3. Charlie #2
Sunday mornings, the only day he wasn’t at the gym by 6 a.m., belonged to his mother.
Beside the lamp, in a simple wooden frame, his mother’s watercolor caught the early light.
A beach at sunset, the colors soft and imprecise, painted by hands that hadn’t touched a brush in years before Italy gave them permission again.
She’d sent the piece six months ago, tucked between layers of tissue paper with a note that said only, “I remember this day. Do you?”
He did. He’d been seven. They’d built sandcastles while his father took calls on the hotel balcony, her hands guiding his around the plastic mold, and for three whole hours, Charlie had believed that was what family felt like.
The screen flickered to life.
“There’s my boy.” Lyla Carnell smiled from her sister’s villa in Positano, morning light turning her silver-streaked hair luminous. She’d stopped dyeing it the day the divorce finalized. Charlie loved her for that small rebellion. “You beat me to the call again.”
“Six a.m. gym sessions all summer. My body doesn’t know how to sleep in anymore.”
“The athlete’s curse.” She tilted the phone to show a basket of lemons on the table beside her.
“Aunt Evelyn and I went to the market this morning. We’re trying to make limoncello.
” The screen centered back on his mother.
Charlie cataloged the new lines around her eyes, the slight tan she’d developed from afternoons painting on the terrace.
She looked healthier than she had in years.
Lighter. “I saw the car, by the way. Your father’s Instagram is very . . . enthusiastic.”
Charlie’s jaw tightened. “You follow his Instagram?”
“Evelyn does. She screenshots the important things.” A pause. “Orange, Charlie? Really?”
“I didn’t pick the color.”
“No. I don’t imagine you did.”
Neither of them said what they were both thinking. They’d gotten good at that over the years, talking around the shape of Brennan Carnell without ever touching him directly.
“How’s the project coming?”
“Slowly.” She glanced at something offscreen and her shoulders dropped a fraction. “I’m working on a new project. A series, I think. Places I remember.”
“What kind of places?”
“Happy ones.” Her voice hushed. They way it always went when they were trying not to disturb his father. “That beach in Cape May. The garden at the Westbrook house, before we sold it. The kitchen in our first apartment, with the yellow curtains.”
All places from before. Before Brennan’s obsession with money had swallowed their lives whole. Before Charlie had learned that wanting things came with a price. “They sound beautiful.”
“They’re not the kind of thing anyone would hang in a gallery.” She lifted one shoulder, a gesture that was half-shrug, half-surrender. “But I’m painting for me.”
Charlie understood that more than he could say.
Creating because you needed to, not because anyone was watching.
He thought of the notes app on his phone, the files he’d never shown anyone, the words that poured out of him in the dark when he couldn’t sleep.
There was no playbook, unlike football, where he didn’t have to think, every move laid out for him and risks were discouraged.
Football was simple. At least when his father wasn’t involved.
“I’m proud of you.” The words came out rough, catching in his throat.
“I’m proud of you too.” Her expression shifted, a careful stillness settling over her features. “Are you excited for senior year?”
“Yeah.”
“And when it’s over . . .”
“After that, I graduate.” He kept his tone light. “Walk across a stage. Wear a silly hat. The whole thing.”
“Charlie.”
“Mom.”
“Your father has plans.”
“My father always has plans.”
She pressed her lips together, and Charlie could see her weighing options, calculating risks.
She’d always been careful with her words around his father.
But this was different. Before the divorce, her caution had been about avoiding Brennan’s temper, keeping the peace at any cost. Now she was careful because she’d seen what happened when she pushed too hard against his vision for their son.
The consequences hadn’t fallen on her. They’d fallen on Charlie.
“I just want you to be safe.” There was a wobble on the word safe. “On the field. And off.”
His throat tightened around the thing neither of them ever named directly. The shadow that hung over every conversation about his future. The cost of being Brennan Carnell’s only son. “I’m always careful.”
“I know you are.” She blinked rapidly, then smiled, and the fragile moment passed. “Tell me about practice. How’s the new quarterback?”
The pivot was obvious, but Charlie took it gratefully. They talked about Wyatt’s arm, about the new plays Coach Reed was installing, about the season opener. Safe topics. Football was always safe, as long as they didn’t look too closely at what the sport represented.
When the call ended twenty minutes later, Charlie stayed on the couch a long moment, staring at the screen. Three more years until his trust fund kicked in when he turned twenty-five. Three more years of being his father’s billboard.
Unless he got drafted by the NFL.
Not that he wanted that either.
But what he wanted never counted for much.
He opened his notes app and typed. No one could stop him from writing. Even if only for himself.
A notification came in.
ParcelPost:
Your order has been delivered
He stared at the screen. The camera. The best compact model he could find, shipped to Poppy and Skylar’s apartment. Nothing could replace what he’d broken, but this was an apology in physical form, since she’d refused to hear his actual words.
Charlie closed his eyes and the image of her face looking at him like he was another rich kid who thought money could solve everything made his chest tighten.
The hell of it was, he couldn’t even argue.