Chapter 46 Charlotte
Charlotte
Numbness crept over me as I watched Cole’s driver ferry him away. It was over. My legs felt heavy, but I dragged myself up to Dad’s study.
“Hi, Dad,” I said to the air. “I’ve been to Rome. It was amazing. I bet we saw some of the same stuff.”
My pointless words lingered in the silence.
So much silence. The desk sat exactly as Dad had left it when he’d stopped coming in here.
Books piled high on his walnut desk, gathering dust. The chalk had long since faded from the blackboard on the wall.
A dank smell clung to everything. I pulled open a desk drawer.
There were decades’ worth of my dad’s treasures: old letters, fossil fragments, photographs of people I didn’t recognize, rusted toffee hammers, yellowing maps. It would all have to go. How?
At the back of a tall cabinet, I found a faded shoebox stuffed with leather-bound notebooks. I selected one at random. Dad’s neat, methodical handwriting filled the page.
I had a plan of activities to keep the girls entertained. Today was scrap-modeling. Much to Lottie’s distress, Tiffany decided that we should build a robot. With some coaxing, Lottie was persuaded, but alas things took a turn for the worse.
My heart pounded, and I slammed the book shut.
This was a diary. It was a terrible invasion of privacy, but this was Dad’s voice leaping off the page.
His intelligence, his wit, and his sparkling eyes.
These were his private thoughts and experiences that I hadn’t been privy to.
It wasn’t my business. But I couldn’t stop my eyes from drifting back.
I couldn’t get the tape off the roll quick enough, which caused Tiffany to have a tantrum.
Not one to be outdone, Lottie soon joined her.
In the end, both girls became locked in a battle to see who could cry the loudest. I finished the robot myself, using margarine tubs for feet and a silver foil antenna.
In all honesty, it was magnificent. I have multiple degrees, but this robot will still stand as one of my greatest achievements.
I scanned another notebook, and another.
With each flip of the page, my stomach fluttered with guilt.
There were some gaps, but the diaries spanned the years from when Tiffany and I were young to when we were teenagers.
I’d need to text Tiff. I couldn’t sit here and read this without her.
But I couldn’t tear myself away either. Instead, I curled up in the corner of Dad’s office and read his thoughts on the weather, on teaching, on his pupils, on me and Tiff (and how naughty we’d been as toddlers).
Some entries were so funny, I couldn’t stop laughing.
These diaries were so precious. He was here with me in these words.
I closed my eyes and I could almost feel how it had been before, when this house had thrummed with life.
When the curtains were open and the carpets hadn’t faded.
When everything smelled of the hot beer that Dad had brewed in the bathtub, and Cole was by my side, building a tire swing with me in the woods, introducing me to some obscure indie band, eating popcorn on the couch.
Life had felt like nothing but opportunity.
It was all gone. There was just echoing silence, and a crumbling house full of memories.
An unbearable ache inside made my chest hurt.
I had too much feeling—sorrow, regret, disappointment, remorse.
Too much of all of it, like burning inside.
I had to get it out, any way possible. I stumbled through the house, past the stair lift, through the musty hall, and to the garage outside, where I found my old art supplies.
I’d thrown so much of it away, but not all of it.
There were still some blank canvases. Art hadn’t just given me meaning, it had been the way to get my feelings out.
To understand myself. Some part of me must have known how precious it all was.
Some part of me must have known that one day I’d come back to rebuild my tower.
With trembling hands, I salvaged whatever I could, and I began to paint.