22. Charlotte
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Charlotte
I was surprised to hear a knock. It had been a few days since I was fired and I had been avoiding everyone. Especially Sutton.
“Sutton, if that’s you, please go away.”
The knock came again. Harder this time.
I walked to the door running through the possibilities. A bill collector. A reporter. My mother with a lecture.
I opened it braced for the worst.
Madison Ellsworth stood on my grandmother’s porch in white linen and expensive sunglasses.
“You’re a hard woman to find,” she said. “You don’t answer your phone.”
“I’ve had a week.”
“I know. I’m here about that.” She looked past me into the dim house. “Can I come in?”
I stepped aside because I didn’t know what else to do. She walked into my grandmother’s kitchen like she belonged there, sat down at the scarred oak table, and folded her hands.
“I’ll keep this short,” she said. “The firing was a mistake and I’m correcting it. Your desk is yours if you want it.”
I waited for the catch.
“Sean and I have had a conversation,” Madison continued. “He understands now that decisions like that go through me. And I don’t fire good people because Posy needed something to write about.”
“Why would you do this?” The question came out before I could stop it. “You don’t know me.”
“I know you handled the Harvey situation last month without blinking. I know three different guests have written letters about you specifically. I know good when I see it.” She shrugged. “That’s enough.”
“There’s no catch?”
“No catch. No strings. Just come back when you’re ready.”
I didn’t know what to say. A week of sleepless nights and shame and certainty that everything was ruined, and now this woman I barely knew was handing it back like it was simple.
“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Madison stood, then paused at the doorway. “Can I tell you something? You can do with it whatever you want.”
“Okay.”
“A man came to see me a few days ago. Walked into the Bellcliff Club in the middle of my lunch, sat down uninvited, and asked me to give you your job back.” She watched my face. “He didn’t threaten. He didn’t throw money around. He just asked. Like it was the only thing that mattered to him.”
My chest tightened. “Sutton.”
“I’ve been married a long time, and divorced too, and maybe married again soon, all to the same man,” Madison said.
“So believe me when I say I know your story better than you think. I know the difference between a man who wants a woman and a man who loves her. The wanting is easy. It’s selfish, mostly.
But the love?” She shook her head. “The love makes a man show up looking like he hasn’t slept and beg a stranger for help without caring how desperate it makes him look.
Even after the papers are signed. Especially after. ”
I couldn’t speak.
“Someone really loves you, Charlotte.” Madison pulled her sunglasses from her bag. “I thought you should know that. From someone who has no reason to lie about it.”
She was halfway to the door when she turned back.
“One more thing. The Regatta Gala is this weekend. It’s at the Moore house on Ocean Drive this year. I’d like you to come.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Come as a guest,” Madison said. “Just come, have a glass of champagne, and let me introduce you to some people.” She smiled. “I’d like to actually know you, Charlotte. Not just your employee file.”
She was gone before I could decline.
I had spent months telling myself this thing between Sutton and me was over the day I signed the divorce papers.
But Sutton hadn’t abandoned me at that church. He had never seen my message. And now he had walked into a stranger’s lunch and begged for my job like his life depended on it.
Maybe a marriage ending wasn’t the same as a love ending. It was my turn to take a chance on him.