Charlotte rubbed at a rude word scribbled on the desk.
Max sighed. “I just mean—no offence—Sophie’s been through a lot worse than you leaving. You missed a lot this year. A lot of being late for class because of the shitty elevator. Teaching Sophie to drive her new car. A lot of Sophie at her absolute worst. A lot of me at my worst, too—even after we broke up.”
Charlotte cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“We already did this once,” Max said. “But you’re never going to fix things with Sophie until you come to terms with how bad it really was. This is something no one can gloss over.”
“I wish I could have been here.”
Max shrugged and stood up. “It doesn’t matter now. But the quest for my physics book continues.”
Down the hall and to the right was the bank of lockers for seniors. It was your twelfth-grade privilege that your locker was upstairs. The novelty was short-lived. Charlotte, Sophie, and Max’s lockers were all beside each other, Sophie’s in the middle.
“Shit. What is it….” Max was mumbling to himself, spinning the combination dial.
“Alas, foiled by the one thing we knew we needed to get your damn book.” Charlotte folded her arms and leaned against the lockers.
“Okay, let’s pipe down, please,” Max spat, “my memory is coming back. 8-6-99. It’s my birthday.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes.
“Ta-da!” He flung the door open, nearly hitting her in the face. “Mission accomplished.”
Max held the book out to show her; the cover featured a couple of kids who looked far too happy to be learning twelfth-grade physics. He flipped it open. “See, loo—shit.”
Charlotte reached onto her tiptoes and looked down at the book over his shoulder. In the top left corner, Charlotte Romer was written in her own handwriting. “That’s mine!”
“Ah yes. I forgot. I lost mine and, ahem, borrowed yours after you left. Damn.”
“So did I get charged fifty dollars since you stole my textbook?”
“Sean would have gotten the bill.” Max shut the book and handed it to her. “And I wouldn’t say charged, I’d say forcibly donated—”
“You owe me fifty dollars.”
“I think, personally, we should call it even, on account of the memories we’ve made and fun we’ve had this morning.”
A new voice interrupted their squabble. “Memories will not fill the void of a debt unpaid.”
Charlotte and Max whipped around. The janitor was standing several paces back, clinging to a mop handle like it was keeping him upright. “The collectors come for us all, in the end,” the janitor said ominously.
“Okaaay,” Max answered. “Right. Okay. We’re just gonna.… Okay. Goodbye.”
Max grabbed Charlotte’s arm dragged her down the hall before she could stop him.
After their narrow escape, Max dropped Charlotte off at home.
“I’m sorry I stole your book,” he said sheepishly.
“It’s okay,” she said as she climbed out of the truck and hopped down on to the dry grass.
“I would forget that it was yours sometimes, and then see your name up in the corner.”
“That’s touching.”
“You have nice handwriting.”
“I know. I’m great.”
He smiled. “Bye, Charlie.”
Inside, Sean was awake, alternating between a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios and the guitar he’d been trying to teach himself to play for the last twenty years.
“How was your morning?” he asked from the sofa once she’d stepped inside.
“Good. Yours?”
“Laurie Rossi called, from May’s.”
Charlotte’s heart leapt. “What?”
Sean strummed a painfully dissonant chord. “Apparently one of her best servers is gonna be out for the next nine months. They’re in a state of crisis.” He caught her eye. “Your first shift’s tomorrow morning. Nine a.m.”
fifteen
“Charlotte, Father Sutherland is going to lose it if he doesn’t get that coffee. Table seven.”
“I got it,” Charlotte answered. The coffee wasn’t quite finished brewing, and the last few drops spilled into the base of the machine when she grabbed her pot.
“Coffee?” She raised her pot proudly as she sidestepped her way to the table.
The booth held a middle-aged woman on one side, and two blonde children on the other. Wrong table seven.
“Sorry.” Charlotte shook her head quickly.
The restaurant was packed. Serving was hard, and she’d only been a server for approximately fifty minutes. It was almost ten. How did so many people want Chinese food this early? To its credit, however, and since it was the only restaurant in town, May’s had expanded its menu beyond the boundaries of strictly Chinese cuisine. You could get everything from onion rings to bacon and eggs to dim sum.
There were four servers on—any more and the fire department would have had to step in. Charlotte eventually got the coffee to the correct table seven. Father Sutherland politely hummed his appreciation. It took her and the rest of the staff almost two hours to clear up the breakfast rush, and by then it was practically time for lunch. Her current first-day-on-the-job score was: two and a half spilled coffees, one very angry eighty-year-old woman who was enraged to discover she couldn’t order from the dinner menu at nine in the morning, and one piece of chocolate cake Charlotte had scarfed down during her ten-minute break.
“Charlotte, hey, can you run over and refill coffee for my table two?” One of the other waitresses—Katie Cooke, Delilah’s cousin—leaned across the divider from the kitchen. “I’ve got a takeout order to deal with.”
“Sure thing.” Charlotte grabbed coffee pot number ten thousand and eleven and headed into the front room. Table two was…near the front! Aha! Numerical order prevailed once again. Take that, grade twelve math. Table two was one of the only non-booth tables, nestled below the front window.
There sat Sophie Thompson, sipping coffee by herself while she blew through the novel in her hand.
Sophie looked up at her before Charlotte had a chance to come up with a plan. Shit. Be cool. Turn and go back to the kitchen. Better yet, run out of the restaurant.
Sophie laid down her book (Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro). “Hey.”
“Hi.” Charlotte gripped the coffee pot tightly, as it was the only battle weapon she had.
“Do you work here or something?” Sophie asked.
“Or something.” Charlotte looked down at her apron. “It’s my first day.”
Sophie nodded a couple of times. “That’s…great. The place is always busy.”
“Refill?” Charlotte raised the pot.
“Oh, yeah. Sure.”
Charlotte carefully filled the mug right to the top. Sophie never used cream or sugar. Sophie stared fixedly at the tabletop while Charlotte watched the black coffee rise against the white porcelain. The last time they’d talked would have been…almost two weeks ago. When Sophie told Charlotte about the baby. Sophie puffed out her cheeks and blew out the air as Charlotte slid her mug back to her.
“So, um, what’s new?” Charlotte asked, fiddling with the waist of her apron.
Sophie spun the mug around and shrugged half-heartedly, keeping her eyes down. “Not a whole lot.”
Charlotte sighed lightly. Right. She shook her head and dismissed the notion that they’d be capable of carrying on a conversation. “Can I get you anything else?”
Sophie shook her head. “No, thanks.”
Charlotte nodded, and for a split second, Sophie glanced up at her.
It was like those moments where you looked at your reflection in a mirror for too long and eventually you start to look weird, even to yourself. After a while, you don’t really recognize yourself. Did you always hav
e that freckle? Was your hairline always that uneven?
Did Sophie always look at her like that?
No, she reminded herself, a year ago Sophie was her best friend. Now, it was hard to tell who she was looking at, and what they were to each other. If they were going to repair this relationship, Charlotte knew she was going to have to be ready to rebuild from the ground up. They weren’t the same people they’d been a year ago, and especially not to each other.
“See you around.” Charlotte looked away and turned toward the kitchen.
“Charlie,” Sophie called after her. Charlotte looked back over her shoulder. “When do you work again?”
Slightly taken aback, Charlotte recalled her schedule. “Um, Thursday, I think. If I don’t get fired by then. Why?”
“I sail most mornings, off the wharf at the Cape. It’s usually sunny, but always freezing. Summer in the Maritimes, you know?”
“Oh, Sophie, that’s really cool,” Charlotte said honestly. She hadn’t considered what Sophie got up to in her downtime. Charlotte reflected that the closest thing she had to a hobby these days was walking to the Quik Mart to buy Sour Patch Kids.
“Yeah well, we all took sailing when we were young, and it was something I could get back into. I like being on the water. And look how strong my arms are now.” If Charlotte didn’t know better, she’d have said Sophie smiled a bit as she flexed her tanned arms exaggeratedly. Must’ve been a trick of the light.
Sophie raised her mug and took a delicate sip. “Anyway, I usually come here for coffee after, and to read. So, I’ll see ya around, I guess.”
Charlotte smiled in spite of herself, and there was no mistaking Sophie’s expression this time.
Freedom came at 4 p.m. She’d survived her first shift. Inhale, exhale, go home and shower. After stopping at the desk to grab her tips (an admirable forty-seven dollars) and thank Laurie another four million times for employing her, she gratefully pushed her way out of the restaurant and into the afternoon heat. The first thing she saw was Max, sitting on the curb between May’s and the Quik Mart, turned away from her as he scrolled through Twitter on his phone.
She dropped down onto her butt next to him. “Afternoon.”
He jumped. “Hey,” he said, pulling the cigarette from between his teeth and quickly snuffing it out on the sidewalk.
“Don’t stop on my account.”
“Not yours. Your dad’s.”
“Well, gee. That just might bring him back,” Charlotte said dryly.
“God, you’re a treat,” Max guffawed as he tossed his dead cigarette into the bin outside the restaurant without standing up.
“Is there any particular reason you’re hanging out on a sidewalk mid-afternoon?” she asked, pulling her knees in toward her chest.
“A scary birdie told me you were off at four,” he explained, pulling his shirt away from his body and shaking it. His shirt clung to his shoulders.
The heat of the afternoon sun crept under Charlotte’s dark hair, prickling against her scalp. A kind of sticky heat that made you not want to touch anything or anyone.
“Sean?”
“Correct. I came calling, expecting you to be still asleep at noon as per usual, but your brother informed me that you’re now a working woman.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“I’m proud of you, Charlie,” Max said, “really. Now you can start paying back all the money you owe me. And I got you these.”
From his other side he produced a limp and malnourished-looking bouquet of daisies. Over his shoulder, she could see the planters outside the restaurant were slightly more bare than usual.
She took them with a smirk. “Wow, did you drive all the way to the florist in Tatamagouche for these?”
“Yeah, actually. Paid the big bucks.”
“Gorgeous.” She twirled the dirty stems between her fingers. “Why are you looking for me anyway?”
“Ah, yes. The plot thickens.” From his back pocket he withdrew a slightly crumpled, square white envelope and held it out to her.
“Oh, no.” She grinned knowingly and took it from him. She held the envelope to her face, using it to hide her smile. “Please tell me this isn’t what I think this is.”
Max’s birthday was the first week of August, and every year on the following weekend, Max’s father hosted a massive get-together that was half Max’s birthday party, half mixer for the bank. Max liked to use the infamous party to lure his friends with the promise of an open bar. Paper invitations were always distributed, though when it came down to it, they were mostly just a formality. The whole town always showed up. Each year, alcohol was consumed, shenanigans were carried out, people slept together, and it all occurred under the pretense of a sort-of birthday party.
“It’s exactly what you think it is. What you’ve been counting down the days until, I’m sure. Isn’t this the reason you came home?” He nudged her shoulder with his. “And the party happens to be on the actual day of my birth this year—so you’re required to bring a gift.”
“Is Leo going?”
“Obviously.”
“Then I’ll go. For Leo. Consider this my RSVP.” She tucked the envelope into her work bag. “Looking forward to the booze. And the little finger sandwiches. Because I don’t get paid for two weeks so I’ll take all the free food I can get.”
“Good. I wanted to deliver the invite in person.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only person I was worried might not come who I actually want to be there.”
“What, you think I’d chicken out?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It was heavily implied.” Charlotte stood up.
“And maybe I just wanted an excuse to come see you?” He rose with her, brushing dust off the back of his shorts.
She raised her eyebrows. “You saw me yesterday.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“No, absinthe.”
He laughed. “Like some company for the walk home?”
She thought about it, her mind returning to the last time he’d offered to walk her home, after she’d run into him playing pinball inside the Quik Mart.
“Yeah, why not.”
sixteen
“Why are we so goddamn POOR?” Charlotte wrenched the dresser drawer open. Okay, that was a bit harsh, because she knew why they were so goddamn poor. (Exhibit one: family breadwinner was a twenty-one-year-old Home Depot cashier; exhibit two: she’d spent the year at a bourgeois boarding school.) And it wasn’t very kind of her to scream it while Sean was standing in the doorway.
She peeked over her shoulder at her brother, who was staring absently at the ceiling. She slammed the drawer shut loudly with her hip, snapping his attention back to the very important matter at hand.
“Why don’t you call Max,” Sean suggested, “and convince him to change the dress code to Romer-attainable casual? I’m sure he’d do it. I’ll let you borrow my barbecue wings bib.”
“Ha, haha, hahaha.” She wasn’t laughing. At this rate, she’d be showing up to Max’s birthday as the Paper Bag Princess.
“Why don’t you wear the dress that was on the line the other day?” Sean asked.
Charlotte tore through the second drawer. The dress she’d worn to Sophie’s party on her first night back.
“Nope. Tainted,” she said, shaking her head.
Sean rolled his eyes and sighed. “You’re an idiot.”
Charlotte scrunched up her face and mouthed genetic into her T-shirts.
“Some girl I brought home a few weeks ago left a dress here,” Sean suggested.
Charlotte made a frustrated noise as she flipped through the hangers in her closet. In Ye Good Olden Days, Charlotte would have just called Sophie and borrowed something from Sophie’s personal Forever 21 stash.
She probably wouldn’t have even had to call; Sophie loved a project.
“Ah, yes, a dress that once belonged to some random girl that you slept with. How could your little sister say no to that?” Would a beach cover-up pass as black tie appropriate? Hm.
“Just trying to help,” Sean said.
“What did she leave in?”
Sean shrugged. “Didn’t see her leave.”
“Our parents would be so proud.”
She pushed past a few more hangers before she saw Sean spasm into a weird sort of jig out of the corner of her eye.
“Our parents. I just thought of something.”
Charlotte whirled around, but Sean was gone. She tripped her way past the piles of clothes strewn across the floor and followed him. Sean was halfway up the attic ladder.
“What are you doing?” She craned her neck, trying to see up the gap.
“Do you remember Nick?” Sean’s voice floated down from somewhere obscured by boxes and maybe asbestos.
“Um, yeah. He stabbed me?”
“No, OTHER Nick, Charlotte, Jesus.” Sean re-emerged at the top and backed down the ladder with a box under one arm. “Davidson. He needed a dress for Halloween in grade eleven. It didn’t fit. Anyway.” Sean pushed the box into her hands. “Open it.”
Charlotte rested the box against her stomach and pulled open the flaps. The top of the box revealed a smooth layer of silky baby pink fabric.
“Oh, god,” Charlotte groaned.
Sean looked pleased with himself. “Good thing Dad was so sentimental. Mom’s prom dress. I think she made it.”
Charlotte stood, pulling the dress free of the box. She held it against her, the seam hitting just above her knee. “She did not. There’s a Sears tag on it.”
“I’m a genius, you don’t need to thank me,” he said, waving his hands in front of him and stooping over into a deep bow.
Charlotte raised her eyebrows and held the dress at arm’s length. It smelled musty, but she was running low on options. With a sigh, she folded it over her arm. “The jury’s still out on that one, I think.”
The Last Time I Saw Her Page 13