A Heart of Time (4 page)

When I get home, I lock myself inside and lean against the door. I need to destroy something. I take all of the mail on the coffee table and throw it against the wall.
That didn’t suffice
. Next is the damn coasters Mom gave me as a housewarming gift—I chuck each one of them against the wall individually, still feeling only the slightest bit of relief. It’s just school—she’s just going to school but letting her go hurts like fucking hell and I shouldn’t have to do this alone—that’s why I’m mad. A logical reason, as far as I’m concerned; regardless of the fact that if I were watching someone behave the way I am right now, I’d tell them to man the hell up. I’m not interested in taking my own advice, though, not today anyway.

A knock on the door pulls me out of my moment. A moment similar to others I allow myself to have far too often. I jump up; worried it could be Olive...or something—even though that wouldn’t make any sense. She’s on a bus. To school. A normal part of life.

Whipping the door open, I find Charlotte on my doorstep. Her hands are tucked into the pockets of her jeans and the expression on her face tells me she’s as unsure about standing on my front step as I feel about everything right now. “You okay?” she asks sincerely—the “
I get it
” type of sincerity, not the type of sincerity where she’s talking to me like a child. Without giving me a second to respond, she continues with, “We’ve all been there. You’re just the only one with a kindergartener this year. The rest of us went through the pain last year. There were six of us standing on the curb in tears as the bus took off for the first time.” She pauses to catch her breath and then lets out a soft laugh. “At least Olive went willingly. You wouldn’t believe what I had to do with Lana last year. I had to drag her onto the bus kicking and screaming. It was like this horror movie. You would have thought I was dropping her off on the side of a deserted road.”

“Yikes,” I offer as a condolence.

“Yeah, I know, right? Once she was on the bus, she stood up on the seat and pressed her hands up against the window, crying for me. I felt like the worst mother in the whole world for the entire six hours she was gone. As you may have noticed, this year seemed a little easier.”

I look at her for a long minute, unsure of what to say since I already used up my “
Yikes
” remark. What else is there to say? “I’m glad things went better for her today.” Could I sound less interested, or humored by her approach to making me feel better? I tell myself every day to snap out of it and act like a decent person, but it’s like everything inside of me is black and cold. I only have enough warmth inside for Olive. The bitterness just pours out of me and chases everyone away.

“Well, if you want to talk—I...” she points across the street to what I now know to be her house. “I’m just across the street.” Charlotte turns on her heels and releases what sounds like a lungful of air.

“Did I do her hair right?” The words slip off my tongue before I realize I’m calling out for help.
What the hell am I doing?
I don’t ask for help, encouragement or sympathy. I close doors in people’s faces and hang up on phone calls filled with questions I don’t want to answer. I am closed off and not concerned with what anyone else thinks about my life or me.

Charlotte releases a hearty laugh as she turns back around. “She has great hair and the headband is adorable. You really are doing just fine.”

“I grew up with a brother. Having a daughter sometimes feels like I’m living in a foreign country where no one speaks English.” This is exactly how I’ve felt since the day Olive turned two and grabbed her first Disney Princess doll off of a shelf.

A mischievous look spreads across Charlotte’s face and she retraces her steps up to my front door—where I’m standing. “Do you have coffee?” she asks.

What kind of question is that? Is there a parent awake at this hour that doesn’t drink coffee? “How could I survive without it?” I laugh.

“Do you have more than one coffee cup?” Is she inviting herself over? Is this what parents do when their kids go to school for the day? Hang out and drink coffee while they share secrets on how not to screw up their kids’ lives?

“I have four, believe it or not. They all came in one box—so I didn’t really have a choice,” I answer, smirking a bit. The wittiness pouring out of me is something that has felt unnatural for so long, it feels foreign leaving my lips, but standing in front of someone who understands my current pain, the camaraderie isn’t unfortunate. In fact, I’m surprised to realize it feels kind of nice.

“Do you have enough coffee to fill more than one cup?” Charlotte continues, squinting through one eye as if is she’s waiting for me to say no.

“Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?” I finally ask, not that I wasn’t cornered into asking, but I can do coffee. I can be a normal human being for just a few minutes today. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that she’s incredibly gorgeous. A distraction that looks like her would be okay, I suppose.

“Oh my gosh, thank you so much!” she says, as if it’s an unexpected invitation. “I ran out of coffee this morning—mommy brain. If you didn’t invite me in, I was just going to beg you for some coffee beans. I don’t even have a grinder, but I’m so desperate that I would have pounded the hell out of the beans just to get my fix.”

Her joke makes me my laugh—a real laugh—not like the laughs I offer AJ when I’m trying to make him stop a bad joke before it completely rots.

I lead Charlotte into my house, through the living room, and into the kitchen. I wonder what she’s thinking about the couch cushions, coasters, and mail lying on the ground from my recent Tasmanian Devil fit. “A Keurig,” she says, eyeing the coffee maker. “I like the way you think.” I pull a chair out from the table and offer her a seat. “You’re settled in pretty well for moving in so recently.”

“I don’t like feeling displaced,” I say while pulling down a couple of mugs from the cabinet.

“I hear ya,” she mutters in return, looking at her nails, inspecting each one as if using that as a distraction. Her sudden shift in mood has me questioning if I said something wrong.

I retrieve the sugar and cream and place them both down in front of her. “You okay?” I ask.

“I’m sorry for being rude,” she responds without skipping a beat. “I shouldn’t have so slickly invited myself in after only knowing you for twenty minutes. I really did just want to ask for coffee, but...that’s weird. So is asking you if you had more than one cup. Considering the circumstances, that wasn’t funny. I’m sorry. I don’t exactly know anyone else on our street since we’re the only two with kids, so knocking on their doors would have been even weirder. And the bus stop moms all live two streets away.” She lets out a loud groan. “Hi, I’m Charlotte and I like to ramble and make a fool out of myself immediately after I meet a nice person.” Her nervous laugh actually puts me at ease.

“I did the inviting; you’re fine,” I grin. I’m smiling. I almost forgot about sending my child off to war.

With the mugs both filled, Charlotte pulls a napkin from the pile in the middle of the table and wipes away a sprinkle of fallen sugar. I find myself watching her hands, remembering the way Ellie’s hands looked as she was wiping down our counters. Our counters were always very clean. Everything was always very clean. Ellie was what she’d refer to as a clean freak. I think it was a little OCD, but she preferred the term “clean freak.”

The clattering of the two mugs clinking against each other pulls me from my thoughts of Ellie, forcing me to refocus my attention on the stranger sitting before me. If we were in the old house, I probably would have clawed Charlotte’s eyes out at the thought of another woman placing her hands anywhere Ellie’s hands had been, but that is one of the many reasons I needed to sell our house. I was basically living in Ellie’s coffin with her. Except I’m still alive.

Charlotte hands me one of the mugs as I sit down across from her. This is suddenly weird. I don’t know her at all and she’s sitting at my kitchen table. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through,” she says.

I hate sympathy. I really do. When there is too much of one thing, it becomes the least desired part of life, my life anyway. “It’s been a rough road,” I say, running my fingers through my hair.

“One of my closest friends lost her husband,” she says, placing her mug down. “I saw how it took her years to pick up the pieces of her life. Nothing anyone did made the process easier for her, so all any of us could do was just be there for when she needed us.”

I know I haven’t made it easy on AJ or my parents. Actually, I know I’ve been a complete pain in the ass. They’ve all tried to pick up the pieces for me and put them back together in a way they thought I should now be, but Charlotte’s right, there is nothing anyone can do for a person who lost half of their heart. “It’s a horrible thing to go through,” is all I can respond with.

Her focus shifts from me to the empty space beside me, to the picture frame I keep at the third place setting on the table. Ellie’s seat. With a smile, Charlotte traces her finger down the side of the frame. “She’s beautiful. Olive looks just like her.” She pulls her hand away from the frame and rests it over mine. The sensation of her touch causes everything within me to stiffen—
everything
. With a thick breath lodged in my throat, my eyes lock on our hands—the connection and the disconnection. “Did she pass recently?”

I nod my head, feeling some anger stir within me. Why is she making me answer all of these questions? Most people I don’t know will tiptoe around the subject and just offer the sympathetic stare, but not Charlotte. She’s prying open this closed door that I have tried hard to keep shut. “She died five years, eight months, and twenty-seven days ago while giving birth to Olive.”

I was wondering when Charlotte would crack, but I’m guessing that’s right about now. Her eyes are still wide, staring at me, but now they’re filling with tears. I don’t want someone crying for me or over me. I don’t want anyone talking to me, looking at me, or being near me. I want to feel like I’ve died, too, because it just makes this all so much easier. With no more tolerance, I stand up, pulling my hand away from her grip. Debating on fleeing this scene altogether, I remind myself I can’t exactly run out of my own house, so I put the cream and sugar away, doing my best to stall and hint that I’m ready for this coffee date to end before I say something regretful.

Delaying and all, there is still silence and there are still tears in her eyes, so I walk out of the room. I leave her there crying because—because I don’t think I know how to avoid being an asshole to anyone who dares to step foot into my life.

I circle the living room a few times, trying to even out my breaths, waiting for my heart to give up on the boxing match with my ribcage. But it never relents. The heart always wins over everything else. Whatever it needs to feel, it feels, and it will bring everything down with it.

I fall onto the couch and release all of the air from my lungs. The pain is as prominent today as it was five years ago. It’s like shrapnel in a wound. If the wound closes around what is causing the pain, the pain will forever be embedded. I’ve come to accept this. “I don’t even know your name,” Charlotte says, stepping out of the kitchen, wringing her hands around her wrists.

“Hunter,” I mutter softly.

“I’m sorry for being pushy or nosy but you look like—it seems like you might need a friend. We’re neighbors, so I figured...” I could be a great charity case or pity project to make her feel better about herself.

“Thank you,” I say gruffly. “I’m usually fine. It’s just days like today—firsts in Olive’s life—when everything comes to a head, it feels as fresh as it once did. I’m not usually this much of a mess.”

“I went to therapy with my friend after her husband died—it was the only way I could get her to go. The doctor always told her the pain would never go away but that eventually the good days would outweigh the bad. They also told her that the hard days would be harder than they ever had been before, no matter how much time has passed. Grief is like a scar—you can cover it up all you want, but it will always be there.” She’s saying what I have always thought. Everyone who is someone in my life has told me the pain will lessen, things will eventually get easier, and I’ll move on and forget about her. But in truth, the pain reminds me of her, and I don’t want to forget her so I endure the pain, and I carry it around like a heavy bag on my back. Sometimes I carry it with pride and other times I let it weigh me down until I’m at the point I’m at right now.

Charlotte exhales loudly and looks around the room, focusing on the mess my couch cushions are in. “What do you do for work, Hunter?” she asks hesitantly, sitting down in the recliner across from me.

And I’m done. Time is up. Did she just become my therapist? Because, yeah, I’m all set with that.

“I’m a carpenter. I run a company with my brother.” How the hell do I get this chick to leave? I need time to deal with Olive going off to school before I head to the job site, and instead, I have
Charlotte,
dredging up every detail of my life. More than I care to share in one day.

“You aren’t with Harold and Sons, are you?” she asks, straightening the pillow behind her, becoming more comfortable.
I don’t want you to get comfortable on the chair that Ellie and I spent two whole wasteful weeks fighting over. I hated it, and I won. Then I bought it after she died. Now it’s my favorite chair.