sitting across from Ellie’s beating heart.

  “I do have a girlfriend, but that has nothing to do with us,” I admit. She smiles at this and I’m not sure I understand why.

  “I’m glad you are happy. It takes a little more of the guilt off of me.”

  I don’t understand how she could feel guilt. Ellie died and was noble enough to think of what would happen in life once she was gone. “You should never feel guilty. This moment right here, right now, shows me how wonderful of a person Ellie was to think ahead and want to save a life if hers were to end. It makes me love her even more.”

  “She was a great woman,” Ari says, once more stealing the breath from my lungs.

  “Can I take your order or do you need a few more minutes?” The waitress interrupts this incredibly important discussion, and Ari uses it to her advantage.

  “Could I have the garden salad with oil and vinegar, topped with the grilled chicken, please?”

  Losing track of the fact that I’m sitting on top of a mile-high roller coaster waiting for the brakes to release, I look at her, dumbfounded. “Salad? Are you serious?”

  She places her hand over her chest. “Gotta keep this ticking.”

  �
��She’ll have a burger and fries.” I know that was rude and she could be a vegetarian or a vegan or something but Ellie would want her to have a burger and fries. If there was one thing Ellie did right, it was eat, and she did it as if she were going to die the next day. Which she did—she had an entire Cheese pizza and two orders of fries the night before Olive was born. She knew they weren’t going to let her eat anything at the hospital and early labor had already started. It was her last pre-mommy wish. The woman got what she wanted and it made her night; thankfully, since it was her last. Talk about a last meal.

  “Hey,” she croaks out.

  “Are you a vegetarian?” I ask pointedly.

  “No,” she laughs.

  “Burger and fries it is, then. Same for me, please.” This helps the waitress speed up the process, leaving us back at the top of the roller coaster. “You knew Ellie? I know you made mention of it in one of your last letters, but hearing it out loud stuns me again.”

  She avoids my gaze as tears pool in her eyes. I give her the moment she must need as I watch her fingers weave tightly together, forcing the whites of her knuckles to glowing under the hanging table light.

  When she refocuses her attention on my face, there’s a reflection in her flooding tears, showing a disfigured version of my facial features. I wonder what the look on my face is right now. I feel so many different things, none of which I’ve ever felt before. “I was her student teacher two years before she passed.”

  “Student teacher?” I’m not sure why I’m asking this since I knew she had several of them over the course of the four years she taught but she never mentioned any of them in particular to me. “I don’t understand,” what one thing has to do with another.

  “I was dying,” she says as the tears dry. Her words sound sour coming from her mouth, but also rehearsed as if she was forced to look in the mirror and tell herself over and over again that she was dying.

  “From what?” I should assume. I am assuming. But I need to hear it all.

  “Congenital Heart Failure. I wasn’t supposed to make it past twenty, but I did,” she explains. Her explanation makes my breath catch in my throat. Ellie was always one to come home and share heart-breaking stories with me. She always had an idea on how she could fix the world single-handedly. It was never a matter of explaining a person’s situation with pity. She always had a solution. Why she never mentioned Ari to me is baffling. “She wanted to help me.”

  “That was Ellie. She considered becoming a nurse but she has—had—an aversion to blood and a teacher was the next best thing when it came to helping people, so that’s what she did. She also had a thing for little kids—born to be a mother, I always thought.”

  Ari pulls in a quivered breath as her lips curve into a small smile. “She told me if it was meant to be, I would receive my heart—meaning if her heart were to outlive her brain before I passed away, I would be pretty damn lucky. The kindness of Ellie is something that has been infused within me; it has remained in her heart. But her telling me I would be lucky didn’t seem so clear until I found out the heart was going to be mine. I wouldn’t consider her death in exchange for my survival to be very lucky.”

  I wanted to hear every last word Ari just said but my mind is hooked on one particular statement that I can’t move past. “I’m sorry,” I shake my head. “What were you saying about her heart surviving her brain?”

  Paleness encompasses her cheeks. “That’s what she said to me,” Ari simplifies.

  “But why would she consider that possibility?” A cold sweat is creeping up the back of my neck and it’s making me dizzy and weak to the point where I just want to put my head down and rest for a minute. Instead, I try to hold my ground and ask the questions that need to be asked. “You must know why she would say something so random?” I hear my voice becoming louder and more aggressive, but as much as I want to tame my outburst, I can’t figure out how to. Ari looks taken aback—slightly frightened even. It feels as if the restaurant is closing in around me, closing me into this hollow bubble where everyone is looking in at me, talking about me in whispers as if I can’t hear them, which I can’t. I can only hear the thoughts in my own head, fighting with each other, battling it out for one simple understanding.

  Ari looks to the side, taking in the staring gazes from the tables surrounding us. I should feel bad for making her uncomfortable but instead, I’m concerned about imploding.

  “She said it was her destiny to give life. It was God’s plan for her,” Ari offers.

  “No. There was more,” I reply, doing my best to keep my volume down.

  “This is not my place,” she says. “I don’t feel right about this, which is exactly why I have kept my distance over the years. I didn’t come here tonight to tell you things Ellie confided in me. I came here to end the pain I’ve presumably been causing you, which is evident now.” Ari looks down to the bench she’s seated on and gathers her purse and coat, scooping them up into her arms. “This was a terrible idea.”

  She’s leaving. No way. She can’t leave. Not after all of this. I grip her arm as she passes by, holding her in place, not allowing her the freedom she deserves. “Don’t leave me,” I stammer.

  “Let go, Hunter.” She pulls her arm from my loose grip and continues for the door.

  I reach into my back pocket and pull out a fifty-dollar bill. I toss it onto the table and grab my coat, slipping out of the booth to follow her. I expect to find her locked in her car by the time I make it outside but she’s sitting down on the curb in front of the restaurant, slouched over, holding herself tightly.

  For a moment, everything inside of me eases, but I’m not sure if it’s because I’m temporarily not afraid of losing control or if I’m overly hopeful for a confession that I deserve to know.

  “Ellie and I kept in contact over the years. I knew when you found out you were pregnant with Olive. I knew when she went into labor. I knew when she died. In fact, I saw you in the lobby of the hospital,” she explains delicately.

  “How did you know who I was?” I take a seat beside her on the curb, instinctively placing my arm around her as a peace offering, trying my hardest to understand that I’m not the only one who has felt pain, regardless of my confusion surrounding Ari’s friendship with Ellie. Why had I never heard of her? I truly thought Ellie told me everything.

  Ari combs her fingers through her hair again, a habit I have been noticing over the past few times I’ve seen her. She exposes the profile of her beautiful face, which is now glowing under the orange street light and the creamy moon. She sniffles softly and pulls her hands up to her chest, shivering against the cold breeze. “She loved you so much,” she says through a soft breath. “Like more than I’ve ever seen anyone love a person. She would show me pictures at school, like stupid insignificant pictures to an outsider, but she wanted to show off a certain smile you had when you were painting a room or the look you had after you just burnt a meal you spent three hours making.” None of this rings a bell to me, but I want to hear more.

  “Ellie was madly, senselessly, in love with you,” Ari continues. “Every decision she made somehow revolved around your life, and while I never met you in person, I felt as though I knew you from the amount she spoke of you.” My heart aches with contentment, listening to her words, her explanations for a reason I may never fully understand. I needed to hear this. I’ve needed this so badly.

  “I knew it was she who died when I was called about the donation. I was told to come to the hospital immediately. I was filled with a combination of heartache, despair, and hope. I had never felt so many intense feelings at one time. Selfish luck was one of those feelings, the one I’m most ashamed of. I wanted to pretend Ellie wasn’t the donor and she didn’t lose her life, in turn giving me a future I wasn’t meant to have. I tried my hardest to put it out of my mind as I walked into the hospital that day.”

  Ari stands up, still clutching her hands over her chest. Walking into the middle of the parking lot and up to her
blue hybrid, she stops to lean against the back of her car. “I saw you the second I walked into the hospital. I thought my heart was going to give out before I had a chance to accept the donation. You were propped up against a wall beneath a payphone, your knees were pulled into your chest and your eyes were inflamed, your cheeks were red and stained with a constant flow of tears. You don’t usually see the moment a person breaks down or loses the love of his life.” She breathes heavily from her overflow of words. “But if you did, you would feel sorry for him or her, regardless of knowing their story. And I knew your story. The guilt that found me in that one particular moment has remained frozen within my head.”

  “You saw me that day, that moment?” I clarify.

  “I stood and watched you for five minutes until my mother forced me to continue walking. I could hardly hold myself up from the weak state my body was in, but I felt it was the repercussion I needed before I went in and took your wife’s heart.”

  “Did Ellie know she was going to die?” I need to know and I will continue to beg her for information until I no longer have the opportunity to do so.

  “Hunter, would you want me to tell you something that she told me in confidence?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  My fist is growing weak as I continue knocking on Charlotte’s door. I know she’s home. I’m also aware it’s close to midnight. I pull out my phone and send another text, pleading for her to answer.

  I’m not giving up until she does. I need to talk to her. I’ve been trying to avoid calling her in case her volume is up since I don’t want to wake Lana this late at night, but she’s leaving me no choice.

  My finger hovers over the call button just as I see the hall light illuminate through the foggy glass. I hear footsteps. Please don’t be Lana. The door opens sluggishly and Charlotte is standing in front of me in a ratty white robe, her hair tousled everywhere and her eyes half-lidded and also full of confusion. She hasn’t yet given me the opportunity to see her without make-up and now I don’t understand why. Every one of her features is lighter, more natural, flushed—beautiful.