3. Charlotte
After loading the last of the bags into the trunk, I took a moment to watch the sunrise. There was something beautiful in watching the light begin to overwhelm the dark sky that had been there before. If you had told me a few hours ago that this night would end, I wouldn’t have believed you. I felt like I had been trapped in the darkness, that I would never see the sun again.
Yet here it is, breaking through the night time into a new day. For the first time in a long time, a new day was a good thing. It meant I had a chance to make it better. This time there was a hope in that light and I was going to cling onto it for as long as it would allow. A sense of anxiety washed over me but I tried to push it down. I felt like I had spent so long scared, frightened of what he would do to me. I didn’t know how to feel anything else.
He left an hour ago to head to some bar or other, giving me a brief period to make a plan. I knew I didn’t have long. He was probably watching me right now on the cameras. I had to hope he was too drunk to piece together anything. The last few weeks has his control tightening. The frequency in which he came home filled with rage was on the rise. Rage that he took out on me. I’m not going to wait around for him to start taking it out on our son. If we don’t leave now, tomorrow could be too late. For both of us.
I took a deep breath in, keeping my eyes to the sky for one final moment before stepping into the car. I pulled out the paper with the hotel address written on it and placed it into my navigation. It would be a few hours of driving before we got there, but it’d be worth it.
“Ready to go on our adventure?” I asked, turning to Theo in the backseat. He gave me a slightly lopsided thumbs up as his eyes were still half closed. I watched as he nestled his head into the side of his car seat before I turned the car on and pulled away.
I can do this. We can do this. Everything will be okay. It has to be.
A couple of hours later I was still repeating those words in my head over and over. We’d stopped for breakfast and got back on the highway not too far from our destination. The darkness was completely gone now and the sun shone bright in the sky. Summer was well underway.
Theo briefly woke up at the promise of food, but had drifted off again almost as soon as we had gotten back in the car. Neither of us exactly got any sleep last night, so I didn’t blame him. Truthfully, I was enjoying the quiet. I was running purely on caffeine, fear, and desperation to get to the hotel to rest. To keep me and my son safe. I was looking forward to a peaceful day before the hard work started tomorrow. Trying not to think about my ever growing to do list, I turned up the volume on my car speakers.
The harmonic tones of Billy Joel’s Piano Man filled the space in the car.
This was one of my favourite CDs to play and truthfully, it was the third time I had gone through it on this drive alone.
Almost involuntarily, I took a deep breath.
My body desperately tried to inhale the peace of the moment, as if somehow it would help calm my brain down. As a way of blocking my mind out, I allowed myself to get too lost in the song.
I hummed along to the music, careful not to be too loud and wake Theo. It was my grandpa who first introduced me to Billy Joel. Just The Way You Are had been a firm favourite of my grandparents. I was suddenly transported into the memory of dancing around the living room with him.
When I was little there was always music at their house. It was always so loud and vibrant, just like the people that lived there. It was something I carried into my adulthood; I couldn’t stand the quiet. When things were too quiet it made my mind wander. Or it meant danger was around the corner.
Everything would be okay as long as there was music playing.
My grandpa was someone who on the outside looked stern and serious, but on the inside he was a kind man. He dedicated his life to his family and their happiness.
He always did whatever he could to put a smile on my face and he was good at it. I loved going to their house. Truthfully, it felt more like home to me than my parents’ house ever did.
His prized possession was his piano. Watching his fingers move along the keys was like magic to me. It was effortless and beautiful. I found myself mesmerised watching him as a little girl. His music was like a river flowing elegantly. He rarely used sheet music; he had been playing so long his fingers just knew what to do.
As a child I was in awe of him. Nobody could come close to him. He was my hero.
I was only about eleven when my grandma died, it happened suddenly. One day she was here and the next we had gotten a call to say she passed away in her sleep. There had been no warnings, no long-drawn-out illness; she was just gone. We went to visit my grandpa that day and it was the first time I’d walked into that house and it was silent. There was no Billy Joel playing, he wasn’t at his piano, and he didn’t try to make me laugh once.
In the years between grandma’s death and his own, music never played in that house again. I never so much as saw him sit at that piano. He had tried to teach me when I was younger, so when we visited I tried to play. Granted, I was terrible, but I thought it might just convince him to play something better. He never so much as even looked my way.
When I was fourteen, I got angry at him. His silence felt like a personal attack on me. Where had the man gone that once stopped at nothing to make those around him happy? Who was this fragile shell of a man that we were left with? It wasn’t fair. I needed him and he wasn’t there anymore. It felt like he may as well have been dead, too.
He only met my anger with silence. Silence that matched that of the unrecognisable atmosphere in the once lively house. He offered no explanation. He simply looked right through me. I stopped visiting of my own accord then, only going when I was forced to by my parents. My parents both worked away so often that previously my grandparents had looked after me, but I was old enough now I didn’t need a babysitter. I opted to stay at home rather than sit in that miserable silence.
He died just over two years later. I’d only seen him a couple of times since my outburst and he’d appeared frailer each time. I was still angry at him even then for shutting me out, but it didn’t stop my heart from breaking when I was told he passed. The anger and grief sat side by side in my heart, constantly shifting me between tears and resentment.
We cleared out his house a couple of weeks later. I found a box of old sheet music and insisted my mum let me have it. I couldn’t play, but it was important to me to keep it. I didn’t win the argument about keeping the piano. It shattered me when I watched it be carried away by strangers. That was his piano–no one else deserved to let their fingers touch those keys.
Among his things we found a letter addressed to me, well, with his nickname for me. Little Charlie was written on the front of it. Nobody else called me Charlie but him. My parents used my full name, Charlotte, and a few friends called me Lottie. Truthfully, I loved his nickname. It was our thing and always made me feel special.
I still had the letter now; it sat in an envelope in my handbag on the passenger seat. I read it over and over again when I first got it before putting it away in a box. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I knew one day I would need it again.
Last night was that night. I read it for the first time in years because I needed his advice. I knew everything I needed to know was in his words.
* * *
To My Little Charlie,
If you are reading this then I am no longer here.
I have been getting sicker over the past year and I didn’t want to go without writing to you. Please don’t blame your mother, I insisted she keep my illness a secret. I know that our relationship has faced hardship and it is because of me. You are in high school now with new friends and hobbies. I did not want you to waste your precious time on a sick, sad, old man. I want nothing more than for you to live life to the fullest.
I haven’t been who you needed me to be for the past couple of years and I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for one moment for stopping to visit me. If you still were, I’d be telling you to stop myself. My grief and misery are painted all over the walls here. I can feel it seeping out constantly. I wouldn’t want it to consume you as it has me.
Please don’t feel sad for me that I am gone, I do not want your pity or your guilt. Truthfully, I am happy to be dying, for in death I get to be with your grandma again. There is not a moment that goes by that my body doesn’t ache to be near her. The world hasn’t felt right since she left me.
I don’t think I ever told you the story of how we met and I wanted to make sure you knew. It’s important to me that you understand all of it.
I learned to play piano when I was a boy; my mother insisted. She had always played and wanted at least one of her children to carry it on. I hated it. I wanted to play sports and that was all I cared about. I gave it up as soon as I could.
Your grandma, my Lily, lived in one of the houses across the street. I had observed her from a distance but I was too scared to ask her out. Eventually, I plucked up the courage to speak to her and that weekend we made plans to attend a local place that did live music on Saturdays. I was a bag of nerves for the whole rest of the week.
From the beginning I could tell she was enamoured with the music. She watched them while I watched her. There was pure joy in her face, there wasn’t a single hint of sadness in her smile. It was in that moment I realised I wanted to be the reason she smiled like that; I would do whatever it took to make her happy.
We had a great evening; I asked her questions about all the music she enjoyed and walked her home on my arm. The next day I went to the music shop and bought sheet music to all her favourite artists. I still had my old piano.
My mother was under the impression I still played and insisted I took it with me when I moved out. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t play anymore and it was just collecting dust in the living room.
I spent weeks learning all these songs. I was rusty, but it quickly felt like no time had passed. In the meantime, we had a few more dates and I was falling hard for her. The harder I fell the more I played. Eventually we attended the same live music night we went to on our first date. Except this time, there was an additional act. She was so confused when I got up and started walking towards the stage. I played a handful of her favourite songs. I had purposely practised them so much that I hardly needed to look at the keys. I wanted to look at her when I played, I wanted to see her smile. The smile that I was putting there. I asked her to marry me that night and made a promise to myself that I would spend my life making her smile.
She’s gone. I will never be able to make her smile ever again. I didn’t play because I loved playing, I played because I loved her. Why would I play now if she isn’t here to smile?
I wanted you to know this story for two reasons.
Firstly, to understand why I have been quiet since she left. Why the piano keys have remained untouched and will remain untouched by my hands. The next time I will play is when I am reunited with her. I will play to make her smile once more.
The second reason is I want you to promise me something, Charlie. You are special and I do not want you to settle for any less than you deserve.
Someday someone will love you like I loved Lily; they will do anything to make you happy. You will mean the absolute world to them and they will live for your smile. They will fight for your smile.
One day, one of you will die and it will be earth shattering, but it will be okay. It will be okay because you loved them and they loved you. You lived every day together feeling loved and seen. How lucky you will be to have been loved and to be able to love. It will be okay because you made the most of every moment together.
Promise me you won’t settle for anything less. Life is too short to not be loved in the way you deserve.
I’m so proud of you, Charlie,
Grandpa x
* * *
When I was little, I told my grandma I wanted to grow up and marry a man just like grandpa. The truth is, I don’t know if that will ever happen. I’ve never met a man like him. I’ve never known how it feels to be loved like that.
Instead, I felt like I had betrayed this promise–I had done the exact opposite. I had been so desperate to be loved, I had found myself with someone who showed how he felt about me through fear and control. Wasting precious years cowering in a corner because I had nowhere to go. I know if my grandpa was here, he would never have let this happen.
Theo and I would be safe with him. There was nobody in our corner now and it was up to me to be brave and take care of us both.
I broke off from the memory with fresh tears rolling down my cheeks. I quickly wiped them as I hit my turn signal to pull off the highway. I glanced in the mirror and watched the highway get smaller and smaller.
The road got quieter and quieter.
Silence.
It wouldn’t be long until we got there now.