“Lily Virgilio came into the gallery today. I don’t think she’s going to let Charlie leave. She said he’s absolutely amazing with the kids—they completely forget they’re in a doctor’s office when he starts with his magic tricks and crazy songs. He’s a wonderful help to her and Janie Levin—Lily actually looks more rested since he arrived. Working her own practice and the clinic was a load.”
Nell smiled.
“But after singing Charlie’s praises today, Lily looked concerned. At first she was hesitant to say anything, but she knew I’d see you tonight, so she talked to me.”
Nell’s heart immediately skipped a beat. “She was concerned?”
“Charlie had a three o’clock shift this afternoon, and he didn’t show up for it. Lily wasn’t worried about the shift—it was easily covered. But it was so unlike Charlie that she was concerned. Something important must have happened to keep him from the clinic, she said. And she just wanted to be sure he was okay.”
Nell looked out the window. The guesthouse was dark.
Across the room, Ben was mixing martinis and listening to Danny and Cass, his face full of laughter.
He had said Charlie was coming after his shift.
But he didn’t show up for his shift.
“Hey, sweetie,” Jane said, tilting her head as she peered into Nell’s face. “I didn’t mean to worry you. Charlie’s a big boy. And responsible. I’m sure he’s fine.” She handed Nell a hot pad. “Check your pork tenderloin. It smells ready. I’ll toss the salad.”
Nell walked to the stove and pulled out the roast, her mind going over possibilities. But none came readily to mind.
Izzy walked over with a sleepy Abby on her hip. “Aunt Nell, Abby tells me she wants her favorite great-aunt to read Goodnight Moon to her.” She rubbed her nose into Abby’s soft curls. Abby’s eyelids drooped.
Nell’s worry washed away momentarily as she lifted the sweet baby from Izzy’s arms and cuddled her close. Abby nuzzled down, one tiny fist rubbing against her curls.
Izzy looked at Jane, who had taken over at the stove. “What’s up, Jane? I could see Aunt Nell was stressing about something, not her usual way on Friday nights.”
Jane smiled. “You’re a wise and perceptive niece. Abby and Goodnight Moon will hopefully take care of some of that.” Jane pulled out the tray of vegetables and turned the oven off. She turned to Izzy. “Did you happen to notice if your brother’s car is in the driveway? I didn’t look when we came in.”
“No, it’s not there. Sam talked to Charlie earlier today. He is coming here after work.”
Jane hesitated for a second, then said, “Something must have come up, because Charlie didn’t make it to the free clinic today.”
Izzy’s eyes widened. She looked across the room, spotted Sam, and waved him over. “Where’s Charlie?” she asked him, her voice carrying a slight edge.
“Am I your brother’s keeper?” Sam asked, attempting to lighten the tone.
The look on Izzy’s face erased his smile. “I told you earlier—he’s at the clinic. But he’s coming here later.” As he talked he checked his watch, then his cell phone for messages. He looked at Izzy and Jane. “What’s going on?”
“Sometimes I think you know Charlie better than I do, Sam,” Izzy said. “He didn’t show up for his shift. Would he miss a shift at the clinic?”
“Maybe, if there was a reason.”
“But he’d have called Lily or Janie to let them know, right? And where would he go? What would keep him from work?”
Nell walked back into the kitchen, her face noticeably more relaxed after just a few minutes of Abby’s tonic. “Any word from Charlie?”
Izzy shook her head.
Sam was already tapping numbers into his phone.
They waited. Sam’s brief voice message suggested Charlie give him a call as soon as he got the message. “No worries, just wondering if you’re coming over for your aunt’s amazing dinner. You miss one, you might never get invited back,” he joked.
Izzy was typing in a phone message before Sam finished, her words more terse: Charlie, call me.
“He could have forgotten about the shift. He’s had a lot on his mind these days,” Sam said. “We all forget things.”
Nell half listened to the excuses. She began taking out the rolls, whisking together a citrusy orange sauce for the meat while Jane helped, slicing the tenderloin into juicy slices.
Charlie was fine.
When Ben came over to her side, he reinforced her thoughts. “Don’t worry, Nellie. Everything is being blown out of proportion these days.” He put one arm around her shoulders. “We see evil and suspicious faces all over the place. We wouldn’t be thinking twice about Charlie taking some time for himself under ordinary circumstances.”
Nell leaned slightly into his side and said, “Dinner’s ready. Uncork the wine and call the troops.”
Ben was right, she thought. None of this would be a concern, not if less than two short weeks ago Amber Harper hadn’t walked into their lives. And then—been murdered.
But she had.
And sometimes worry was real.
Chapter 28
Charlie didn’t call, but he finally answered Izzy’s text.
It was after Cass and Danny had taken Birdie home—the weariness of the week weighing on all of them. The Brewsters had called it an early night, too.
Finally it was just the sound of the humming dishwasher. Sam and Ben were drinking a scotch in the den and Izzy was trying to decide whether to leave Abby at her aunt and uncle’s for the night or to wake her and take her out in the cold.
But mostly she and Nell were stalling, hoping to hear a car drive into the driveway.
Finally the text came. I’ll be there soon, it read.
In less than ten minutes, they heard the car drive up and a door slam.
Charlie walked in, kicking off his boots at the door. He greeted them as he walked across the family room, shrugging off his jacket, his attempt to appear normal in place. But he didn’t look normal.
He looked like the lone survivor of a grueling boot camp, his hair matted down when he pulled off his hat, his cheeks raw from the cold. He was disheveled, weary, and looking as if he’d lost his best friend.
“Where’ve you been?” Izzy said, her eyebrows pulled together in a harsh scowl, her worry hidden beneath the scolding.
Ben and Sam had come out of the den at the sound of the door. Ben poured his nephew an inch or two of scotch and put it in his icy hand. “You look like you need this. It’ll warm you,” he said.
Nell walked to the microwave to heat up a plate of leftovers. Izzy stood near the island, her arms wrapped around herself as if Charlie had brought a blast of cold into the kitchen—one unrelated to the weather outside.
Charlie straddled a stool and rested his arms on the island, leaning forward, but his eyes were on his sister and when he spoke, it was to her.
“I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Well, you did.” Izzy held his look. She repeated her question.
“I’ve been a couple of places. The last one being a walk around the shoreline for as far as I could go. Around boulders, up that hill on the point, along the sand. The back shore.”
“In this cold?” Nell asked. “At night?” The shore was long and winding, rugged in places, and not a place for an evening stroll in December.
“No wonder your cheeks look like they’re going to fall off,” Izzy said. “And before your ridiculous ocean hike? Where were you then?”
“The police station,” he said. He took a breath. “Tommy Porter called me and asked if I’d stop by the station today on my way to work. I suppose ‘asked’ is not entirely appropriate, but he’s a nice guy. He asked.”
“More questions?” Ben asked.
Charlie nodded. “They had come across a text
message on Amber’s phone that somehow had been misplaced. Actually she had deleted it—that’s why they hadn’t seen it earlier. But when they received the records from the phone company, they found it. It was a message from me.”
“And?” Izzy picked up her coffee mug, cradling it in hands that had suddenly grown cold.
“It read ‘I killed a man.’”
The silence in the room was deafening. Finally Sam spoke, stepping in as if he were Charlie’s older protector. Don’t touch him, his body language said.
“Morgan College,” Sam said.
Charlie nodded.
Sam clenched his jaw and shook his head. “You didn’t kill anyone, Charlie.” He looked at Izzy, then back to Charlie.
Charlie took a long swig of scotch, his eyes narrowing as it went down, stinging his throat.
“I finally get it,” Sam said, his voice sad. “It’s why you left. Dropped out of college. Dropped out of our lives. It was that damn football game.”
It had happened at the end of his last summer before his senior year, at the small Colorado school where Charlie had gone to play football, not entirely to his mother or father’s liking. But he was getting a free ride. And then there was the promise of skiing from November to April—Charlie was in heaven.
And he loved playing football; he was good at it. Even pickup games during late summer when they’d be getting ready for the fall, playing whenever they had the chance, everyone wanting to be first string when the real play began. Sometimes frat guys filled in to make the extra team. It usually worked well. There were always assistant coaches around—school rule—to keep the games instructive and safe.
Charlie looked over at Sam. “You were there that weekend, Sam. Remember how hot it was? But a little heat doesn’t stop football players—not tough guys like us—and I was ‘the man,’ the one who took the ball carrier down, the one who saved games.” He said the words facetiously, his dislike for “the man” clear. He looked around at the others. “Sam had stopped in at Morgan, just to check in on me and to say hi. He was doing a photo shoot in Aspen, but stayed around for some of the game.”
“You’re into detail, aren’t you?” Sam said quietly, his memory of the day hazy and not completely in sync with Charlie’s, but clear enough to know where Charlie was headed. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Charlie looked around as if anxious to get it over with, to explain his life away in two minutes. To lay it out on Nell’s island, for better or worse, something he should have done years ago.
“We were crushing the other team that day—mostly frat guys—when one of them started calling our quarterback names, you can imagine the kind, maligning this really great guy simply because he marched to a different drummer than the frat guy did. He wouldn’t stop. On and on, goading our guy, sexual slurs. I could feel my blood rising, my face getting hot, that awful boiling feeling I used to get when my temper was winning out over my mind. I knew the frat guy would be receiving the next pass, and I was ready for it. The ball went up, his arms went up to catch it, and I barreled into him with all I had, pummeled him to the ground. My teammates were ecstatic.”
Nell looked at Sam. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Charlie, as if his look might help him through it.
“Then everyone got quiet. I couldn’t figure it out for a minute, then looked down. The guy didn’t get up. He stayed right there on the ground, convulsing, his body flopping uncontrollably.”
Nell stopped herself from going over to him. It wouldn’t help him finish.
“An ambulance took him to the hospital. It wasn’t until later that the coaches got the results. A separated vertebrae, they told us in the locker room. He was paralyzed.
“But after a few days, no one talked about it anymore. Not the coaches, not my teammates, not other students. It was like it never happened. I was supposed to forget about it. The season started, life went on. It was no one’s fault, they said, a football injury. It’s too bad, but it happens.”
“They were right, Charlie. It was no one’s fault,” Sam said.
“You knew about this?” Izzy said, looking at her husband.
Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Charlie. “Did Mom and Dad know?”
“No. And don’t give Sam that evil eye. He was headed to Aspen that day and had to leave before the game was over. Lots of times guys don’t get up right away. Drama on the field. Sam went off to Aspen after the guy was taken off to the hospital, and the game actually went on. It wasn’t until later that we knew the extent of it. And like I said, even the guy’s family didn’t blame anyone. No one.” He swirled the amber liquid in his small glass until it became a small whirlpool. His voice dropped. “They left all the blaming to me.”
Nell thought back to any hazy memories she might have of that time, of Charlie’s time in Colorado. Her sister, Caroline, had called, upset when Charlie had dropped out of school without a word to anyone. He spent the rest of the year as a ski bum. Caroline and Craig thought he was just getting something out of his system. But then, it seemed, he dropped out of life. Moving around. Odd jobs here and there. Sending cards occasionally, e-mails. But missing family holidays, celebrations, Izzy and Sam’s wedding. “We could have helped,” Nell said softly, but Charlie chose not to hear.
“I got into some strong stuff, my own cure to forget it all. I was pretty useless for a while. Woke up every night sore and achy, like I had just played a football game. I’d stumble around, then fall back into bed, not feeling anything. Going home to Kansas City or seeing you, Iz—or Jack and you, Sam—it was beyond what I could do. I simply couldn’t hack it. I had flunked out of the family, is how it felt. The youngest. The mess-up. I’d e-mail Mom that I was okay. Just out exploring the world. I even got a job on a freighter, made some good money, and bought myself the used BMW as if it would prove I was worth something.” He laughed at his own foolishness. “But jobs never lasted long because I’d fall back into darkness and have to claw my way out, messing up along the way.
“It was a girl in Idaho, of all places, who finally forced me to do something. She worked in rehab at a small hospital and we hung out with some of the same people. One night she told me what I already knew—that I was a disgusting human being and of no use to the world. I should either kill myself or shape up, she said. Just like that. We were friends—and for some reason I actually thought about what she said. For a week or so. Frankly one of her choices was way more appealing than the other. I don’t know for sure why I didn’t go that route. But I didn’t. I decided to pull myself together. Rehab, anger management. The whole shebang.
“Angel—that was my friend’s name, if you can believe it—managed to get a good deal on the treatment. I had some money, that inheritance we got from Dad’s aunt, Iz. And maybe Angel told them I was a charity case, who knows?”
Charlie’s story had flooded the room, filling every corner and crevice, and while Nell heated Charlie’s now-cold food, they played with their drinks and tried to arrange his story in their minds, following the journey that had taken him from them. And wishing at every turn he had turned to his family for help.
Nell set his plate back in front of him and he managed a bite before Izzy asked something they were all wondering.
“Nursing school,” she said, the need to fill in the gaps overriding the emotion they were all feeling. “How did you end up there? Dad had you signed up for Harvard law when you were in preschool.”
“Yeah, go figure,” Charlie said.
Nell handed him a glass of water and he drank it gratefully. Then looked at his sister and finished his story.
“At the end of rehab the director plugged each of us into a supervised volunteer program. Mine was working on a playground—kind of like a counselor—with some tough young kids. They spent most of the time shooting baskets, playing hard and banging up knees, heads, bloodying noses, even a sprained ankle or two. I surprised mysel
f by liking it as much as I did. It guess it doesn’t take a shrink to figure it out—all that shame for the tackle, all the guilt. It made me feel, I don’t know—useful, maybe? I liked fixing the kids up, tending to their cuts and sprains, keeping them calm, and making them laugh. While I was there, the supervisor told me about a nursing program in that godforsaken town. She said they actually needed students to keep their grant money, and she thought I’d be good at it.” He stared down at his hands for a minute, then looked at Izzy. “And you know what, Iz? I was. I am.”
Nell’s emotions were bottled up so tightly in her chest that she found it difficult to breathe. As Charlie’s journey unfolded in her kitchen, her sister’s youngest child appeared in her memory—the playful one, charming teachers, carefree. His grades never as good as his older brother’s and sister’s because he didn’t study much, but no one cared, because he was Charlie.
Izzy climbed onto the stool next to her brother. “But you didn’t let us know, when we could have helped, or even when things were getting better. Why, Charlie? I want to shake you. Beat you up.” Hold you close. Her eyes were damp.
He picked up his fork but held it still beside the plate, looking into Izzy’s eyes. He swallowed hard, as if there were something stuck in his throat. A lump as big as his fist. “Because I wasn’t sure I’d make it. I didn’t know if I’d fall back into hell. I didn’t want to take anyone with me—and I didn’t want those who loved me and whom I loved to have to watch.” He was holding himself together as best he could. But beneath the surface was a battered young man, ready to cave in upon himself.
His eyes begged his sister to understand.
Izzy looked at her younger brother, certainly no longer a baby brother. And she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight.
Chapter 29
Charlie was spent, his shoulders slumped, his body as weary as if he’d just run a marathon. But there was a lightness to him that Nell had not seen in the weeks he’d been living in her backyard.
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