Charlotte heard Leo give up and shuffle back down the porch steps. The police had come by yesterday, as they had the day before, asking her if she’d heard from Sean and asking her (again) if she had any idea where he went. She (again) told them no. They told her, formally, that Sean was wanted for Nick’s murder. She knew they didn’t believe her when she said she didn’t know where Sean was, and she wished Max had been there, sitting beside her, while they asked her to retell what had happened over and over.
So, now her days were filled with watching TV and barely eating. She couldn’t keep anything down—nothing tasted good and if she did eat, she missed Sean so much she made herself sick. Charlotte missed her last two shifts at the restaurant, which she felt guilty about. Laurie had called and left a message, explaining that she’d heard what had happened—or at least sort of—and told Charlotte not to worry about work until she was feeling better. Charlotte didn’t know when that would be. It was hard. Harder than expected, because every time she closed her eyes she saw Nick—or worse, Sean—and it wasn’t getting any better. She’d barely slept last night. Didn’t move from the couch. She always kept one eye on the door, just in case. Didn’t look in the mirror, at her stitches. She knew she was supposed to go back to the hospital to get them removed, but she couldn’t remember when.
Charlotte drifted into an uneasy sleep without un-pausing her show. It could have been minutes or hours later, but a noise through the screen eventually drew her back.
“Charlie! I know you’re inside.”
Leo again.
Charlotte groaned and rolled over to go back to sleep, planning to ignore him.
“I can’t do the stairs.”
Charlotte opened her eyes. That wasn’t Leo’s voice. She raised her head.
“Charlie!”
Charlotte rolled off the couch and tucked her sweater tighter around her. She caught her reflection in the mirror by the door. Christ. She looked pale and gaunt and sick. She approached the screen carefully, although she knew there was only one person it could be.
Sophie was in her chair, on the driveway, looking impatient. “No ramp,” she said.
Charlotte opened the door. “What do you want?”
“I heard what happened. Everyone has.”
Charlotte teetered down the stairs and sank down on the bottom step. Charlotte’s dark eyes on Sophie’s light ones. If Charlotte was the ocean, dark and twisting, Sophie was all wildflowers, strong and beautiful, pink-grey like the colour of the sky the second before the sun disappears. She could feel Sophie’s eyes burning into her face.
“Jesus,” Sophie said quietly. “Did…he do that?”
“Nick. Yeah. And the wood stove.”
“And he’s…?” Sophie tried.
“Dead.” Charlotte nodded.
“And Sean’s…?”
“Gone,” her voice tripped up on the word, like it was a different language.
“Where’s Max?”
“Don’t know.” That last bit was the hardest to say.
Sophie didn’t press it.
“I didn’t know you could drive,” Charlotte changed the subject, gesturing to the SUV.
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “It’s a custom car. I like driving. I always thought it was fun, good for clearing your head. I drive myself to sailing early in the morning when everything is still all foggy and it’s just…peaceful.”
Charlotte didn’t answer her, instead looking over at the grey ocean, which surged and slid over the smooth rocks at the edge of the shore.
“Do you need something?” Charlotte asked finally. She didn’t mean to sound rude. She wasn’t even mad at Sophie. She just didn’t care anymore.
“I wanted to check on you,” Sophie said simply. The rumours must be pretty bad for Sophie to be concerned for Charlotte’s wellbeing. “And on Max, actually,” she continued. “I figured I owed you guys a talk. I thought he’d be here.”
“Yeah, me too. A talk about what?”
“About everything.”
The money, Charlotte guessed, though she still didn’t know what it meant. And the cheating. “Max knows,” Charlotte told her, “well, we kind of figured it out together, but he knows about the money.”
“Ah.”
“We thought maybe you were blackmailing the person who hit you.”
Sophie’s mouth fell open. “Oh, my god. I’m not a criminal mastermind, Charlie.”
“I know it’s not that. But I also know you’ve been getting paid since last summer.”
Sophie readjusted in her seat and avoided Charlotte’s eye. “Can you just trust me when I say you don’t need to know what it is? I promise it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Charlotte leaned her head against the railing and nodded. “Yeah. I just…I’ve learned to stay out of things, I think.” She motioned vaguely to her face. Meddling had almost killed her, had definitely cost her her brother, and probably Max, too. Time for a break.
“Charlie, I’m sorry, okay?”
Charlotte raised her eyes to look at her. “For what?”
“I shouldn’t have cut you out of my life when you came back. Not after everything that happened and not after everything…that I did.”
Charlotte shook her head. “We’ve all done horrible things, Sophie. And you had every right to cut me out.”
“I was so angry at you, because you leaving hurt. And I think I just thought that the best way through that hurt was…around it. If I could ignore you then I could ignore how bad it messed me up. But…I couldn’t just ignore it. I should’ve known that. And Leo told me that it…that this was really scary and—and that Max was terrified when he heard you were in the hospital and what if—” Sophie hiccupped, and Charlotte was surprised to see that she looked scared. “What if you weren’t okay?”
“Sophie. I am, though.”
“We would have left things,” Sophie said, “with you hating me.”
“I’ve never hated you,” Charlotte told her. The truth, for real.
“I did hate you.” Sophie sniffed. “But only because…boys aren’t really the ones who break your heart, eh? Maybe we deserve each other.”
Charlotte looked at her and waited.
“I’m just saying,” Sophie continued after a moment, “it would have sucked to end it there.”
Charlotte made a hrmph kind of noise in agreement. What felt like a significant amount of time passed, and eventually Sophie stretched her arms and started turning her chair.
“I guess I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said. “I just wanted to…say hi.”
“Yeah, um.” Charlotte stood up. “Thanks for coming by.”
“Thanks for coming outside.” Sophie turned back to Charlotte from the door of her SUV. “Why did Sean do it?”
No matter what they went through, there was a part of Charlotte that automatically trusted Sophie. Never lied to her.
“Nick was trying to kill me,” she said simply. It was almost laughable, how casually she could say those words.
Sophie froze. “What? Why? Your face…I thought—I didn’t know you were attacked.”
“It’s a long story.”
“How do you even know Nick?”
Charlotte cleared her throat. It was weird, the things that didn’t matter anymore. “Nick is the reason I left a year ago.”
Sophie’s expression was unreadable as Charlotte elaborated, telling her the story the same way she’d told it to Max a month ago. When she was done, Sophie’s face was much more clear. Calculating. Like the gears in her head were working.
“Nick was going to kill you for what you saw?” Sophie asked.
“I guess so.”
More silence.
“I…shouldn’t be saying this,” Sophie nearly whispered. “But I maybe was wrong, before, when I said the money didn’t ha
ve anything to do with you.”
Charlotte felt the hairs on her neck stand up.
“What?”
“Um.” Sophie was clearly cycling through words, trying to figure the best way to string them along. “It’s the bank.”
“Huh?”
“The bank—Simon’s bank—owns property.”
Charlotte didn’t follow. “Okay.”
“It’s off of West Branch, behind the old school. Way back in the woods. There’s a trail. A house.”
Charlotte frowned. “What does this have to do with you? Or me?”
“All the records—the contact information on the deed and stuff—the phone numbers and addresses, they’re all for the bank. There’s a fake name on the lease.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s all I can say, or all that I want to,” Sophie said. “But that house is a secret for a reason.”
“Sophie,” Charlotte said, trying to piece together the fragments of what Sophie was telling her. “I don’t understand.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” Sophie was opening the door. “I can’t say more. I can’t. I’m…I can’t.”
“Sophie, please—”
“Bye, Charlie. I’ll see you soon, I promise.”
Sophie left, and Charlotte didn’t think she said anything back to her. Charlotte was looking at the ocean again, frustrated by how cryptic Sophie had been. She wished Max was there to talk it out with.
Something, at least, was clicking into place. Nick’s connection to Charlotte had been what forced Sophie to be honest, and whatever Sophie was so nervous about explaining was connected to Simon. And really, Charlotte knew, there was only one person in town with enough money to be paying Sophie two grand every month.
Maybe her meddling days weren’t quite over.
thirty-one
The days trickled by. It had been officially a week since she’d heard from Max. She’d called him a dozen times in the first few days after he left, leaving pathetic voicemails that tasted sour as she spewed them out. He hadn’t returned any of her calls. She didn’t call again, and every day she didn’t hear from him, she told herself that she thought about him less. Whatever. One more person to strike off her list of people she’d loved and lost. Her mom. Her dad. Sophie. Sean. Max. Everyone that mattered.
Well, and Leo. She was being a bitch not answering his texts or even his in-person visits. While the wound was still fresh, she saw him as an extension of Max, which she knew was unfair. She just hated the thought of letting Leo in and having him relay everything she was doing to Max. Maybe in a few more days she could talk to other people again.
Charlotte spent the days doing what she always did when she was stressed or angry or scared: cry and drink tea and reorganize her possessions. She’d torn apart the living room, ready to re-alphabetize their DVD collection and weed through literally every storage unit in the room.
At one point, she found herself in Sean’s room. It was the first time she’d really gone in to investigate. Everything was the same. Everything was a complete mess; stacks of dishes and laundry. She’d given up quickly—being in there was not only sad, but even thinking of cleaning it was nearly impossible.
A day later, she stood in the bathroom, glaring at herself in the mirror. Her face was beginning to heal, regular skin beginning to creep back over the black bruises. In the mirror, she was starting to look more like herself, but she was looking at a version she hadn’t seen in a long time. This was early-boarding-school-era Charlotte, who’d been so devastated by the accident and leaving her hometown that she couldn’t eat or sleep. At least at school food had been readily available, and a class schedule kept her preoccupied.
Charlotte’s stomach hurt, and she didn’t know if it was because she was starving or not, but either way it forced the appetite out of her. It was getting harder to get out of bed, to do much of anything. Charlotte braced her hands against the sink. It had been a long time since things had been this bad. But the familiarity of the feeling was what made her feel the worst.
She sighed. Don’t let this win. Get some groceries. She figured it was time she broke into the family savings. She was running out of money, and the missed shifts didn’t help.
She returned to Sean’s room and gingerly edged to his bed on her hands and knees, carefully avoiding any old food and garbage. Reaching under the bed, she retrieved an old English biscuit tin and pried the top off. It had been their dad’s—he always kept stray bills and leftover change in it and left it on top of the fridge. Their dad made her and Sean “sign out” the money whenever they took some. Taped inside the lid was a scrap of loose-leaf and a record of their transactions. Her latest: four dollars, chips from Quik Mart. Sean had scratched this out and corrected it to seven dollars. Which was true. She’d thought she could get away with buying her and Sophie ice cream too. This would have been…what? Five years ago? Before their dad was sick. Sean’s latest entry was: ten dollars, for not cigarettes. Charlotte smiled. In the bottom of the tin was a wad of fives, tens, and twenties. Maybe a couple hundred bucks of Sean’s savings.
Charlotte sat back on her heels. God, her head hurt. She needed food. Halfway to pulling herself to her feet, she caught sight of a long object jutting out from near the head of the bed. Pulling it out by the neck, she found a quart of rum. Dark. Dinner. Perfect. She straightened up, swiped a few twenties from the tin, and took the bottle with her to the kitchen.
Charlotte was trying to think about what it had really been like when her dad was alive and Sean wasn’t on the run and they all lived together under one roof and things weren’t a mess. Charlotte didn’t realize she was shaking until she reached onto her tiptoes for a glass from one of the higher shelves. Her hand was trembling as it closed around the cup and it slipped through her fingers, bouncing off the counter and shattering against the floor. She jumped back on instinct, surprised by the noise and way the glass sprayed out in pieces.
Transfixed by the pattern, she removed the cap from the bottle and took a swig. It burned a bit and she nearly gagged, but it settled warmly in her stomach. She took another sip and reached for the identical glass beside the first, but tipped it off the shelf and sent it to the same fate.
It became a one-person drinking game.
Sean was gone. Drink. Break one of the pastel-coloured plates leaning in the drying rack.
Max was gone. Another drink. More plates.
Nick was dead but it felt like he had more control over her than ever (drink; cereal bowl). She had no money and no plan, everyone would go off to university and she’d be stuck in River John forever, destitute and alone. She threw a mug; it caught the corner of the oven and the sound rang in her ears.
She was crying but she didn’t really care, and when she pulled the bottle to her mouth again, she missed the first few tries. Not eating had done her in quickly. She must have stumbled, because her hips bumped back against the counter and her knees gave up. Charlotte slid to the floor amid the rest of the broken things. On her left was the bigger chunk of the mug she’d just destroyed. It was huge, way too big to be safe for coffee—more like a bowl with a handle. It was hand-painted yellow and red. Way back when they were little, she and Sean had convinced their dad to drive them all the way into the city so they could go to one of those pottery places. The places where you pick something out, like a plaque or a little statue of a kitten or a mug, and you would paint it and then the people there baked it for you and it came out all shiny. She and Sean painted their dad a mug for Father’s Day. The base of the mug, the part Charlotte was looking at now, had the messy initials S.R. and C.R. written in blue paint.
“Cheers,” she said to the mug and to no one. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, only measuring time by how much of the rum was drained out of the bottle. The sun cut uneven across the front of the counters as it hung lower in the sky. Dark swam in and out of h
er vision as she drifted between sleeping and not. She didn’t move until a knock on the door pulled her back through to consciousness.
Charlotte froze. Shit. It was probably Leo. The door was locked, like she made sure it always was, now. He would leave eventually.
“Charlotte?” She heard the voice and the person wrestling with the tricky lock as they clattered the door open. She snapped to attention. Only one person had a key.
“Sean?” she croaked, but the word strung out messy and slow.
“Charlie?”
But it was Max who appeared in front of her. He stared at her and she stared right back. She didn’t even bother thinking about how pathetic she must look, curled up on her kitchen floor with half a bottle of rum and a bunch of broken plates. Part of her was happy that he had come home to her. But the drunker, angrier, more present part of her found herself staring back at someone who had left her when he promised he wouldn’t.
“How—” she started, trying to nod toward the door.
“I went and got Sophie’s key from her. Leo told me you weren’t answering the door.”
Charlotte leaned her head back against the counter and closed her eyes, barely awake and very drunk.
“What happened here?” Max asked, crossing the kitchen.
Charlotte didn’t answer and took another swig from the bottle, wiping her face with the corner of her sleeve.
He lowered himself to the floor, sitting with his back propped against the counter across from her. Max reached across the space between them toward her leg.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, surprised by how hard her voice sounded.
“No,” he shook his head and reached farther, pulling the bottle away from her. He took a mouthful for himself before placing it behind his head, on the counter and out of reach.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking at her closely.
Charlotte bent her legs back toward her, pressing them against her chest. “Yup. Best day of my damn life.”
“You look awful. Sick,” Max said.
The Last Time I Saw Her Page 25