“She’s in her room,” Ellen continued in her flat tone. “I wish you luck.”
She moved aside, allowing Charlotte to pass. Charlotte avoided looking at her and marched to the bedroom in the back of the house.
The door was closed. She knocked once.
“Yeah?” came Sophie’s disinterested reply.
Charlotte figured an introduction probably wouldn’t do either of them much good, so instead she pushed the door open.
Sophie was sitting in bed, her hair piled on top of her head in a giant blonde bun. The laptop open in front of her kept her attention for several seconds after Charlotte opened the door. Sophie’s eyes left the episode of Breaking Bad and flickered to her. Denzel was curled up at the end of the bed and lifted his head.
“I didn’t realize I had to give my mom an approved guest list,” Sophie said.
“Honestly, Sophie,” Charlotte said, shutting the door behind her. “I’m over this.”
“Right. Have you come to murder me, then?”
“Why did you tell me you were pregnant with Max’s baby?”
She’d cracked the glass expression on Sophie’s face. “What?”
“Max just told me you never slept together,” Charlotte said. She leaned back against the door, reluctant to get any closer to Sophie. She tilted her head back, so she was staring above Sophie at her faded green curtains. The door was steady; it held her in place.
“That must be the first time a guy’s ever told a girl that to get her to sleep with him,” Sophie said eventually.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I’m not here to fight. I just want to know the truth. He might be lying to me but I don’t think he is.” She squinted at Sophie. “What’s going on?”
Sophie’s expression was frozen, but Charlotte could practically see the gears working in her head.
“Did you make it up?” Charlotte continued.
Sophie threw her hands in the air. “Yep. That’s just what I needed. Another reason for people to feel sorry for me.”
“So it wasn’t Max’s.”
Sophie let out an even breath. “No. And I never said it was. I just said he would hate me if he knew. You filled the rest in yourself.”
Charlotte let a few seconds pass. “You don’t owe me anything more than that, I guess. We don’t owe each other anything anymore. I just…I know about the money.”
“What?”
“Are you in trouble?” Charlotte asked. That was her worst fear, at the end of it. If Sophie was involved in something she shouldn’t be. Like Charlotte had been, a year ago.
Sophie shook her head. “What money?”
“Sophie.” Charlotte didn’t realize she’d been pacing but stopped herself short.
“How do you know?” Sophie asked very slowly, her hands twisting around the edge of her bedspread.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Sophie pursed her lips. “I’m fine. Don’t ever mention it again, please. Forget that you know about it.”
“Did it have something to do with the baby? Who were you with?”
Sophie looked out her bedroom window, feigning disinterest. “It doesn’t matter. Are you going to tell Max? That I cheated?”
An entirely new wave of anxiety washed over Charlotte. “I don’t know.”
“Please don’t,” Sophie whispered. Charlotte looked at her, caught off guard by Sophie’s eyes, wide and pleading. “Like you said, we don’t owe each other anything. But I’m asking you. It’s just going to ruin his life even more. I’ll never ask for anything again.”
She was damn right. But while Sophie had no problem lying to Charlotte, Charlotte didn’t want to make any promises she couldn’t keep. “I have to go.”
“Charlotte, please.” Sophie pulled herself from her pillows, sitting up straighter. “I don’t want to hurt Max more.”
Charlotte paused with her hand on the doorknob, facing away from her. “You’re never gonna tell the police—or anyone—what you were gonna say about Max.”
Sophie was quiet, and Charlotte looked back at her over her shoulder.
“I would have never done that to Max,” Sophie said. “Ever. Of course I wouldn’t have. Besides, Max isn’t the one I hate.”
Charlotte turned away again, pulling the door open. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”
Sorry that this was where they were. Sorry that all they had become was ultimatums and lies and secrets. Sorry that every time they saw each other they took another step toward becoming strangers.
• • •
“I’m so full,” Charlotte groaned as she slid out of the car. It was almost midnight, a few days since her confrontation with Sophie.
Sean glanced sideways at her. “You say that every time we go, and yet you always overdo it with the fried rice.”
Charlotte shut the passenger side door. “They give us extra at the end of the night. You know I can’t just leave it. It’s basically free.”
Sean followed her up the stairs of the porch. “Basically.”
Charlotte felt a weird sense of calm these past few days. There was a small part of her, now, that didn’t feel like she needed to fix things anymore. That she probably couldn’t anyway. But she was also gripped with the reality that she was now lying to Max about Sophie’s baby. Every time Charlotte wanted to tell him, she stopped herself. Not until she knew more. It was also clear that Sophie didn’t know who had caused the accident. Sophie knew something else.
Charlotte fished her key out of her jacket pocket and jammed it in the door, but she realized she didn’t need it.
“Did you forget to lock this?” she asked.
Sean frowned. “I don’t remember.”
“Hopefully no one came to steal any of the many priceless artifacts in this house. If we lose our backup cheese grater, that’s the end of nachos for us.”
Sean pressed his hand to his chest. “Don’t joke about that. Not that I ever got to eat any of those nachos before you demolished them.”
Charlotte shot him a look and swung the door open.
“Shit, left my phone in the car,” Sean said, “one sec.”
Charlotte wandered into the dark house, wiggling out of her jacket.
“Did you find it?” Charlotte asked as she crossed the room to turn the lights on, hearing Sean behind her. She flicked the switch and turned around. Not Sean.
Nick had her by the hair and wrenched her sideways. Her cheek caught the edge of the wood stove and the pain was blinding.
Everything, black.
The end, quick.
twenty-seven
It was bright. Too bright to be hell, which was probably where she’d be, so Charlotte knew she wasn’t dead. Not to mention that every inch of her hurt, so she was definitely still alive. A rhythmic, mechanical whirring; slow beeps. She knew where she was. She and Sean had spent a lot of time here before their dad died. While he was dying.
Sean.
Charlotte opened her eyes. Her face felt like it was split open. She tried to raise her hand to check, but it felt too heavy. She glanced down. Her arms and hands were still there, resting on top of blue hospital sheets. She just couldn’t move yet.
What happened?
Max, she noticed with a vague feeling of affection, was asleep beside her, holding her right hand and hunched over in his seat. His head rested on her bed beside her hip. What time was it? Grey light pressed against the blinds, so morning?
Charlotte pulled her hand free from Max’s and patted his head. He shifted and she watched his eyelids flutter and open. After the second where he remembered where he was, his head shot up.
“Hey,” she managed. It hurt to talk.
“It’s okay, you’re going to be fine,” Max said.
The panicked look stretched across his face conjured a memory, and between half-closed eyelids she
remembered Sean’s face swimming above her, wearing the same terrified expression.
Nick. Nick had been in their house.
“Sean,” she croaked. “Where’s Sean?”
“He’s gone,” Max said quietly.
“What?”
“Sorry,” Max said quickly, shaking his head when he realized his word choice, “he’s okay. He’s just…gone.”
“What do you mean?” she repeated. The words were clear in her head, but came out all garbled. She didn’t know how Max understood her.
“He brought you in, called me,” he elaborated. “He waited until we knew you were gonna be okay.” Max took her hand back in his. “But he’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
Max shook his head. “I don’t know, Charlie.”
“What about Nick?”
A pause. Max grimaced, shifted his shoulders a bit. He looked around like what he was about to say was a secret. “I don’t know, exactly,” Max said, “it was an accident, but, Nick’s dead. Sean killed him. I think…he just lost it.”
Just like that, the one issue that had been twisting and smothering Charlotte’s life for the last year was extinguished. She didn’t want to think it had cost her her brother. She couldn’t think about it. Nick was dead. Not just dead—killed. By Sean.
“I was so….” Max looked like he was struggling to string the words together. “They wouldn’t let us see you, at first, and I’ve never seen Sean like that.”
“What happened?” Charlotte asked. She couldn’t look at him; he was so relieved and she felt the farthest thing from it.
“Nick got your face. They said nothing’s broken. The doctor will explain it all to you, I guess.” Max leaned far back in his chair like he needed a time out, covering his face with his hands.
She had stopped listening to him. All she could picture, over and over again, was Sean slamming Nick to the ground, off of her, or however else he’d done it. She didn’t like knowing the memory was probably tucked away somewhere in her brain. She couldn’t process it.
“Sean was…messed up, when he called,” Max said, as if almost entirely reading her mind. “I think he thought you were…. It was bad.” He took a breath. “It was like last time.”
She turned her head away from him, trying to push herself farther into her pillows. She heard herself crying before she really registered it. He was talking about Sophie. It triggered the memory of Charlotte’s last conversation with her. That Charlotte knew, for sure, that Sophie wasn’t blackmailing whoever had hit her and Max, and that Sophie had been cheating on him. Charlotte didn’t know why she didn’t tell him then and there. Her head hurt but she didn’t feel much else.
She was discharged later that day. The doctor had explained everything Max had tried to; that she was pretty bruised and her left wrist was sprained, and she’d have to come back in a few weeks to get the stitches in her face removed. She was lucky her cheek and jaw weren’t broken.
The police talked to both Charlotte and Max before they left. They wanted to flesh out her version of events—she told the cops that Nick had broken in to rob her and Sean (half true), attacked her when she found him (true), and that was all she knew, really. She told them Sean had accidentally killed Nick in her defence, which is what Max had said too. She didn’t say anything about her history with Nick. No need to get Sean in any more trouble. But she had a feeling he was in about as much trouble as you could be. The police asked if Charlotte had any idea where Sean might have gone. She said she didn’t, and wished she were lying.
Max took her home, helping her into his truck and with her seat belt. They had to go to Max’s, because the police weren’t done searching her place. It was late into a grey summer afternoon when they got to his house. He kept looking at her like she could drop dead at any moment.
Thankfully, Simon and Deirdre weren’t home—they’d gone to Wolfville overnight for a wine tour. Charlotte wandered inside and toward the bathroom, because all that she really wanted was to brush her teeth.
An unfamiliar face—her face, she realized—greeted her in the bathroom mirror. She hadn’t gotten a good look until now. Max had been averting her attention away from any reflective surface. Underneath her eye was swollen, and the blue-black cut that slashed across her cheek was tied together with a dozen little black stitches. Her throat and collarbone looked like they’d been tattooed with dark shadows. She looked almost as bad as she felt.
Max appeared in the mirror behind her and she was reminded of the last time they were here like this.
“You can borrow anything you need. We have extra toothbrushes and stuff,” Max said.
“I didn’t realize I looked like this,” Charlotte said, gazing at herself.
Max moved her hair away from her neck and the action sent a shiver dancing down her spine. He swiped his fingers just below her jaw. “It’ll go away. It’s still you.”
She braced herself against the sink, disgusted by the person in the mirror. “I don’t even look like me. He took that.”
“Charlie—”
“He took so much.”
Max reached around her waist and twisted the faucet on. He took a facecloth from the shelf beside the mirror and held it under the stream. “Here. For your face. I’ll get you some ice. It might help. And here,” Max opened the mirror cabinet and reached for a tube of antibiotic cream. It sat on the shelf next to a few skinny orange pill bottles with his name on them.
“What are those?” Charlotte asked.
“Uh.” Max frowned and shut the mirror. “I got them after last year. For anxiety and stuff.”
She leaned back against him, just barely, unable to tear her eyes from the mirror. She felt weak and miserable and defeated. Like even though he was gone, Nick had still won.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly to him through the glass.
“For what?”
“That it was so hard for you.” She swallowed. “And that you were alone.”
She watched his reflection, his face registering her words. He slid his hands to her shoulders, holding on to her protectively.
“It’s still hard,” he said without looking at her. “But I had Leo. And I have you now. Like you have me.” He put two fingers under her chin and tilted her head to look at him through the mirror. “Nick can’t hurt you again.”
“Sometimes I wish he had just killed me the first time he tried.” She felt dizzy with the realization of it. “None of this would have happened.”
“Charlie,” Max said, dropping the facecloth. “Don’t say that—”
She couldn’t catch her breath and felt like her chest was contracting around her lungs. She hugged her arms around herself. “I mean it,” she cried.
She turned to face him, as if he had answers. Max placed his hands on either side of her face and kept repeating that it would all be okay. She hadn’t cried like this in a long time—not before this morning, at least—and she felt like everything that had happened since she’d come back to River John was rushing out of her all at once.
“Sean can’t ever come home,” she cried. She was so angry at him. Why did he have to kill Nick? And why did he run, and make it so much worse? “He killed Nick but Nick killed him, too. He may as well be dead.”
She felt Max’s face against hers and his lips against her forehead. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said again and again. “Baby, look at me.”
Charlotte gripped him by the waist as she pushed backward, sliding herself up to sit on the edge of the sink. Without stopping to think, she moved her head and caught his lips with hers. She pulled him forward so he stood between her legs.
Max’s body went rigid with surprise when she kissed him, but neither of them stopped. Charlotte’s thoughts were moving so quickly she felt like she was drunk. She’d thought about this, sure, as their friendship had grown and teetered on the edge of m
ore than that. When he slept beside her and she woke up with his arm across her shoulders, she would think about what it would be like if things were different.
“Charlie, wait. We shouldn’t—”
“I want you,” she said. “Please.”
He pulled her off the sink and they stumbled to his bedroom, falling into bed a tangle of limbs and loose clothing. Charlotte worked on the buttons of his shirt, pushing it down off his shoulders and he pulled her sweater off her.
She could feel his eyes on her body, felt him stop moving. “I—we shouldn’t. I don’t want to hurt you. Your face.”
Charlotte cut him off, dragging his face to hers and kissing him again. “I can’t feel anything. Please.”
“Christ, Charlie,” Max whispered, his mouth trailing down her throat and chest delicately. He looked back at her. “What do you…?”
“I want to have sex.” She cleared her throat. Max was the only one left. She wanted to show him how much it meant that he’d stayed. Because she didn’t see the point anymore in hiding from him, or really, from herself. Max had become a part of her life and a part of her. “Do you?”
“God. Yeah.” She felt him pull away from her and he fumbled for something in his side table. She heard him rip the foil open.
Max moved slowly at first; she could tell that he was nervous. He held her carefully, her body moving to meet him as they moved together. His weight held her in place against the mattress. His movements became harsher, his hands twisting around her and his mouth moving down across her. She pressed her face to his shoulder and clutched at him tightly, and they were all skin and tangled bedsheets instead of clothes, and at last they both fell silent.
Charlotte rolled away from him, facing the wall and pulling the sheets up around her. She felt his hand on her waist, but he didn’t say anything either. What had she done? There was no going back now, no acting like whatever was between them just existed in their heads. What if she’d misunderstood how he felt? What if he didn’t want this, or her? Thoughts of him and Sean and Nick swam in front of her and bled together, sinking beneath the surface as she tried to push them away. She was too scared to look back at Max. So she didn’t.
The Last Time I Saw Her Page 22