The Last Time I Saw Her

by Alexandra Harrington

She tilted her head so she didn’t have to look at him. “Well,” she rasped, “I don’t have any food. And I haven’t been working. And I’ve been,” her voice was shaking, “too…afraid to get any sleep. So, yeah, that’s probably fair.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She wanted to cry but choked on a laugh instead. “I don’t care.”

  “I shouldn’t have left you.” Max shifted forward on his knees, closer to her. “I knew I shouldn’t have as soon as I went. I was just…mad. And I didn’t think.”

  “I begged you not to go,” she bit out, “and you still did. You left me in the house where a lunatic tried to kill me a week ago.”

  He bowed his head. “I know. I hate what I did, all right? I should’ve called you that night like I said. But I was angry. So I didn’t.”

  She sniffed and still wouldn’t look at him, the sound of the breaking glass still echoing inside her head.

  “It’s not like I can be mad that you left,” she said. “I did it first.”

  “But you came back,” Max said.

  She peeked at him from the corner of her eye. “So did you. And I didn’t think you would.” Her voice cracked on the second part, her face twisting to keep the tears back. Things weren’t done falling apart, it seemed.

  Max was closer to her than she’d thought, and he pushed the hair back from her face, taking her chin in his fingers. “Can we try again?”

  Charlotte slipped her hand inside his. “I hope so.”

  They had to. Max had come back for her, and that was something worth trying for. She wanted to feel relief, comfort in Max’s presence, but it was like she couldn’t let herself. What if they couldn’t find each other again; what if that thread that had connected them was too frayed now? She was scared Max had come back to her, and it would all be for nothing.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” he said vaguely, his finger swiping along her cheek.

  She cleared her throat and straightened her back, trying to push away the alcohol that was seeping into her brain, making her feel hot and shaky.

  “I don’t know,” she managed.

  “Charlie, it will.”

  “Do you remember when you told me that sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you love someone? That sometimes it doesn’t mean anything?”

  He nodded like he knew where she was going and pulled her body toward him, as if in protest. He tucked her into a hug, holding on to her like he was trying to keep her.

  “This feels like that,” she said against his shoulder, her words intercepted by a sob that pushed past her lips. But she knew he’d heard. With his arms around her middle, Max lifted her carefully and helped her to the bathroom. She could barely walk—bunched his T-shirt in her fists as she clung to his sides, but Max was doing most of the work.

  “Wait,” she mumbled. Too much movement; her insides were sloshing. She pushed herself down onto her knees in front of the toilet and heaved. It was all acid and bile.

  “Oh, Charlie,” she heard Max say gently, and he said it almost like a sigh. He rubbed his hand up and down her back and pulled her hair behind her shoulders, out of the way.

  Charlotte finished, her eyes watery and throat burning, throwing a hand up to flush. Max pushed a cup of water to her lips. Thank god for him, she thought through her humiliation. He guided her to the edge of the tub, reappearing with a cool, wet washcloth. She felt like she was only catching glimpses, specks or showers of what was happening.

  Max held her face like she was art, fragile. He wiped the cloth over her cheeks, under her eyes that were streaked with old makeup and over her mouth. She just barely noticed that the cool water felt refreshing. Woke her up, almost. Made her think of the first swim of every summer. Charlotte always hoped for June but Sophie always made them go in May. Charlotte reached out and grasped Max’s waist. A quiet thank you, the only one she could manage.

  “Here, be careful.” Max pulled her sweater off over her head, stained from liquor and sick and whatever else. He wiped her throat and chest and the tops of her shoulders before throwing the cloth back over to the sink.

  She waited for him to say something about pulling herself together, tried to catch if he was annoyed by what a mess she was. Max stood up from between her legs.

  “Let’s go to sleep,” he said quietly. He reached out and slipped his hand around to settle at the base of her neck. She teetered herself onto her feet and he didn’t let go of her. It was almost like he was nervous to leave the bathroom. In the exact moment, at least, they were safe. They were together.

  “Do you forgive me?” he whispered, close to her face. Eyes wide and waiting.

  Charlotte nodded and closed the space between them. Of course she did.

  “Do you hate me for not telling you?” she rasped. Words, finally.

  Max pushed his fingers up into her hair and kissed her just beneath her eye, hovering just above the mark on her face. “I can’t,” he answered.

  He led her to her room and to her bed. He stayed. She slept.

  thirty-two

  A dull throbbing at the base of her skull pulled her awake. Charlotte didn’t think she’d ever been so hungover. She didn’t think anything could top spring formal at the end of grade eleven. But she’d woken up after that in Sophie’s bed, with Sophie, fake eyelashes stuck to her cheek and glitter in her hair. And her brother hadn’t just murdered someone and her life hadn’t just fallen apart.

  Pieces of memory from last night swam around her head and tried to string themselves together. She was drinking, obviously, right out of the bottle, because…right. The pang of realization burst in her stomach the same way the glassware shattered against the kitchen floor.

  Max had come back, she remembered. Charlotte checked over her shoulder, the tiniest movement sending her head spinning. Not here. She knew he’d stayed at least some of the night. She had a blurry memory of her face in the toilet, heaving out an empty stomach while Max rubbed her back and held her hair. Charlotte pressed her teeth together and grimaced into her pillow.

  She could hear Max—she assumed it was Max, at least—in the kitchen, the tinkling sound of glass drifting over to her bedroom. It sounded like he was cleaning up. She couldn’t let him do that. If she was going to have a hysterical breakdown and destroy her house, she would clean it up herself, goddamnit. Part of the healing process.

  Charlotte uncoiled her body, stretching out her limbs as if to test that they still worked. All four were there. So far, so good. She stood up a bit too quickly, she realized, and of all her near-death experiences she figured this was the closest she’d ever come to actually dying. Jesus. Her head. Her stomach. For the first time in a few days, she wanted something in her body. Water.

  She crept to the kitchen. Max was standing over a bag sitting on the counter, unloading groceries into the fridge and onto shelves. She noticed the remnants of her destructive rampage had been swept into a pile in the corner.

  “What’s that?” she croaked, nodding to the bag. Her voice sounded goopy and thick out loud.

  Max looked up at the sound of her voice. “You’re alive,” he said, sounding half-surprised. “I went out for these this morning. You don’t have any food. You literally only have mayonnaise.”

  She moved down the counter, closer to him, stopping when they were hip to hip. “There’s definitely ketchup in there, too.”

  “Ah, the biting sarcasm,” Max said. “Makes me think you’re feeling a bit better.”

  Charlotte inspected the contents of the bag—bananas, eggs, cheese, bread, milk, peanut butter. “You didn’t have to buy this stuff.”

  “Yes, I did,” Max said. He lifted a carton of strawberries out of the bag. “You look like you’re on the verge of death. Have you been eating?”

  Charlotte popped one of the strawberries in her mouth defiantly. “I have.”

  Max shook his head and
ignored her, putting the rest of the items away. When he’d finished, he leaned back against the opposite counter and looked at her, arms crossed against his chest.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You were…kind of scary last night. I mean, I was scared for you.”

  “It’s been…hard,” she sighed. She was tired of talking about it already. Talking about feeling sad and hopeless wasn’t going to fix anything. “I just lost it.”

  “Do you not want to talk about it?” he asked, like he read her mind.

  “No,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “How do you feel right now?”

  She bit her lip. She was still angry—no, she corrected herself, she was still hurt—by him leaving, and a small part of her was reluctant to let him back in. Behind Max’s head, on the shelf, she spied a new, too-big bag of Reese’s Pieces. They were her favourite, but the Quik Mart only had M&M’s. You had to drive to the gas station in Tatamagouche to get Reese’s Pieces.

  “I’m just glad you’re back,” she admitted finally.

  Max looked relieved, and he crossed the space between them in the tiny galley kitchen to wrap his arms around her.

  “I’ll pay you back for this,” Charlotte told him when she finally pulled away, trying to do a mental calculation of what the bill would be.

  “Stop,” he said quickly. “It’s not my money, anyway.”

  Simon. If Charlotte had been feeling somewhat better, that feeling went flying out the window and into the Atlantic Ocean. The phone call that Simon had answered and Sophie’s cryptic visit pressed to the front of her mind.

  “I need to tell you something,” she said, sliding her hands around his waist. “More than something, actually. A lot.” No more secrets.

  She tried to recount everything Sophie had said—that the bank, so likely Simon, owned a property at the edge of town, and that nobody knew about it, and that there was a reason nobody knew about it. She explained how scared Sophie had been after she said it, like she had revealed something she shouldn’t have.

  “So, Sophie came over to tell you this?” Max asked. Charlotte could tell he was trying to steer the conversation away from his father, intentionally or not. It was one thing to not get along with your dad, it was another to agree that he was mixed up in something potentially illegal.

  “No,” Charlotte said, “she just came over to check on me.”

  “Then how did you start talking about my dad?”

  “We didn’t. She never said anything about your dad, really,” she assured him, though she didn’t think that meant Simon was innocent. “She brought it up when I mentioned Nick.”

  “What does Nick have to do with my dad? And with Sophie?”

  That’s the question, isn’t it?

  She paused, sucking in a breath. “I would think nothing. But then I found something, right after you left.”

  Charlotte told him about the phone and hitting redial and his dad picking up.

  She could tell Max was getting more agitated. Not really at her; he kept touching her face and her arm and her waist like he was trying to distract himself. “You’re sure it was my dad?”

  Charlotte nodded. “He said his name when he answered.”

  “So you think Nick was working with my dad?”

  “I think he worked for your dad,” she said, wondering if that was too much of an accusation. “Max, we don’t even know what this is. It could be…,” she trailed off. There was no positive, innocent explanation she could come up with. Unless it was just nothing at all. Maybe Sophie was somehow wrong.

  Max thought about it for a long time, and she guessed he must have been trying to do the same thing she was. “Okay,” he said finally. “There’s only one way to find out. Where did Sophie say the house was?”

  They walked, because Charlotte was too nervous to go near the mystery house with a car that could identify them. Plus, she needed the fresh air.

  Max was quiet the whole way. She repeated what Sophie had said, about the path snaking up from behind the farthest corner of the old elementary school. When they disappeared into the treeline, along the uneven and overgrown trail, she slipped her hand inside his and he squeezed it tightly.

  Sophie didn’t say anything about how far back it was—it occurred to Charlotte that Sophie likely didn’t even know where the house was exactly, or if she’d even been to it. Sophie’d probably just looked it up on Google Maps.

  It was about fifteen minutes of mud and wet leaves before they came to a clearing. There, tucked behind a chain-link fence to their right, was what looked like a dilapidated farmhouse. It looked abandoned, with shingles missing on the caved-in roof and boards over most of the windows. Signs zip-tied to the fence warned them to stay away: No Trespassing, Do Not Enter, DANGER. Around the front of the house, and across the porch, door, and windows, yellow caution tape fluttered in the breeze.

  She chanced a look at Max. His face was hard set, but she couldn’t quite read him. She looked back at the house, torn between being better off not knowing and finding out what Sophie was so afraid of.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  She was scared of what they would find, but Max pulled on her hand and she followed him. Max boosted her up over the fence; she landed unevenly on the other side, head pounding on impact, as he climbed nimbly over. They crept up to the porch and Max ignored the tape, but was careful not to disturb it.

  “Maybe you should wait out here,” he said to her.

  “Shh,” Charlotte hissed, both in a don’t-be-stupid and a don’t-make-any-noise sort of way.

  The house was, as it looked, abandoned. Some old furniture remained, but it was faded and gloomy and looked like it had been cut out of an old-fashioned photograph. Dust and cobwebs seemed to hang in the air out of nothing. From the entryway,

  Charlotte stepped into the room to the left. It looked like it had been a living room. Mostly empty, and overall not suspicious. As she turned to leave, a dark object against the wall beside the door made her stop. It was a sleeping bag.

  She moved closer, spotting something lying on top of it. A box of cigarettes. A black lighter with yellow smiley faces. Charlotte picked it up.

  To me, from me said Sean’s voice in her head.

  Shit.

  “You okay?” Max asked, poking his head into the room.

  She dropped the lighter back onto the sleeping bag. “Yup,” she said quickly, her head swimming in a silent panic.

  Shit, shit. Please, don’t let him be involved.

  “Let’s go upstairs, there’s nothing down here,” Max said.

  Like a zombie, Charlotte followed him up the stairs and through the first door on the landing. It looked like the walls that divided all the upstairs rooms had been knocked out, creating one wide-open space.

  And there was everything.

  Stacks and stacks—grouped into piles and piles—of thick, fat packages, wrapped over and over in plastic. They looked like flattened bags of sugar. But Charlotte had seen enough CSI to know it wasn’t sugar.

  “Oh, my god,” she choked. This was worse than she thought. They had to leave. Now. Right now. “Max.”

  Max looked like he was glitching. His mouth kept opening and closing. “What is that?”

  It couldn’t be drugs. This was River John, the quietest most boring town in Nova Scotia.

  “Max, we gotta go.”

  As if in agreement, a car door slammed outside. It snapped Max back to reality. She grabbed his hand and they raced back down the stairs. They had to beat whoever it was to the door. Charlotte’s heart was pounding in her head, adrenaline neutralizing her hangover. If they were caught, they were dead.

  Max pulled Charlotte around the stairs, away from the front door. He seemed confident there was a back exit. The kitchen. They stopped short—the floors were rotted out, and a fallen beam blocked
their path.

  They were trapped. Finished.

  Max pressed her back against the wall, wedging her as close to the stairs as they could get. She could feel his heartbeat.

  Max hooked a hand around the side of her face, holding her close as they waited.

  Footsteps.

  The creaking of old wood on the porch.

  Max was shaking and Charlotte couldn’t tell if she was afraid, or too scared to be.

  Whoever it was went directly upstairs. As they crossed to the first step, Charlotte saw his face. Simon Hale, unmistakably. He was on the phone. She knew Max saw him too.

  “No, we have two for Halifax tonight” were the only words she made out.

  As Simon’s face faded, Max moved for both of them, dragging her back down the hall and out the front door. They stumbled over the fence. They ran until they hit the trees.

  • • •

  “Maybe it wasn’t drugs,” Charlotte tried.

  Max eyed her. “Then what was it?”

  “Counterfeit money?”

  “Is that better?”

  Charlotte puffed out her cheeks. “I don’t know.”

  It was the next day. They had hardly spoken once they got home. They went straight to bed, but she didn’t think either of them slept.

  Max was sitting cross-legged on her kitchen floor. “Shit. That piece does not go there,” he muttered. He was working on a large yellow dinner plate.

  Charlotte ran the glue across the jagged edge of a china saucer. The cleaning was helping, keeping them thinking about something else. “Sophie must have known,” she said.

  “About the house?”

  “About the drugs”—she avoided his look—“or whatever it is. About everything. She knew. She found out when she was working at the bank. And your dad was the one paying her. To be quiet.” Charlotte sighed, pressing the delicate pieces of the saucer together. “It all fits.”

  “I know,” Max said. “I just…don’t want it to.”

  “And Nick must have been involved,” she continued, thinking aloud. “He was probably a dealer or something.” And Sean probably was too, Charlotte reminded herself, thinking of the lighter.