A Heart of Time

by Shari J. Ryan

  Again, we’re all silent. Normally, we’re careful about what we say out loud but things slip in anger. “No, Lana, your dad is not a bad man.” Charlotte closes her eyes and clasps her fingers together. My attention is drawn to her hands, noticing the red polish coating her nails. I have never seen her nails done before tonight. She’s a t-shirt and jeans girl. I take a better look at her face and see she’s wearing way more makeup than usual, too. Is she trying to impress this dickwad?

  “Are you lying?” Lana asks.

  “Do I lie to you?” Charlotte snaps back.

  “No,” Lana replies.

  “I want you to tell me what you want for your birthday. What have you been asking me for since September?” Charlotte asks her.

  A wide grin unfurls across Lana’s lips while her thoughts of her shitty dad melt away. “Ummm, a bike?” she squeals.

  “Lance, could you grab Lana’s gift?” Charlotte had asked me to help her with the bike and I obviously said yes but when she never followed up, I assumed she went in a different direction. Now, I realize, she just had Lance-a-lot help her. Douche.

  “Sure, babe.” Is that all he says?

  Lance stands up, pressing his chest out to make a show of it, and groans as he pulls his chair away from the table. He points a finger at Lana and winks. “Wait until you see this, little girl.” That doesn’t sound creepy at all.

  Lance slips out the front door and returns a minute later carrying a turquoise bike with a big hot pink ribbon on the handle bar. Lana lets out a shriek that could be confused for a pterodactyl screaming.

  Olive looks excited for Lana because I just bought her a bike for her birthday, too, and the two girls have many plans to go bike riding all summer.

  “Sweet ride, kid,” AJ says in his tough guy voice. “How many different speeds you got on that thing?”

  Charlotte thwacks AJ in the chest, forcing him to choke with laughter. “Do you like it, sweetie?”

  “I love this so much, mommy!” Lana croons. With her arms flung around Charlotte’s chest and Charlotte’s head resting over hers, my heart warms up from the past hour of coldness. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Lana releases her arms from Charlotte and hops over to Lance, giving him the same hug. And that hurts me. It shouldn’t. I’m not her father and I’m not her mother’s boyfriend, I’m only the person she is staying with right now. But I love her, regardless.

  “Olive, you should go get Lana’s gift now,” I tell her.

  “Yay!” Olive shouts while skipping up the steps. I hear her wrestling with the wrapped package in her bedroom before she returns.

  “What is it? What is it?” Lana asks, gleefully.

  “Two-way radios!” Olive spills the beans before Lana can open the gift but it doesn’t seem to take away from the excitement. The two girls have been asking for these for the last couple of months so I thought it might be a nice gift.

  After the gifts are opened and the girls have settled back down, we’re digging into our cold dinner. Everyone seems content for the moment so I think we’re all okay right now.

  I scrape up my plate first, looking up at Charlotte just because she’s sitting across from me. I catch her looking back at me with a small, almost unrecognizable grin. AJ, Ari, and Lance are all caught up in a conversation about flowers and Ari’s shop, the girls are in the living room playing with their radios and Charlotte and I are lost in a staring contest. “I never wanted to cause you any more pain, Hunt,” she says softly. “When you first told me Ellie’s full name, I did put two and two together but with the amount of pain I saw in your eyes after so many years had passed, I didn’t see the purpose of telling you who my ex-husband was. I wasn’t withholding the information for any reason other than not causing you more stress.”

  I want to reach across the table and take her hand but that would be inappropriate right now. I believe what she’s saying. “I know,” I tell her.

  “This town is so small it’s hard not to come across someone who you haven’t had some degree of connection with.”

  “Oh,” I laugh, “I know.”

  I stand up from the table and collect as many plates as I can hold at once. Charlotte does the same on her side of the table and we meet in the kitchen.

  “This all feels wrong,” she says to me, once behind the wall between the kitchen and dining room.

  “What does?”

  “This whole situation tonight. I don’t like Lance and I think I’ve come to realize that I need to fix some algorithms on my dating site because it matched us together.” She looks somewhat embarrassed, and yet, humored at the same time.

  “Yeah, you might want to get on that,” I say, placing my hand on her shoulder. Charlotte looks over at my hand as if it is strange for me to be touching her at all. Which it is, once again, considering our current status.

  “Are things still in limbo with you and Ari?” she asks.

  I close my eyes briefly, unsure how to respond. “Yeah, pretty much. But she has Ellie’s heart. I’m in love with that heart and I don’t know if it has anything to do with Ari but I’m in no shape to push her away after wondering who she was for so long.”

  Charlotte places her hands on the outsides of my arms and looks up at me. “I get it,” she says, her eyes squinting slightly with the sense of understanding. “I really, really get it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, just be fair to your heart too, Hunt.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JULY

  -Two Months Later-

  “I think I have the last of the boxes, Charlotte.”

  “It’ll be so nice to be home again,” she says. “Not that living with you and Olive hasn’t been a treat, but I miss my stuff.”

  The renters across the street took an extra month to move out, which pushed Charlotte’s plans back a little. The only thing that matters, though, is that she won the court case and Don is no longer selling scripts to the underground consultants. Proving this fact was a challenge but with Lana’s well-being at stake during the very few visitations she has with Don, the judge was easier to convince with the evidence presented to him. I don’t know if Charlotte is over all of this, and I don’t think she’ll ever trust Don again but her life is slowly falling back into place and that is what is most important.

  “Mom, do we really have to move back across the street? I love living here. Plus, Olive and I are like sisters, and you should never separate sisters. Don’t you know that?” Lana and Olive have been moping around the house for the past two weeks since we told them the news. It’s breaking my heart a little.

  “Girls, you will only be a hundred feet away from each other. It’s hardly something to be upset about,” Charlotte tells them.

  “I don’t understand. Why are you leaving, though?” Olive asks. “Aren’t you and daddy married now? Don’t married people live together?”

  Olive’s questions stun me and a large pit gnarls at my stomach as I kneel down and pull her toward me. “Why do you think Charlotte and I got married, Olive?”

  “You live together and you love Lana.” Her reasons are so simple, innocent, and true, but yet so far from reality.

  “Honey, that doesn’t mean two people are married.”

  “But Daddy, you love Charlotte, too,” she says, loud enough that both Charlotte and Lana hear. I can feel Charlotte’s gaze burning a hole into my back right now.

  My conscience can’t handle many more of Olive’s intellectual life questions and assumptions. “Ollie, you’re six. How do you know what love is?”

  A little smile forms over her lips as she closes her eyes and presses her hands into my shoulders. “It’s the warmth you feel when you’re around someone, like you belong together. Isn’t that how you feel when Charlotte and Lana are here?” Her question stabs right through me, as I never assumed she would be so in tune with all of this, and if I had known, I would have been more careful. I’m just not sure how I could have been more careful in this situation.

&nb
sp; “What time is Ari coming over today?” Charlotte asks.

  “I don’t know if she is,” I respond.

  “What do you mean? It’s Friday. Don’t you two normally go to the gardens?”

  “She’s been a little distant lately, but I guess I have been, too.”

  “How so?” Charlotte pries.

  “I don’t know.” I kind of shrug her off. In truth, I haven’t paid much attention to the lack of communication Ari has had with me, mostly because I’ve had back-to-back jobs for the past two weeks. I’m also a little bummed that Charlotte and Lana are leaving, so I haven’t felt too motivated to do much. AJ got his own place last month and for the first time in months, it’s just going to be Olive and me again. I’m happy to have our alone time back but this house is going to feel very empty as of tomorrow morning.

  “Oh,” Charlotte says, seeming a little surprised. She lifts a small box and brings it over to the door to label it. “That’s odd.”

  It is weird. I pull out my phone and send Ari a text message.

  Me: It’s Friday, are you still coming by today?

  Ten minutes pass and there is no response from her. There has been no response to the last several texts I have sent her over the past two weeks—of me checking in and asking her to have a meal with me, or just talk at least.

  “Why don’t you go talk to Ari at the shop?” Charlotte suggests.

  I nod in response, agreeing with her suggestion. “I’m getting the feeling she might not like that but I need to know what’s going on, I guess.”

  “Go ahead; I got the girls. We’ll go start unpacking.”

  “Thanks,” I say as I lift Olive up and hug her tightly. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  She places her small hands against my cheeks. “Mommy’s heart isn’t mommy.”

  “Olive,” I respond through a hoarse grumble. “I know that.”

  “It’s the truth,” she says into my ear. “Just remember that.”

  I place her down and look over at Charlotte, who has her hand flattened against her chest, pulling in a deep breath. “I hope everything is okay,” she tells me. “Tell her I say hello.”

  “You sure you’re okay with the two of them while you unpack?”

  “Yep, we’ll be fine.” Charlotte takes the few steps between us and wraps her arms around my neck—a gesture she hasn’t offered since the moment she moved in here. “Thank you for saving us when I needed it the most. What you have done is unforgettable and you are truly the most genuine, best friend I have ever had. If that’s what I’m lucky enough to walk away from you with, then I am grateful.”

  “You’re talking like you’re never going to speak to me again now that you aren’t forced to,” I respond nervously.

  “I didn’t say that,” she says. Pulling back a bit, she sweeps her thumb across my cheek before placing a small kiss where her thumb was. The touch of her lips sends comforting warmth through my entire body and it was only my cheek that she kissed.

  I grab my keys from the side table and step outside into the warm July air. The sun is hot today and the air is dry, making for the perfect summer weather—Ellie’s favorite kind of day. Shortly after we got married, we would go to the gardens, find a bench directly in the sun and sit there until it got too hot. We’d hang our heads backward over the top of the bench’s back as we allowed the sun to wrap us up in its heat.

  Before heading to the flower shop, I take a detour to the gardens, arriving alone for the first time in a couple of months. I take the steps slowly down into the shaded area where our tree is. It’s surrounded by the jasmines Ari and I planted here a couple of months ago.

  I place my hand over the engraved writing and press my head against the tree. “Am I doing this all wrong, Ell? I feel like that’s all I ever ask you. I just wish you could answer me for once.” I sigh heavily and drop down into the grass. “I thought I had this all figured out but you know what I can’t figure out? I was never supposed to have to make a decision like this. You were supposed to be with me until we were old and gray.” Gripping at the sharp blades of new grass, blame filters through me like it often does. “Instead, I was a jackass and got us into a car accident. And you were a jackass and didn’t tell me that the car accident shortened your life by seventy years or so. I guess us two jackasses were destined for each other. But now I’m sitting here in front of two paths and I don’t know which way to go.” I take a deep breath, contemplating the answer to my own question. “Ell, do I follow your heart or mine?”

  “You follow yours, Hunter.” Ari’s voice is soft among the slight breeze. I didn’t see her walk down the steps, and I didn’t see her car in the lot when I came in but she’s come from the path behind me, which means she was here all along.

  “Ari,” I say, standing up, brushing the dirt from my backside. “Why haven’t you returned my texts or calls?”

  She places a hand over her heart, Ellie’s heart. Looping her other arm around mine, she pulls me toward the bench where we both take a seat.

  “Do you remember when I told you I was no good for you, that you would end up hurt because of me?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I remember that conversation.” I place my hand down on her trembling knee.

  “I’m selfish. I’ve been selfish, Hunter, but please, go along with this—whatever this has been—companionship, friendship, connection, a little more.”

  I don’t understand what she means by that. My eyes strain against the sun as I continue staring at her with wonder. “There is no such thing as selfish, considering the hand you’ve been dealt.”

  “I’ve known all along that you’re in love with the heart in my body, and I can’t help but feel like I took it for granted—the way you treat me is like no one else has ever treated me. You’re a gentleman and perfect in every other way, too. As simple as our relationship has remained, you have still managed to make me feel things I was sure I would never have the opportunity to feel, but mostly, you have made me feel alive.”

  “Are you saying goodbye to me?” I laugh anxiously, realizing that while I want to think it’s a joke, I’m pretty sure it’s not.

  She looks up to the sky and closes one eye against the brightness. “I saw you and Charlotte at the grocery store last week.” She pauses and smiles up at the sun. “You know you two are meant to be together, right?”

  “What? Where were you? Why didn’t come over to us?”

  “I—I can’t answer that yet.”

  “I don’t understand where this is all coming from, Ari.”

  “I know,” she says. “Hunter, I know you want to be around me for more reasons than just Ellie’s heart. We’ve gotten really close, but I’m hurting your life right now. You just don’t realize it.”

  I lean down and pick a small, white flower from the ground, holding my focus on it as I digest every word she’s saying. “How could you think that?”

  “Besides that I feel like I’m preventing you from moving on to have a normal relationship with Charlotte, the one person who will likely be there to grow old with you, there’s one fact you have overlooked, or possibly never considered.”

  A gust of wind blows the small flower from my loose grip, and my heart pounds heavily as I look back over at her. Her pinched lips tell me she is struggling to retain her composure. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, ” I say, tilting my head, and giving her a bewildered look.

  “Some people are incredibly lucky and live a long life with their transplant but one out of two heart recipients don’t survive for more than ten years.”

  “Well, you’re on the better half of that fifty percent,” I tell her, feeling angry that she should consider being on the other end of that half. Ellie’s heart is meant to survive. With that, I see a fascinating stone I think Olive would like. Attempting to distract myself from what I’m hearing, I bend down to pick it up, noticing that it is, ironically, heart-shaped—not like a valentine heart, but a real heart.

  She shakes her head
and sweeps her hair behind her back. “No, I’m not,” she says, through a frustrated exhale.

  “What? What are you talking about?” I ask, my voice betraying my anger as I chuck the stone as far as I can throw it. “You have no way of knowing that. Ari, you shouldn’t talk like that. You need to stay positive. Look how far you’ve come in the past six years.”

  “Hunter,” she says calmly. “Stop. Just stop.”

  “Ari, what the hell are you trying to tell me right now?”

  She stands up from the bench and wrings her fingers around her wrists as she paces back and forth. “Last Friday afternoon I had my bi-annual heart check-up. The doctor found something we had all been hoping not to find.”

  “What? Ari, tell me, please,” I beg.

  “The scans came back showing that I have accelerated coronary artery disease.” I don’t even know what that means but the word disease and artery give enough away.

  “Well, they can fix that. They can give you meds or change your diet, right? Now that they know you have it, they can treat it...surely.” I know I sound ridiculous and I have no idea what I’m talking about. “I’m sure they can do something to help you. Again, don’t be so negative.” I’m nearly yelling at her, scolding her for saying what she’s saying. Why is she saying all of this to me? Why does she look like she’s about to be sick? Why do I feel like I’m about to be sick? Why the hell do I feel like I might start crying like a goddamn baby here in a minute?

  “They gave me a year at most, Hunter,” and, just like that, she says the words I was hoping never to hear from her. “I was going to keep this to myself for fear of putting you through something like this after what you have already been through.”

  I stand up and, without any words to say, I grab her and pull her into me tightly. I squeeze her harder than I should, and I cry harder than I’ve let anyone see me cry in years. I bury my head in her shoulder, shaking her along with my shuddering body. “No,” I cry. “No, no, no…”