A Heart of Time (21 page)

“I wasn’t the one who broke things off and now she’s with someone else, so it is what it is and we’re both where we need to be, I guess, plus I never said Ari and I are just friends.” In truth, I don’t know what Ari and I are.

“Neither one of you are where you should be,” he says, climbing into his truck. “You may think I know nothing, but you and Charlotte are supposed to be together. I know that much. No one said you can’t be with the person you love and have a friend who owns your wife’s heart at the same time.” AJ finishes his thought and then steps back out of the truck. “Holy shit, your life is so fucking confusing. Dude...I don’t even know.” And with his last bit of insightful information, he shakes his head and hops back into his truck.
Thank you for the talk, AJ.

Charlotte is putting the garnishes on the turkey and I’m stirring up the gravy as Olive and Lana both shout from the living room. “Someone is here!”

“Ooh, Oh, Oh!” AJ shouts, running down the hall into the living room. Sometimes, I swear he’s an eight-year-old trapped in a man’s body. I know he’s just playing along with the girls, but part of him is teasing both Charlotte and me. My chest tightens and my palms are a bit sweaty. Whether it’s Lance or Ari coming in, both are making me feel uneasy right now. This wasn’t a great idea, for either of us.

Plus if this situation is difficult for AJ to understand, it is probably confusing the hell out of the girls. We have waited a while before bringing either of these two into this house but we don’t have a typical situation. Actually, I wonder how much Lance even knows about Charlotte’s living situation.

“Someone else is here, too!” Olive yells. Oh great, they’re both here. They’re both going to walk up the driveway at the same time and they’re both going to wonder who the hell each other is.

I lean back to look out into the living room, seeing AJ manning the door. He opens it and gives them a wave. “Hi there! Come on in, the party is just getting started!” Why does he sound like the biggest tool ever right now? With the way he’s talking, he should be wearing a cardigan, Dockers, and penny loafers, rather than a nearly see-through white t-shirt with paint stains and torn jeans.

“Hi,” Ari’s voice wafts through the house. “I’m Ari, you must be—AJ?” she asks with question, unsure, but assuming, as well.

“That, I am,” he says. “You must be
Ari,”
he says in a teasing voice dripping with sarcasm.

I wipe my hands off on the dish rag and place the wooden spoon down on a napkin. “Hey hon,” I say, walking toward Ari. “I see you’ve met AJ. Feel free to ignore him; he’s in a particularly obnoxious mood today.”

“
Hon
,” I hear Charlotte’s voice quietly echo through the kitchen. I don’t think she intended for me to hear that, but I did.
Irritation noticed
.

“How was work?” I ask Ari.

“Good, we did well today. You know, with Mother’s Day in a few days, things have been a little crazy.” Mother’s Day—the day I have hidden Olive and myself from in a dark room as we watch movies from the minute we wake up until the minute we go to bed. I have done my best to avoid her knowing much about Mother’s Day. I don’t think it’s necessary, seeing as it would probably cause her unnecessary sadness. She’s aware it’s a holiday but she knows it as the day we watch movies together all day. Movies without commercials, I should add.

Ari moves her hand out from behind her back and reaches out with a small bunch of blue jasmines. “Olive, I heard these are your favorite?” she says, leaning down to hand them to her.

Olive runs over to Ari and carefully takes the flowers from her hand. “These are my favorite. My mom’s, too. That must be why you drew them on the back of daddy’s letter,” she giggles.

“It is,” Ari says softly.

Olive looks up to me and back at Ari. “Daddy said you knew her?”

A tight-lipped smile touches Ari’s mouth, illuminating her deep dimples. “I did know her. She was a beautiful and incredible woman and you look just like her.” Ari touches her fingertip to Olive’s nose.

“Daddy says that, too,” Olive giggles.

“Hi, I’m Charlotte.” Charlotte steps out from behind me and offers her hand to Ari. “I—I’ve heard so much about—you. You—,” she laughs uneasily. “It’s nice to—this is nice.” Her voice sounds friendly enough, although unsure, as she introduces herself.

“Oh my goodness,” Ari says gleefully, “I-I” she stutters, sounding similar to the way Charlotte does. “I’ve heard so much about you, too. Hunter gushes about you all of the time.”
Gushes?
Geez. Didn’t know I was going that far. Charlotte’s cheeks turn a scarlet hue and she backs away, moving toward the front door where Lance is now standing.
Wow, this is awkward.

“Hey babe,” he says to Charlotte.
Babe. Gross.
He gives her a peck on the cheek and runs his hand down to the small of her back. I shouldn’t be watching, but I am, and now I know Ari is watching me watching them since she nudges her shoulder into mine before gripping the sleeve of my shirt and pulling me into the kitchen. This was such a bad—no this was a fucking horrible idea.

“Are you okay?” Ari asks me, grabbing the wooden spoon from the counter and stirring the bubbling gravy. “You haven’t met Lance before tonight?’

“Yeah, this is a little more stressful than I thought it would be. I’m just glad you came,” I tell her, trying to laugh through my words.

“Why? Because your ex-girlfriend invited her new boyfriend over to your house to celebrate her daughter’s birthday?” Ari’s eyes are squinting from her grin and her teeth are pressed firmly into her bottom lip. I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic, or truthful. “Then you add me into the picture, the carrier of your wife’s heart, and things can seem a little weird.” Her laughter relieves some of my stress. “Relax. Everything is fine. There’s a reason there is no instruction manual for life.”

“Uh,” yup, that’s the only thing I can think to say right now because everything she just said is true.

“Hunt, not to make things more stressful, but I do have one question?”

With only a second of breathing freely, my chest tightens back up. “Yeah?”

“I’m pretty sure Charlotte is married to the chief of surgery at Brookhill Hospital. Or was, I should say...I mean, he
was
the chief of surgery.”

“What? She’s divorced.”

“Oh, well, that makes sense then,” Ari retorts.

“But, I didn’t think he was a surgeon,” I say. Although, I do remember the on-call doctor at the hospital recognizing Charlotte the day Olive fell at school. I never thought to ask how she knew anyone there because I was so wrapped up with Olive.
I’m always so wrapped up that I never ask important questions.
I also never thought to ask much about her ex-husband. Other than hearing he’s an asshole on a daily basis, I didn’t see the need to know more about him.

“
Was
the chief of surgery?” I ask her.

“Yes,” she says, her eyes scanning the kitchen, rather than looking at me.

“So, do you know Charlotte?” I ask, holding my focus tightly on her wandering eyes. I realize wives of surgeons aren’t typically found in the hospital but I can’t help but wonder, after their odd greeting in the living room.

Ari looks down to where her fingers are fidgeting with the hem of her black shirt. “Yeah, I mean, Dr. Don Drake was my doctor for years. He was the best there was and I was dying. I was practically living at the hospital with the amount of testing and episodes I had, and Dr. Drake seemed to always be on an endless shift so Charlotte was around quite a bit. Actually, a few times she brought me flowers. I’m just not sure she remembers me. I’m sure she visited plenty of his patients.”

It’s like this whole other side of Charlotte I don’t know. How could a heart surgeon of his status be consulting underground somewhere now?

“Charlotte!” I shout into the living room. I’m getting to the bottom of this.

“Hunter, what are you doing?” Ari, says, pressing her hands up against my chest. “Stop.”

It is several seconds before I even hear Charlotte’s feet moving across the floor and I’m guessing her hesitation is playing a part in her speed. “Do you need something?” she asks, walking over to the turkey.

“Hunter,” Ari says again.

“Look at her, Charlotte,” I tell her.

Charlotte turns on her heels and slips her hands into her back pockets. It takes her a minute but she lifts her chin, forcing eye contact with Ari who now looks incredibly uncomfortable. “Ariella,” Charlotte says. “How could I forget you?”

Charlotte places her hand gently on Ari’s shoulder. “How’s the heart?”

“Did you know about Ellie?” I ask Charlotte. “Your husband, he’s the chief of surgery over at Brookhill. Don Drake, is that his name? The surgeon who removed Ellie’s heart.” My words may be a little harsh considering Ellie died from an aneurysm, but for five years, I have had no one to blame and right now blaming him feels so damn good.

“Ex-husband,” she snaps. “And I don’t believe Ellie was a patient of Don’s,” Charlotte says softly, so softly I’m not sure she’s being truthful. “He was a heart surgeon and Ellie didn’t have heart problems, right?”

“No, she didn’t.” There is still a lingering explanation somewhere in this room and I don’t know who the hell to turn to.

“You know something, don’t you?” I take the wooden spoon from the counter and throw it across the kitchen. “Did you know I was the fucking reason Ellie died? Huh? Did you, Charlotte? God,” I laugh. You must have. “You fucking knew about Ellie, didn’t you? Clearly, HIPAA regulations don’t matter in your household. You know all that doctor-patient confidentiality crap. Is that why Don doesn’t have a job at the hospital anymore? Because he immorally broke laws?” As the words continue to filter from my unfiltered mouth, I hear Dad’s words ringing loudly in my head.
You know what assuming does.

Tears are now spilling from Charlotte’s eyes, and she’s holding herself tightly as Lance steps into the kitchen with his gym-buff air-lats stance.
Dude, you don’t fucking work out. You look like you just stare in the goddamn mirror all day flexing.

“What’s going on in here? Everything okay, babe?”
Fuck you and your babe shit.

“
Yeah,” she says, sniffling. With a hand on his shoulder, she forces a fake, tight-lipped smile and squeezes her hand around him a little more. “Just a misunderstanding. Why don’t you go talk to AJ for another minute? I promise I’ll be right out.”

Without much concern on his part, he places a quick kiss on the top of her head and grabs a beer from the counter before heading back into the living room.

“You have some nerve accusing me of all that,” Charlotte says under her breath. “You also have the audacity to upset Ari after she’s only been in this house for five minutes. She didn’t ask for any of this.”

I glance at Ari, who is leaning awkwardly against the wall, hugging her arms around her body with her sleeves curled over her hands. Her teeth are pinched over her bottom lip and her focus is glued to the tiled floor.

I cup my hand around Ari’s elbow and tug her into me. “I’m sorry.”

She begrudgingly complies with my effort to make her less uncomfortable but she doesn’t look at me or say anything.

“I did not know Ellie’s history and to be quite honest, I didn’t know much about her death. What I do know is that Don lost his job after a hospital-wide malpractice suit following Ariella’s transplant. You must have heard about his case; everyone in this state heard about it. It was all over the news, as was Ari.”
That’s why she looked familiar to Dad. Unbelievable.

I feel lost at the other end of her story. I don’t remember hearing anything about this doctor. “I wasn’t exactly watching the news after Ellie died. I was managing a newborn while mourning.”

A sheen of sweat covers Charlotte’s forehead as she rakes her fingers through her hair. “Things were kept under very tight wraps when it came down to the details but what the public knew was that Don mishandled the paperwork for the transplant. And I don’t know more than that because days after the surgery, he was let go from the hospital. At the same time, he told me he wanted a divorce. I asked him over and over again what had truly happened and he would only tell me there was a misunderstanding and he was wrongfully terminated. That’s how our marriage was—need to know basis only.”