Chapter Twenty
Twenty
Simon
The look on Hannah’s face was comically horrified.
If I looked as mucked up as she did—and of course I did—then her dismay wasn’t out of order.
We must’ve looked like two creatures from the Black Lagoon.
Totally worth it. I tamped down my smile, not wanting to give Charlie any emotion to misinterpret.
“Charlie, it’s good to see you.” I unclipped my helmet and let it dangle from my hand. Hannah did the same with hers.
“Is it?” Charlie asked. His eyes were guarded and I knew he was assessing, trying to figure out what the meaning behind my words was while trying to respond appropriately.
“Of course it is.” Julian Quinto, Charlie’s caregiver, came around from the driver’s side of the car. “We talked about this, Charlie. You know how Simon feels about you.”
“He loves me.” Charlie nodded as if remembering an important detail. I smiled at him, encouragingly, even as my heart was smashed into a thousand pieces. I held my arms wide and said, “I’m your favorite baby brother.”
A quick flash of recognition at the old joke lit Charlie’s face and he stepped into my hug. “That’s right.” He smiled and there was a twinkle of the old Charlie in his eyes when he responded, “You’re my only brother.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not your favorite.” I hugged him close and felt my throat get tight when he returned the embrace with a laugh. This easy affection wasn’t always the case with Charlie.
“I hope it’s all right that we just stopped by,” Julian said. “Charlie wanted to surprise you.”
“Happy to have you visit anytime.” Julian and I exchanged a look and I knew that he knew that Lorelei had given me a heads-up.
“Were you surprised?” Charlie asked. His voice was high and he sounded more like a middle schooler than a thirty-seven-year-old man.
“Totally.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “You got me, Charlie.”
“And you got me!” He gestured to the mud on his T-shirt but he was amused rather than angry.
“I can loan you a clean shirt,” I said.
Charlie turned around to face Julian and I glanced at Hannah.
She was watching the interaction with gentle curiosity.
No judgment, just clearly trying to put the pieces together.
I could have kicked myself for not explaining it to her sooner.
I hadn’t really thought Charlie would show up so soon and, frankly, I’d been distracted by her.
“Told you, Julian.” Charlie was laughing. “I told you I’d surprise him.”
Julian raised his hands in surrender. “You were right, Charlie.”
Charlie spun to face me. He was grinning but it immediately vanished when he spotted Hannah. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Who’s she?”
I reached out and took Hannah by the arm, pulling her close to my side but leaving a small gap between us. “This is my friend Hannah.”
Charlie’s gaze darted to mine. “Friend?”
“Yes, actually, her grandfather was friends with Gramps,” I said.
“Our Gramps?” Charlie’s voice came out high and squeaky.
“Yup. Her Pops was Gramps’s…fishing buddy.”
“I miss him.” Charlie’s eyes filled with tears and his face crumpled. “Gramps used to come and play cards with me every Sunday, didn’t he, Julian?”
“He did,” Julian said.
“Do you want to see the house where Gramps used to go fishing?” I asked Charlie.
His eyes lit up and he nodded. “Yes!”
“It’s the house at the end of the street,” I said. “Number 81.”
Julian nodded. He glanced at Charlie and said, “Think we can beat them there?”
Charlie looked from the car to our bike, which was still on the ground. “Totally.”
He hurried into the passenger seat and Julian climbed into the driver’s side. Julian sent me a wave as he slowly pulled back onto the road.
I picked up the bike and checked it over. Other than some mud on the wheels, it seemed fine.
“Do you want to ride or walk?” I asked Hannah.
She glanced down at the mud coating her shorts and said, “Walk?” She phrased it as a question but I wasn’t going to argue. The idea of riding a bike while covered in mud had zero appeal. Plus, it would give me a minute to explain everything.
Ever since Lor had told me that Charlie was coming, I’d been debating how much to tell Hannah. Now that she’d met him, I didn’t see how I could avoid telling her the whole story.
“About Charlie…” I began, but she interrupted.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” she said.
“I know, but…I want to.” I was surprised to discover this was true. I rarely told anyone about my brother or his condition because it just hurt too much to talk about. But Hannah was different.
“He wasn’t always like this.” I started to push the bike with one hand on the handlebars and the other on the seat. Hannah moved to the other side and mirrored my position, helping to keep the bike balanced.
“What happened?” she asked.
“About ten years ago, he was in a horrible car accident,” I said. “He swerved to avoid a deer, lost control of the car, and wrapped his Mercedes around a tree.”
“Oh, that’s awful.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t go into the late-night call from my sister telling me what had happened or the frantic flight I made from New York City, where I’d been working with an author on a book.
Instead, I kept it on Charlie. “He spent ten days in a medically induced coma as they tried to get the swelling around his brain down. When he woke up, he struggled with headaches, memory loss, his emotions, and the ability to do regular day-to-day tasks. The doctors said he’d suffered from a traumatic brain injury in the crash and it developed into posttraumatic dementia. ”
Hannah gasped and her brow creased in a frown. “ ‘I’m sorry’ feels like a pitifully inadequate thing to say, but I am so incredibly sorry.” She let go of her side of the seat and put her hand on mine.
“Thank you.” I appreciated the gesture and resisted the urge to stop walking and pull her into my arms for a hug.
“Is Julian his caregiver?” she asked.
“Yes, he’s an occupational therapist with experience in helping patients with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. PTD presents similarly to CTE, and Charlie has made huge strides under Julian’s care,” I said. I hesitated and then added, “But it’s not cheap.”
Hannah nodded in understanding. I was unloading a lot of personal stuff onto her and Charlie was waiting for us. Also, I didn’t want her to think I was trying to guilt her into agreeing to sell our house.
“Does Charlie live near here?”
“No, he’s in a group home in Raleigh with four other men. They have similar conditions and needs and have created a found family there.”
“I’m glad he’s doing so well under the circumstances,” she said. “I can’t imagine how hard that was to go through for him and for all of you.”
“It certainly wasn’t the plan,” I said. “Charlie was Gramps’s right-hand man in his insurance business. It was the role he’d been born to and he took it on without hesitation. Charlie was going to do amazing things with the company.”
“What was he like as an older brother?” Hannah tipped her head to the side, waiting for my answer as I sifted through a lifetime of memories.
“He’s three years older than me, and he was my hero.
Still is in many ways. I was happy to be his sidekick.
I followed him everywhere and wanted to dress like him, act like him, and be just like him, but then our mom passed away from pancreatic cancer, and Charlie went away to college, and it was just me and Dad and Lor and everything changed. ”
“How so?”
“Without Charlie as buffer, my father was entirely too aware of me and the fact that I wasn’t the charmer, the athlete, or the leader that Charlie was,” I said.
“My father didn’t understand my love of art over football and it made life…
difficult until my father decided he didn’t want the responsibility anymore and turned Lorelei and me over to Gramps so he could start over in Florida without any baggage. ”
I felt Hannah’s swift glance on the side of my face, but I kept my gaze on the road ahead.
How much did I want to share? A part of me wanted to share all of it, every miserable moment of my home life from those years, but to what purpose?
This conversation was about Charlie and it was best to focus on that.
“Needless to say, after the accident the one thing I could do for Charlie was to make sure he got the very best care, so I took his place in the business since Gramps had retired and I’ve been an insurance guy ever since.
Given that Charlie’s conservatorship became my responsibility after Gramps passed, it’s all worked out for the best.”
“That’s…you…” Hannah’s voice trailed off as if she couldn’t figure out what exactly she wanted to say. “You’re a good brother, O’Malley.”
“Nah, that’s just what you do for family,” I corrected.
We reached the house. Julian was parked in front and I could see him and Charlie watching our neighbors as they sorted the stuff from the attic.
Zach was the first to spot us and his guffaw was enough to startle the birds out of the trees and set the dogs to barking.
Dude ran at us at a gallop from around the side of the house.
I wondered if he was upset that he’d missed the fun, but Frank was hot on his heels and Dude seemed happy to have his little buddy by his side.
“You know that bike wasn’t built to ride on the water, Simon,” Roland teased with a full belly laugh.
“That’s why Monica and I don’t have one of those,” Davis chimed in. “I call them divorce bikes.”
“That’s because you’d try to boss me around and we both know how that would go,” Monica retorted.
“Something like that.” Davis waved his hands at us.
“Any word from Bebe or Luke?” Hannah asked.
“Minor update,” Stephanie said. “She’s dilated to four centimeters and holding.”
Hannah nodded, absently patting Dude’s head. Then she glanced at me and said, “I call first shower.”
I had no chance to respond as she bolted into the house, leaving me muddy and dripping in the yard with our neighbors as my brother and Julian joined me.