Chapter 35
35
C arlisle waved her hand frantically at the rear of the truck as it slowly backed up her long driveway.
“No!” she yelled, now jumping as she waved again. Leaning over, she tried to make herself visible in the passenger mirror. It appeared neither of the men in the truck could see her.
Next, she motioned frantically to Charlie, but he’d already caught on to her concerned hops and spastic motions. Jumping to the other side of the truck, he also waved his hands above his head.
Of course, when the man did it, the truck stopped.
Carlisle sighed. There were two of them delivering the boxes and between them they still weren't keeping the truck on the paved portion of her drive. Wasn't handling a large truck literally their job? But she didn't say it out loud.
She was probably just stressed. Moving forward, still on the passenger side, she stood on the grass as if she could be a human marker for the driver to aim from. Charlie was already at the driver's side giving instructions.
The kits were arriving, and she felt both the lift and overwhelming responsibility in her soul. Another truckload was going to Jane’s tomorrow. The production company that actually made the physical parts and assembled the kits had upped the delivery date again. While it was wonderful for them to underpromise and overdeliver, Carlisle had to scramble to get the garage ready.
That was her own fault, she knew. She’d procrastinated until the very last minute then begged her brother to help. She wouldn’t have been ready today if he hadn’t done a lot of heavy lifting.
He'd seemed to appreciate the physical labor and the time out of their parents’ house. So Charlie had quietly helped her clear things out. He’d even managed to pick up boxes with their childhood baby books that her mother had passed to her and not react at all.
Several times, he would lift the lid, look inside, and just set the lid back on, moving the box to wherever Carlisle directed. He did it all without a hint of nostalgia. That was not the Charlie she knew.
While her brother wasn't one to get maudlin, he would definitely make fun of her just for keeping this stuff. He’d mock their baby pictures. Charlie loved to point out her shock of black hair. It had stuck straight up for the first six months of their lives, while Charlie's blonde had always been there. It had even quickly matured into golden ringlets.
For Carlisle, it had taken those six months to begin to look like herself. Her twin teased her relentlessly about having been swapped for another baby at the hospital. Her consolation was that they looked too much alike. She even looked a lot like Christian despite his dark hair for her not to be an actual Weaver. But Charlie teased anyway.
Not now though. Now, he simply came in and provided the labor, moving things around as though he weren't the one in the baby books they found, as though it wasn't his tiny socks that their mother had given to Carlisle instead of to him .
Carlisle on the other hand, had freaked the fuck out. Everything was in the garage for a reason: because she didn't have space for it elsewhere. Yet she had to find a place for every last bit of it or give it away.
The delivery company had estimated a square footage for storage of the boxes, and she needed every last inch of the garage for it. She also needed to have a table of some kind set up so that she could fill boxes, add labels, and packing materials. Charlie hadn’t made it any easier when he pointed out she also needed to store the mailing boxes somewhere.
After carrying as much inside as she could, she’d pulled down the cord in the hallway, opening up the tiny attic. The work had been sweaty and gross and each thing they did led to something else that she hadn’t anticipated. Putting boxes in the attic had seemed like an easy idea, but she had to first clear the attic to make space. It also needed to be cleaned, which was time she’d not accounted for.
Stacking the boxes in the attic should be easy, except none of the boxes she had were evenly shaped. That meant a trip to the store and money spent on containers to put other containers inside, just so they would store neatly.
Then she'd had to make labels for all the containers, or how the hell else would she find anything in the future? Especially since she’d just scrambled it all. It had been overwhelming and she’d been glad her brother had come to help and that he was here now. Even if he was concerningly quiet.
Charlie managed to get the delivery guys to back the truck into the drive as Carlisle opened the garage door glad to see the place empty and reasonably scrubbed.
The whole time she'd known his new normal wasn't normal . She'd understood that at a cerebral level when she worked in the ER. Patients in chronic pain didn't fake their pain—they faked not being in pain. Mentally ill patients didn't fake their illness—they faked acting normal .
Then, when she'd had her accident, she began to understand it in her core. People asked how she was, and she said she was fine. She worked on making her face look the way it had before. Wore the same makeup. Made the same expressions. Stood with her back straight like it used to be.
Inside, she'd been petrified. Getting back in her car the first time had been one of the scariest things she'd ever done next to nearly dying. She’d faked it all the way, even to herself. However, as Simon liked to point out, though she wasn't 100% better by her own terms, she was better than she had been.
He also liked to remind her that fully better was never going to make her the same as the Old Carlisle. Old Carlisle had not suffered something traumatic like that and New Carlisle would never be able to get rid of it. But she was functioning better—not at the level she wanted to function at, but better .
So now she could look at her brother and see it as plain as day. Whatever was inside him was eating him alive and he wasn't telling anyone. But right now, the two men were getting out of the truck, stepping down the long distance, opening the back and pulling out dollies.
With a few quick motions, the first one snapped the dolly together so it was essentially a pallet on wheels. That made Carlisle a little more afraid. How much had they ordered?
They already had sales. She had labels printed and ready to go. The plan for today was just to move the things into her garage. Tomorrow, Jane would move her boxes into her storage.
Then, the next day, they would do their inspections and begin shipping products. This too, took longer than Carlisle had expected.
The men stacked the boxes as the twins watched. First, they warned her against stacking them more than three high. “The weight may be too much, and you might damage product in the bottom box if you put a fourth one on top.”
She nodded as though she hadn’t figured out her storage space based on stacking them four tall. In an attempt to lift one, she realized how heavy it was, and how she would have to figure out how to carry a bunch. Walking back and forth across even her small garage with one or two in her hands at a time would be pointless.
Against the other wall, Charlie had set up her long table, an old piece of fabric serving as a makeshift tablecloth. She was glad now that they had put it out already or these two would have stacked boxes there. At one end of the table, Charlie had stacked foldable cardboard boxes in three sizes. Under the table were the larger ones for orders of five or more, along with packing materials.
She told herself she was ready for this. Then she told herself again.
Carlisle was definitely ready to start earning money rather than putting it into the business. She just made her mortgage payment again. Each time she went to the grocery store, each time she covered a bill, she watched the amount she had in savings dwindle. It was getting low enough it was starting to make her nervous.
Jane was clear that they would be paying themselves income before they paid Jane back. But, even so, once they got these first orders out it would be time to start advertising. Jane wanted them to go on local morning shows, wanted Carlisle to tell her story, talk about what had happened. They would show everyone how they designed the kit and why people needed it.
Just the thought made Carlisle shake in her shoes. She stuffed the fear back into its mental cabinet and acted normal.
Eventually her garage was full and this, too, had taken much longer than she had planned. She was sweaty and gross. But she and Charlie stood in front of the open door as the truck drove away.
“How are you doing?” she asked, not having wanted to ask it in front of total strangers. Not that they would have understood but it was her brother's life, and she wasn't giving it away.
“Definitely better being out of the house.”
“It's hard there with Mom and Dad.”
Charlie’s response wasn’t surprising at all. “Mom mothers me and Dad doesn't talk.”
“I’ve never understood that. They talk to each other just fine.” Carlisle put her hands up in the air. But when it came to their kids, their father always wanted to believe whatever sunny version he could cook up. Until he saw bold evidence that things were wrong, he didn’t act on it. Their Mom, on the other hand, swooped in and took care of everything. Mostly by taking over everything.
Hell, Christian even met his wife because their mother had swooped in and taken care of him—and he was a full grown adult, older than the twins.
“Do you need more help here?” Charlie asked.
“You want to be our first volunteer employee?”
But then Charlie's eyes darted to the side, and Carlisle turned around, still sweaty and dirty, probably with spiderwebs in her hair or on her back. With one hand on her hip, she stood and watched Simon walk slowly up the driveway.