Chapter 60 Charlie
CHARLIE
“But he’s applied for a new passport,” says Charlie, desperately looking to apply logic to Anita’s wild accusation. “So he can’t be dead.”
“She’s applied for a new passport on his behalf,” cries Anita shrilly.
Charlie runs his hands through his hair. “Why would she do that?”
“You saw how she went, the other night—when I said he was back in England.”
“Right,” says Charlie, feeling a flood of relief rush through him. “You said it was on Facebook.…”
Anita shakes her head. “The only things on Facebook are the desperate pleas of his family who have spent the last four years looking for him. I wanted to test her reaction, see what she did.” Anita holds the passport up in the air.
“And this is it. She doubted herself. She let the demons trick her into thinking she hadn’t done what she did. ”
Charlie falls down on the stool, unable to speak even if he wanted to.
“I know my daughter, Charlie—far better than you could ever hope to—which believe you me is for the best. She doesn’t let people just walk away.
She was in love with Pete—or whatever the equivalent is in Freya’s world—and she thought she was going to marry him.
So do you honestly think she was going to allow a visa issue to come between them?
That she’d happily let him swan off to Australia, never to come back… ?”
A numbness coats Charlie’s nerves, his body’s response to protect him from the extent of Freya’s destruction.
“Do you have any idea how insane this is?” he manages.
“Do you have any idea how insane she is?” snaps Anita.
Charlie shakes his head. “This can’t be the woman I’ve lived with for the past three years.
She’s not a sociopath. She may have made some mistakes, but she more than makes up for them with the work that she does.
She helps people. She saves lives.” His determination to convince himself of her empathy makes him sound ever more desperate.
“Has it not occurred to you that it’s one and the same thing?” vents Anita. “That it’s all about power. She has the power to destroy lives and the power to save them. An incredibly intoxicating combination for someone like her.”
Charlie shakes his head.
“Don’t go believing that she does the work she does for any other reason than to satisfy her godlike ego.”
Charlie furls and unfurls his fist, not wanting to accept that no matter how hard he fought for her, Freya would never be the woman he thought she was.
“We were good together,” he says. “Once upon a time…”
“When everything was going her way,” says Anita scathingly. “But then something flips—like it did in London—and your fate was sealed.” She looks at him. “I assume it was another woman that sparked the events of that night? The same as with Pete.”
Charlie shudders. “She thought I was having an affair with Coco De Luca.”
Anita doesn’t look remotely surprised. “And were you?”
“No, but she caused such a scene that I ended up in a fight with Frank.” It still hurts Charlie to admit. He misses Frank every day. Even more now that he knows he picked the wrong side.
“And then the accident happened…?”
Charlie nods.
“Why didn’t you tell the police the truth?” Anita asks. “To save you from living a lie and having to constantly look over your shoulder, waiting for them to show up.”
Charlie asks himself that question every day.
Wondering how different the past six months would have been if he’d come clean.
Police interviews, court hearings, prison cells, snatched visits with Freya.
And all that on top of the guilt that threatened to swallow him whole, knowing that his actions had caused the death of an innocent man.
If he hadn’t discussed plans for Freya’s birthday party with Coco.
If he hadn’t drunk too much to drive. If he hadn’t let Freya walk out of there in the state she was in. …
“It wasn’t your fault,” says Anita, as if she’s able to hear the tortured thoughts running roughshod through his head. “If she wanted to get in that car and drive home, there was nothing in the world you were going to be able to do to stop her.”