Chasing Charlie

by C. M. Newman

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: CONFRONTATION

  The situation was delicate; the lines between what was true and what was hurtful were too thin. It would be easy for Vince to cross one, just as Angela had done by taking matters into her own hands with Charlie’s ordeal.

  Vince didn’t want to fight. Five days of their marriage had already been spoiled by her being away. How many more days would be ruined if he allowed himself to speak his mind, to remind her that Charlie was his son, that he was the final authority, to inform her that Charlie had suffered as a result of her ill judgment?

  There was the option of gently informing her that she hadn’t handled to situation to his liking and leaving it at that. Surely she would feel guilty enough knowing that Charlie’s tormenting had continued; she probably wouldn’t even need to know how much that torment had hurt Vince in turn. She would learn her lesson.

  There was also the openness issue. Save for his clinical trial, Vince couldn’t think of anything about which he hadn’t been open with her. He felt strongly that that was why they worked so well together. Their relationship had evolved over years, really, growing layer upon layer of trust, loyalty, and sometimes brutal honesty. Would he rather spare a few days of their marriage and downplay his reaction, or did he want to make sure things were still clear between the two of them?

  His head swam in all of the factors that probably wouldn’t matter in the end. He was frustrated—with Angela, with himself, with the world, with God. He was tired. In a foul mood. And it didn’t help matters that, still, he missed Angela. He felt as if his chest were slowly inflating to its full capacity, and that he would blow up at the first person that made the tiniest misstep. He knew he couldn’t lash out at Charlie, even if he wanted to, even if he tried. But perhaps once he put Charlie to bed, he could find a way to release his rage in a healthy and hopefully silent way. No matter what he decided to tell Angela, he wanted to do it calmly. It was simply a matter of finding that levelheadedness before she called.

  Charlie’s bedtime prayers finally included an open plea for his friend to stop picking on him—something Vince mentally added to his own prayer list as well. “I’m sorry I made you sad,” Charlie said glumly when Vince tucked him in.

  Already, Vince felt a little of the pent up anger quietly free itself. “I’m just fine, buddy,” he said, crouching down next to Charlie’s bed and patting his belly. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It was really…brave of you to try and take that on yourself. I don’t ever want you to hide something from me just because you think it’ll make me upset, but I can kind of understand why you did it.”

  “Because I love you,” Charlie said simply.

  “I know. And I love you. And I know that…you want to protect the people you love, and that’s a good thing. Just promise me you’ll leave the big stuff like this to the grown-ups, all right? That would make me really happy.”

  Charlie smiled. “Okay.” He didn’t ask for a bedtime story, and Vince didn’t have the energy to offer to read one, so he left a kiss on Charlie’s forehead and bade him goodnight.

  Not long after, Vince started up a pot of half-caffeinated coffee in an attempt to stay awake long enough for Angela’s call. It seemed as though she had been itching to find out what it was he wanted to talk about, because she called exactly twenty minutes after Charlie’s bedtime. Vince hadn’t had time to decide on an approach to the conversation and was somewhat flustered when he answered.

  “Is Charlie asleep?” Angela asked after they greeted one another.

  “Yeah.” Vince still poured his coffee.

  “Coffee?” Angela asked, having heard the pot being set back on the warmer.

  “Cigarette?” Vince asked when he heard Angela’s question escape her lips with a puff of air.

  “Can we be even?” Angela asked with a dry laugh.

  “On that account, I suppose,” Vince said. “Is this a regular thing, though?”

  “I’ve had maybe three since I’ve gotten here. I’m all keyed up over the case and then when I get time to sleep, I can’t. This at least helps me calm down a little.”

  “You never needed cigarettes to cope with stress on cases before,” Vince remarked.

  “I never really had anyone to miss back home,” she said frankly. “It was easier to handle the stress when I had nowhere better to be. Anyway, lovey-dovey daily quota being fulfilled, what’s up? You sounded a little tense earlier.”

  Just roll with it, Vince thought to himself. “Charlie’s grief counselor passed along some information to me today,” he said, leaving things open-ended not to be cryptic, but to figure out how he wanted to phrase it.

  “Oh, what’s wrong?”

  “You remember that friend of Charlie’s, the one that got him talking about us getting married and all that?” Vince led in.

  “Yeah, Adam?”

  “Yeah. He’s been picking on Charlie at school. Making fun of him because he won’t have a mom or a dad once I’m gone…calling me ugly—which I couldn’t care less about, but it still bothered Charlie. And…” Vince sighed as Angela quickly let out another lungful of smoke. “Charlie said he told—”

  “He told me, a couple weeks ago,” Angela confessed. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought it was just a one-time thing, and he didn’t want to upset you—”

  “Angela, he’s six. He doesn’t call the shots,” Vince said, calmly for the time being.

  “Well, I didn’t want to upset you, either,” Angela replied. “And I promise you, I thought it was just that one time. You know kids, they make fun of each other and then the next day they’re best friends again. I told him that I would keep it a secret but that if it happened again, I wanted him to let me know, because then we’d need to tell you.”

  “How exactly would that be incentive for him to tell you if it kept happening? He didn’t want me to know, so why would he have come to you again if he knew you’d bring it to me?”

  “I—” Angela hissed. “I don’t know, Vince. I’m really sorry. I really wanted him to trust me—”

  “He does trust you,” Vince said firmly. “He already showed that he trusted you by coming to you instead of me.” The envy and disappointment was perfectly clear in his voice.

  “Vince, I never meant to step on your toes. I only wanted to help. You don’t have to do this all on your own, you know?”

  “That’s not your call to make,” Vince snapped. And that was it. He hadn’t thought of it this way until now, but the impotence was the impetus for his outburst. “Leaving my job, going through torture three weeks out of the month, dragging this out when without him I’d rather just die—I’m doing it for him. I’m doing it because I’ve never been anything more than a sorry excuse for a dad. I’m trying to make that up to him. But if I can’t protect him from another kid, let alone protect him from being heartbroken over everything that’s happening to me…then why bother, Angela?” Tears finally rimmed Vince’s eyelids as he paced around the kitchen. “What am I even doing here if I can’t be the one to keep him safe? That’s the only duty I have left. I don’t have a job. There are no people to rescue, no criminals to catch. My only responsibility—one that I’m lucky to have—is to take care of my son.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all he heard on the other end. A very hushed, mousy apology, one said with slightly parted lips and upturned eyebrows that he could picture vividly. “I didn’t mean to take that away from you, and I certainly didn’t mean to let Charlie suffer. If I’d thought—”

  “But you didn’t.” As soon as Vince spouted out those words, he wished he could siphon them back up. His earlier argument at least had valid points. Now, however, he knew he was just being mean, robbing Angela of the chance to apologize and get them out of this graciously.

  “Don’t, Vince. You have to at least let me speak,” Angela said, standing up for herself. “I’m not saying you have to forgive me. I know I…I screwed up. Royally. I never would’ve made that agreement with Cha
rlie had I thought things through with a clearer head. I was too concerned about him trusting me and not concerned enough about how he would interpret it, and how hurt he could be if it continued and he didn’t come forward again. It was stupid of me. I won’t deny that for a second. I’m sorry. I really am,” she said desperately. “But…being a father isn’t your only duty. You’re a husband, too. Charlie’s not the only one who needs love from you. You don’t get to bully me.”

  Knowing he would regret it five minutes later, but unable to control himself, Vince kept going. “Regardless of why I’m still here, what my responsibilities still are, you need to stop trying to control everything. With this, with Marshall…I can still function. I can handle things myself. And if this is going to work, with us three, then you need to remember that I am Charlie’s father and I love him—”

  “And that means that I don’t?” Angela cut in, incredulous.

  “There’s a difference, Angela, and you know it. You can’t really know what it feels like to be a parent—can’t really know what it feels like to love a child—until you have your own. And you becoming a stepmother hasn’t magically changed that.” Vince said, his voice shaking on a low register.

  “Wow, Vince, that’s—that’s really nice. Keep twisting that knife,” Angela said bitterly. Vince heard her light up another cigarette. “Got anything else? What else have I done wrong? Am I wrong about how much I love you, too? Do I ask you how you’re feeling too much? Do I coddle you too much? Now’s the time to tell me, while you’re being honest. Am I not a good enough wife because I left on a case when you had chemo coming up? Anything that’s on your mind, Vince, just let it out.”

  “Angela—” Vince said with distressed breath. That five minutes he’d given himself before he would regret his decision had turned out to be closer to thirty seconds. The sharp edges of Angela’s words signaled to him that he had gone several steps too far, and there was no telling how many of them he would be able to take back.

  “Daddy?”

  They both heard it. The worst possible word from the worst possible person at the worst possible time.

  “I’ve gotta let you go,” Vince mumbled to Angela.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Angela said, barely audibly, before disconnecting their call.

  The silence was deafening. Vince turned around to face Charlie with no time to hide the tears that had trickled, no time to soften his face. “What is it, buddy?”

  “How come you were yelling at Angela?” Charlie asked, lingering at the entrance to the hallway, his tiny hands grasping the corner of the wall.

  “Oh, I wasn’t yelling, buddy…I think it just sounded that way,” Vince whispered, overcompensating. “C’mere.” He went to the couch and beckoned Charlie over to him. “Whatcha doin’ outta bed, kiddo?”

  “You woke me up,” Charlie said.

  Vince set his palms on his son’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk so loud.”

  “You were yelling.”

  “I raised my voice, but I didn’t yell,” Vince insisted.

  “How come you’re mad at Angela?” Charlie asked, not engaging in his dad’s embrace at all.

  “We just…had a little disagreement, that’s all. Everything’s okay.”

  “Are you still mad?” Charlie asked while they walked together back to his bedroom.

  “I don’t want you to worry about it, okay? Remember how I said it’s my job to worry about stuff? It’s your job to be a kid and have fun, as long as you eat your vegetables.”

  “And go to school,” Charlie said.

  “Right. Give me a kiss.”

  —

  Not much later, Angela found herself and her team on their way home. The five-day case had ended as well as any case could—all of the missing children had been found alive. Not well, but alive. Angela had gotten into a scuffle with the abductor in the end and had some cuts and bruises to prove it, but thanks to a fire fueled by her marital discord, the man had walked away looking much worse than she.

  Although the rest of the team looked forward to warm beds, that was the last place Angela wanted to be. Going home sounded daunting. Vince was either sleeping, in which case Angela would probably crash on the couch, but if he happened to be awake, she would be heading into a confrontation for which she wasn’t ready, even if it was a confrontation that needed to happen eventually. And then there was Charlie. She would need to talk to him in the morning and apologize for many things. So Vince’s apartment was a no-go, and going back to her own apartment for the night sounded downright lonely.

  The office wasn’t so bad, though. The cleaning crew was already gone and there was busywork on her desk that she could go over. As she sat down to try and engage her barely functioning mind in the task, she saw a folded grey t-shirt with the FBI emblem sitting on top of her desk. She hadn’t needed it when she’d bought it the week before for a fundraiser, but now she thought of someone who might want it, so she tucked it into her bag.

  She easily lost herself in a stack of paperwork with the help of a cup of coffee. Hiding at the office was easy—at least at first. It wasn’t until an hour or two into things that she realized just what it was she was doing. For all she preached about her and Vince not having time to waste, how could she be sitting at work, putting off any sort of resolution? Only halfway through the work she planned on finishing, she threw on her jacket and walked back out into the snow that was beautiful as it fell but didn’t stick to the ground just yet.

  A combination of an empty stomach, coffee, exhaustion, and nerves as she entered the apartment left Angela wanting to steal medication from Vince just to keep from throwing up. She set her things down quietly, stepped out of her shoes, and crept back to the bedroom. It was the best of all possibilities, she supposed—Vince’s slow snores sounded natural. It was good that he was sleeping. He needed his rest, and it also meant that their fight hadn’t kept him up all night. After changing into pajamas, she made herself comfortable on the couch with some throw pillows and their favorite blanket.

  No confrontation yet. No resolution. But as it turned out, it still felt good to be home. Still, though, she tossed, turned, and twitched until she finally gave up and went into the kitchen for some food. She supposed if she ate enough of Charlie’s sugary cereal, she could make herself crash, so she overfilled a bowl, added a splash of milk, and turned on some infomercials at a low volume to keep herself company. Just as she was about to be convinced that she needed a set of knives that were guaranteed to cut through anything and that a free juicer made the deal impossible to pass up, she heard the hardwood floor creak slightly behind her. With half a bowl of cereal still in her lap, she turned her head over the back of the couch and saw Vince standing a few feet away, squinting and wearing a look on his face that wasn’t well-lit enough for her to read.