by H. P. Munro
A flurry of movement at the entrance caught her attention. The door flew open, and Sam strode into the clinic. His head moved wildly as he looked for either Mack or Maddie. Spotting neither, his eyes landed on Charlotte.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Neither the full waiting room of local residents nor the knowledge that Sam was lashing out due to fear stopped Charlotte from responding to his tone.
“I was with Maddie when she got the call. Nice of you to show up.”
Anger flashed across Sam’s face as he reached her in two strides so they were almost nose to nose. “You are not wanted nor needed here.”
“Erin should be the one to decide that. Not you.”
“When it comes to you, Erin loses the sense she was born with. You almost destroyed her and yet you come back like nothing happened and stir it all up again.”
Frustration fizzed off Charlotte. Yet again she was painted as a villain in what happened. The tenuous hold she had of her self-control withered with the renewed accusation.
“I destroyed me too, Sam,” she yelled.
“Yeah, well at least it was your choice,” Sam shouted back in return. “You are nothing but a chicken shit, Charlotte Grace. You denied everything Erin was to you just so you could go on being a Grace. You chose being a Grace over Erin and you can’t just swoop back in, and expect her to forgive you.”
Charlotte inched closer. Her teeth gritted as she stared intently into Sam’s eyes. “You have no idea. You have no clue what happened back then and what I chose. So don’t preach at me, Sam.”
“Yeah?” Sam tilted his head. “So tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong.” Charlotte could feel the anger pulsing through her body, then realizing for the first time she had a chance to set the record straight, she relaxed. “Almost every memory I have of Erin there’s an animal involved.”
“What the hell’s that got to do with anything?” Sam shook his head.
“All she ever wanted to do was work with animals, and the Grace Falls Foundation sponsorship was going to make that happen.”
Sam looked at Charlotte in confusion.
“My mother found out about us and threatened that if I didn’t end it the foundation would pull the sponsorship. So everything you think you know about what I chose is wrong. I chose her. I chose to give her the future she deserved and I chose to break both our hearts to make it happen.”
Charlotte’s shoulders slumped with relief. Finally, someone in Grace Falls knew the truth of what happened. She turned and took in the numerous faces sitting in rapt attention. Apparently now more than one person knew and unfortunately none of them was the person who deserved the explanation.
“Are you two finished putting on a show for the whole town?”
Both Sam and Charlotte spun around at the sound of Erin’s voice. She stood clutching her ribs wearing a hospital gown. Her face was pale, but neither could ignore the furious expression on it. They both started to speak and walk towards her, but she held out a hand to stop them.
“Imagine you are sitting in unimaginable pain, waiting on painkillers to kick in and take away the agony in your ribs. Now imagine hearing two people yelling at each other and airing your dirty laundry for all and sundry. If you can imagine that you can then surely understand why both of you are the last people I want around me right now.
“So if you don’t mind, go make yourselves useful and collect Cooper and my truck from the Foster’s Ranch, while I go back to being cared for…and be thankful it was me that came out here and not Mack.”
Sam and Charlotte had the grace to look sheepish while Erin tore a strip off them both.
“Sorry,” they both muttered.
“Don’t be sorry. Be gone.” Erin tramped off attempting to keep as much of her ass as possible covered as she walked.
Sam blew out a long breath then turned to Charlotte. “My truck’s outside.”
Charlotte nodded and silently followed him as he led the way.
***
They rode in silence. Both took more interest in the road than was strictly necessary seeing as they were the only vehicle on it. Finally, Sam made a small coughing sound that was almost a growl.
“Was that what really happened?”
Charlotte let out a long breath and ran her hand through her hair. “It was the abridged version. In reality, there was a lot more shouting and tears from me and a whole load more threats from my mother.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell Erin the truth?”
Shrugging, Charlotte turned in her seat. “I almost did about a thousand times, but I was told not to contact her. If I had it would have put her sponsorship at risk.”
Sam sucked his bottom lip into his mouth as he contemplated Charlotte’s explanation. Finally, he nodded and glanced in her direction. “You know she wasn’t the only one you hurt.”
The rawness of his words hit Charlotte straight in the chest. She’d anticipated anger from Sam, he’d always been protective of his big sister. What surprised her was that her departure and the manner in which it happened had hurt anyone other than her family and Erin.
“Sam, I’m sorry—”
“I don’t need you to apologize. I just needed you to know. You doing what you did meant I lost my big sister in a different way than her jus’ going off to college an’ I sorta thought of you as my big sister too…only you weren’t as mean to me as Erin.”
Charlotte let out a laugh. “She was pretty horrible to you. Remember when you wouldn’t leave us be and she pretended to call Santa, and cancel all your presents.”
“A line of trust was broken that day.” Sam grinned at the memory.
“I am so very sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing for everyone at the time. If it’s any consolation, while I’m not sorry my decision meant Erin got to be a vet, I have regretted every day since then that I hurt her.”
He nodded and Charlotte sat back in her seat. The entrance to the Foster’s farm became visible in the distance as the thick atmosphere between them felt as though it had lifted somewhat. It wasn’t entirely relaxed, but it was a start.
“So, I’m training for the Winter Olympics,” Sam said nonchalantly.
“Seriously? I thought Ruth was just joking when she told me.”
Sam frowned, a familiar wounded puppy look that Charlotte had seen countless times during their childhood when Erin told him to leave them alone. She had to resist the temptation to ruffle his hair as she had in the past.
“Why does everyone have that reaction?” he sighed.
Chapter Twenty-One
“So you know the drill, ice packs for twenty minutes every hour. Painkillers regularly and don’t try to be a hero and not take them. It’s not big and it’s not clever. Deep breaths and coughing exercises every two hours.” Maddie signed off her notes then looked up at Erin to make sure she’d taken the instructions in.
“When can I get back to work?”
“Take a couple of days. Office work should be okay. Then light duties in four weeks and we’ll see about anything else after six weeks.”
“Six weeks!”
Maddie shrugged. “Just be thankful you were wrong about that break, and you’ve only bruised your ribs. Had it been broken we’d have been talking six minimum.”
Erin part growled and part groaned as she slipped off of the bed. “What you got that will relieve the symptoms of the whole of town knowing your business, and a good portion of them having seen your ass?”
Laughing, Maddie opened the door. “Time will heal that as well. Although it may take longer than six weeks. Particularly the ass bit.”
Erin gave her the side-eye as they stepped out into the hallway.
“Your ride is here,” Mack said with a mischievous look on her face.
Coming into the reception area, Erin was greeted with her brother bearing a look somewhere between remorse and relief.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Peachy.�
�� She held out the paper bag with her painkillers in it.
“Okay then.” He took the bag and nodded his head in greeting towards Maddie. “Thanks for taking care of her.”
Maddie waved her hand in the air. “No worries. You make sure she takes those.” She pointed at the bag in Sam’s hand.
“Will do.”
He rushed around Erin to open the door for her and nodded again to Maddie and Mack as his sister left the clinic.
***
“What you got that weird look on your face for?” Maddie asked, seeing the wide grin on Mack’s face.
“Wait two seconds.”
They didn’t have to wait that long when a loud ‘Hell no, Sam Hunter, I am not riding in that golf cart again’ rang through the building.
“That.” Mack chuckled, then turned and waddled off to the waiting room. “Right, who’s next?”
***
“Jesus that’s cold,” Erin whined as Sam dropped another ice pack gently onto her ribs.
“That’s kinda the point.” He slumped into a chair and took a slug from his soda bottle, ignoring his sister’s pointed glare. “You still in a huff with me about the golf cart?” Sam sat up straight and pointed the neck of his bottle in her direction. “You went straight to seeing the bad. Thinking I was just trying to pull some stupid prank, when alls I was doing was getting a vehicle I thought you could get in and out of easily without hurting your ribs none.”
“I apologized already, Sam.”
“Well, I’m just sayin’ that my feelings got hurt.”
Erin was about to expound upon her own feelings and how they might have been trampled on when he chose to go ten rounds with Charlotte in front of half the town. But she knew from his contrite behavior since he collected her at the clinic, that he was sorry. Making him feel worse wouldn’t do either of them any good. Instead, she decided to focus on the other half of the debate team.
“So did you and Charlotte speak when you picked up my truck?”
Sam toyed with his bottle. “A little.”
“Don’t make me come over there and kick your ass little brother.”
“Yeah we talked, and you should probably talk to her too.”
“It didn’t take her long to get you singing a different tune,” Erin scoffed, surprised by the change in her brother’s opinion.
Huffing, Sam shrugged. “You should still speak to her.”
“I think I heard all I needed to hear along with the rest of the town,” Erin snapped, wincing as she jerked her body in her anger.
“Alls I’m saying is you said you’d give her a chance to explain. Hearing her and me going at it in the clinic doesn’t sound much like you giving her a chance.”
Erin stared into the fireplace. She knew her brother. He was stubborn, and he could hold a grudge. Hell, she only had to mention the Third Saturday in October, and he would be all up in arms about the Tennessee Volunteers. His vitriol could last days.
For him to change his mind so radically about Charlotte, meant he’d heard something sufficient to do almost the unthinkable. She hadn’t heard the entire argument, only the tone of the raised voices as opposed to the content being yelled. But what she did hear was Charlotte admitting she’d broken both their hearts and she’d taken a small amount of comfort from that.
“Will you drive me over to the Anderson place?”
***
The golf cart pulled up noiselessly on the street outside the Old Anderson House. Erin sat for a moment staring towards the house, remembering the hours she’d waited outside the property as a child for Charlotte to complete her piano lessons.
“You goin’ in?” Sam asked.
She turned and gave her brother a half-smile and nodded. Despite her earlier complaints, she was grateful Sam had brought the golf cart as it was indeed easier than climbing in and out of his truck. Still the action to raise herself off the seat caused her to catch her breath in pain. As she walked up the path towards the house the whirring of the golf cart’s motor told her, without looking, that Sam had left her there.
Taking a deep breath, she climbed the steps leading up to the veranda. Pulling the screen door open she knocked on the door and waited.
***
Charlotte had deliberately avoided going to Erin’s Rock on her previous visit. The place where she first met Erin and where they’d spent so much of their childhood and teenage years, would have been too much for her to handle. However, this time, she felt stronger.
She’d started to make some amends, with Sam at least. Her original plan of apologizing to Erin and finally confronting her mother was back in play. The one fly in the ointment was she had no idea of how Erin might react following her argument with Sam. She was bound to have heard at least part of what was said.
She caressed the stone. Its rough texture was so familiar to her she felt as though she’d passed through a portal in time. She hoisted herself onto the rock and lay down. She felt a veil on her memories slip, allowing the memory of when things started to go wrong to appear.
Charlotte heard the noise of clothes being discarded followed by the sound of someone entering the water. She turned. All she could see was Erin's bright smile and her hair fanning out around her on the water. The water rippled with the movement of her arms and legs under the surface as she treaded water.
“What happens if we get caught?” Erin asked, bobbing up and down.
“We’re not gonna get caught.” Charlotte slipped into the pool and slowly swam towards her girlfriend.
Erin cast a glance up towards the large colonial style property that was the Grace Family home. “You’re sure?”
“Positive,” Charlotte replied, as she reached Erin and started to float beside her. “Daddy is in St Anton and Virginia takes a sleeping pill at night. She won’t hear a thing.”
“Well in that case.” Erin’s smile grew wider as she reached out and grabbed Charlotte around the waist and pulled her closer. Their lips met in a slow languid kiss. They felt unhurried despite knowing their time together would soon be limited.
Erin had been accepted at Auburn on their Pre-Veterinary Medicine course. Along with Ruth, she had received the Grace Falls Foundation’s education scholarship, which would allow her career aspirations to become a reality.
Their long-distance relationship was going to have to continue for longer following Charlotte’s acceptance to Cornell. Knowing they were on borrowed time, they cherished every moment they had together, and the midnight skinny dip in the Grace pool had been Charlotte’s idea.
Charlotte pulled away and circled her arms around Erin’s neck. “What happens if you meet some amazing girl at college?”
Erin shook her head, small drops of water shimmered in the moonlight as they fell from the tips of her hair. “Not gonna happen.”
“How can you know for sure?”
“’Cause you’re the only girl for me. Remember, we’re unbreakable. Besides, there won’t be anyone at Auburn who’s as hot as my girlfriend.”
Charlotte grinned as Erin pulled her tighter against her body. She brought her legs up and wound them around Erin’s waist, letting Erin take the strain of keeping them afloat. “Well, when you put it like that.”
They spent an hour in the pool lazily swimming around and playing an elaborate game of catch. Neither girl knew the rules nor cared, as getting caught resulted in long kisses and caresses.
Reluctantly Charlotte swam to the side and pulled herself effortlessly out of the pool to sit on the side. Her legs dangled in the pool, creating patterns on the surface of the water.
“Where do you think we’ll be in twenty years?”
Erin frowned. “God, we’ll be thirty-seven. That sounds so old.” She grinned as she swam up to Charlotte and rested her arms on her thighs. “We’ll be here. I’ll be the local vet, and you’ll have taken over the lumberyard.”
“You think?”
“Or we’ll be rich and famous living a glamorous life in LA. Either one is good.”
Charlotte laughed. “Somehow I can’t see us in LA but here would be just fine.” She held onto Erin’s arms to keep her in place as she bent down to kiss her. “Just fine,” she murmured against Erin’s lips.
***
With a practiced movement, she swung her leg over the window ledge and pulled herself into her room. Dropping onto the floor, she pushed down the wooden sash and case window as slowly and as quietly as she could. It was only when she turned, her smile still evident on her face, that she saw her mother sitting in the old wicker chair that had been handed down by her grandmother.
“Mama!”
“Charlotte.”
“You damn near scared the hell out of me.”
“Then we’re even because I can assure you I almost had a stroke a few moments ago when I looked out of the back room window towards the pool and saw you cavorting with that girl.”
Charlotte’s heart rose to her throat so much she felt it would block her ability to swallow. “Her name is Erin.” She winced, annoyed with herself that there was an evident shake in her voice. “You know her name is Erin.”
Standing, Virginia took in a deep breath. “We will talk about this more tomorrow in the light of day. No good comes from discussing emotional matters before slumber.”
For the briefest of moments, her mother had a deep frown on her face before the cold and self-possessed mask Virginia Grace wore so easily slipped back into place. “Sleep well.”
There had been no sleep that night for Charlotte. She’d sat fretting about what her mother would say the next day and more importantly what her father would think of her. She dressed carefully, shirking her usual pastime of dressing to annoy her mother. Today she wore clothes she knew Virginia Grace would approve of, as if her choice of dress would somehow influence her mother.
When she stepped into the dining room, she was surprised to see only her mother sitting there. She looked around in the room for her father but stopped when her mother spoke.
