Chapter 9
CHARLOTTE
Charlotte was running late. Five minutes, maybe seven, but she hated being late the same way she hated typos in her lesson plans, wrinkled bulletin boards and anything that suggested she wasn't holding it together.
Holding it together was her primary occupation these days.
Teaching fourth grade was the secondary one.
She passed the front office, waved to Linda at the desk, and ducked into her classroom just as the first bus was pulling up outside.
Oliver was already there. He was always early.
His grandmother dropped him off on her way to work at the hospital, which meant Oliver had twenty minutes of empty classroom before anyone else arrived.
He used them to draw. Today he was hunched over his desk with a green colored pencil, adding scales to what appeared to be a dragon riding a skateboard.
"Morning, Oliver."
"Morning, Miss Hoffman. I gave your dragon sneakers."
She leaned over his shoulder. The dragon was, indeed, wearing high-tops. Red ones. "Those are excellent sneakers."
"They're Jordans. My cousin has Jordans."
"Your cousin has good taste." She set her bag down, took a sip of her coffee, and began writing the morning agenda on the whiteboard.
Math: fractions review. Reading: chapter 8 of Charlotte's Web.
Art: free draw. The routine was an anchor.
She'd learned that in the months since the wedding — routine wasn't boring, it was a lifeline.
A series of predictable, manageable tasks that kept her moving forward when the alternative was standing still and letting everything catch up.
The kids filed in. Backpacks, lunchboxes, sneakers squeaking on linoleum.
Charlotte stood at the door and greeted each one by name: Morning, Anna.
Hey, Michael, nice haircut. Sadia, is that a new backpack?
— and the rhythm of it settled her the way nothing else could.
These kids didn't know about the wedding.
They didn't know about Dominic, Jacqueline, the name on the altar or the dress on the bridal suite floor.
After school, she stayed late to work on the fundraiser.
P.S. 34 was hosting its annual spring gala.
A modest affair by any standard, held in the gymnasium with streamers, donated food and a silent auction stocked with gift baskets the teachers assembled themselves.
Charlotte had volunteered to co-chair the planning committee, partly because she believed in it and partly because she needed her evenings filled with something other than her own thoughts.
Kate was on the committee too, because Kate was on every committee. And Eric Cho, the fifth-grade science teacher, who'd been helping Charlotte rearrange folding tables in the gym and kept finding excuses to stand close to her.
"So I'm thinking the auction tables go along the back wall," Charlotte said, studying the gym with her hands on her hips. "And the food stations here, near the entrance, so people eat first and then get generous."
"Strategic. I like it." Eric was leaning against the bleachers, arms crossed, grinning at her.
He was tall, with wire-rim glasses and an easy, self-deprecating humor that made the fifth graders adore him.
He coached the school's chess club, wore periodic table ties on Fridays and had once built an actual volcano for a science demo that set off the fire alarm and earned him a standing ovation from fifty ten-year-olds.
He was, by any reasonable measure, a good man. A kind man. The kind of man Charlotte should want.
She didn't want anyone. She was done wanting. Wanting had gotten her a five-figure wedding dress, a thumbs-up emoji and a name that wasn't hers spoken at an altar.
But. Eric was warm, he was present, he laughed at her jokes, and he didn't make her feel like she was auditioning for a role she hadn't been given the script for.
When he asked her opinion, he listened to the answer.
When she talked about her students, he asked follow-up questions.
When she mentioned — once, briefly, in the faculty lounge — that she'd recently gone through a bad breakup, he hadn't pressed for details.
He'd just said, "That sucks. Want half my sandwich? " and handed her turkey on rye.
"You're staring at those tables like they owe you money," Eric said now.
"I'm visualizing the flow. People enter here, hit the food, circulate past the auction items, end up at the donation table by the stage. Maximize exposure to every opportunity to spend money."
"You're terrifying."
"Thank you."
He pushed off the bleachers and came to stand beside her. Close enough that she could smell his cologne. Something clean and simple, not the dark, expensive scent that Dominic wore.
She shut that thought down. Slammed the door on it. Hard.
Eric opened his mouth to say something, but a colleague waved him over. He left her with an apologetic smile. Kate approached, raising her eyebrows.
"Stop,” Charlotte said, rolling her eyes.
"I didn't say anything."
"You said it with your eyebrows.”
"He's cute, Charlie."
"He's a colleague."
"He's a cute colleague who likes you.”
Charlotte picked up a marker and started labeling table assignments on the seating chart. "I'm not ready."
"I know." Kate's voice softened. "But you will be. And when you are, you could do a lot worse than a man who builds volcanoes and shares his sandwich."
Charlotte smiled. It came easier now than it had in the early weeks, when smiling felt like lifting something heavy with a muscle that had atrophied.
She was getting stronger. Day by day, week by week, in increments so gradual she could only see the progress when she looked back.
The sage walls. The clanking radiator. The classroom.
The fundraiser. The Thursday night runs through Sunnyside where she listened to podcasts about history and didn't think about Dominic for entire blocks at a time.
She still thought about him. She hated that she did, but the thoughts came uninvited.
In the shower, at red lights, in the moments before sleep when her defenses were down and her mind drifted to the rooftop bar, the caught drink, how his hand had felt on the side of her neck during their first kiss.
She'd loved him. She was almost certain she'd loved the real him, not just the version he'd presented, though the distance between those two things grew wider every time she examined it.
Some nights she lay in bed and tried to separate what had been genuine from what had been performance, and she couldn't find the seam.
That was its own kind of grief, not knowing what to mourn.
She was learning, gradually, to let the thoughts come and go without chasing them.
Like clouds. Like the weather. Dominic passed through her mind and she let him pass.
The letting go got easier, and the ache got duller, and one day she'd wake up and he'd be a person she used to know instead of a wound she was still tending.
At least that’s what she told herself.
The fundraiser planning consumed most of her time.
Sponsorship calls, silent auction donations, parent volunteer coordination.
Charlotte threw herself into it with the same focus she brought to lesson planning: meticulous, thorough, slightly obsessive.
Kate told her she was overcompensating. Charlotte told Kate to laminate the bid sheets.
It was during a planning meeting that Principal Delaney dropped the news.
"We have a new donor," she said, leaning into the faculty lounge. "A major one. The Gallison Foundation. They're partnering with the Weston Group on an arts education initiative, and they want P.S. 34 as a pilot school."
Charlotte looked up from her seating chart. "The Weston Group?"
"Their corporate giving arm. Apparently the foundation director met with someone from the Weston family who's very passionate about education philanthropy.
They want to meet with our fundraiser committee.
Personally." Delaney was beaming. "This could be huge for us, Charlie.
We're talking arts integration funding, classroom supplies, teacher development grants—"
"Who's the contact?" Charlotte asked. Her voice was even. Controlled. Kate, across the table, had gone very still.
Delaney checked her notes. "The meeting request came through the Gallison Foundation.
A woman named Amrita Kapoor — she's their program director.
But the Weston representative..." She flipped a page.
"D. Weston. He asked for the fundraiser committee lead by name. Asked for Charlie.” Delaney looked up, pleased. "He must have done his homework."
The room tilted. Charlotte gripped the edge of the table because her body understood before her brain caught up.
D. Weston. He asked for Charlie.
Not Charlotte. Charlie.
He'd never called her Charlie. Not once in six months of dating, a four-month engagement and a wedding that detonated on the altar.
She'd always been Charlotte to him. Formal, elegant, suitable.
The name on the place card. And now, six months after she'd walked out, he was using the name that belonged to her real life, the life he'd never been part of, and he was using it to walk back in through a door she had firmly closed.
Kate was watching her. The clipboard had been set down. Her hands were flat on the table.
"Charlie?" Delaney said. "You okay? Do you want to take the meeting?"
Charlotte's heart was hammering. She could feel it in her throat, in her wrists, in the tips of her fingers where they pressed against the table's edge.
She should say no. She should tell Delaney to assign someone else, or explain the conflict of interest, or simply refuse, let Kate do it and never walk into a room where Dominic Weston was waiting on the other side.
But P.S. 34 needed the money. Oliver needed new art supplies.
The school needed everything this grant could provide, and Charlotte was the fundraiser committee lead.
This was her job, and she was not going to let Dominic Weston take one more thing from her.
Not her dignity, not her school, not her work.
She loosened her grip on the table. Straightened her shoulders.
"I'll take the meeting," she said.
Kate's mouth opened. Charlotte met her eyes and shook her head: a fraction of movement, invisible to anyone else. Not now.
Delaney clapped her hands. "Wonderful. I'll confirm with the Gallison Foundation. Meeting's Thursday at four. I'll reserve the conference room."
She swept out. The lounge door swung shut behind her.
Kate waited three seconds. "Charlie."
"Don't."
"You know who that is."
"I know exactly who that is."
"Then why did you just agree to sit across a table from him?"
Charlotte picked up her seating chart. Her hands were shaking, but her voice was steady, and steadiness was what she had. Steadiness, stubbornness and months of learning how to stand in a room without Dominic Weston and not fall down.
"Because this school needs that grant," she said. "And I'm not going to let him take that too."
She went back to labeling tables. Kate watched her for a long moment, then picked up her clipboard, and neither of them said his name for the rest of the afternoon.