Chapter Twenty-five
A small envelope fluttered out of her doorframe and landed on Harper’s foot as she and Franky were heading out for a walk. Her eyes were sore and swollen from crying, so she might have missed the letter if it hadn’t hit her. “Hold on a sec, Franky,” she said as she bent to pick it up.
She recognized her name in Charlie’s swirled handwriting on the front, and a rock lodged in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know what she wanted to be in the envelope, but no matter what it was, she knew it was going to hurt. She slowly slid her index finger under the envelope flap.
Dear Harper,
I am so unbelievably sorry for everything yesterday and how the sins of my past have come back to haunt me.
I am also sorry for any role I may have played in the accident that took your wife, however indirect it was.
I know you don’t want to see me right now, and I cannot blame you for that.
I need some time myself to think and figure out what to do—what I can do legally—so I am going to go away for a little while.
I have an early yoga class to teach this morning, and I am leaving right after that, so by the time you read this, I will probably already be gone.
I’m not sure where I’m going to go for right now, but I need to figure out how to make all of this right. Hopefully, then I can come home.
In the meantime, here is a check for rent for the rest of my lease. I plan to be back before the end of it, but I don’t want you to worry that I am not going to honor this obligation.
I know I may not deserve your forgiveness, but I hope you can find a way to give it anyway.
I will regret the final decision I made at D.
B. Graves every day, along with every decision I made along the way that fueled that unethical machine.
I think I was too close to see the cracks at the time, but that doesn’t justify me not digging in.
Yours,
Charlie
What. The. Fuck.
Harper leaned against the doorframe as she read the note again from start to finish.
How had Charlie just run away? Again.
Taken the easy way out.
Harper wanted to crumple the note and throw it off the balcony.
But she also wanted to gather Charlie in her arms and hold on.
She was somehow relieved that Charlie had left so she wouldn’t have to look at her and wonder just how unethical she was—intentionally or not—but she was also devastated and felt like her heart was being ripped out again.
How could she just run away? Without even looking Harper straight in the face and telling her good-bye? Had the past several months of them growing closer and closer as they’d both slowly taken down the walls around their hearts meant nothing to her? How could she not have stayed and talked to her?
Fuck. She couldn’t put that all on Charlie. She’d said hard words last night and had asked for space. She’d made it clear she didn’t even want Charlie to touch her.
Franky, as always, seemed to know that she needed some love again and pressed her body into Harper’s leg. “Thanks, sweet girl,” she said and bent over to scratch her ear. She didn’t stop there and sank to her knees and buried her face in the soft fur of Franky’s neck and cried again.
She cried for Kelly being taken too soon.
She cried for Charlie, the first woman she’d opened up to since then.
She cried knowing she wasn’t sure she could forgive Charlie, and she cried wondering if Charlie would actually seek her forgiveness or would just disappear from her life like she’d never even been there.
Charlie had felt like a zombie as she’d walked back to her apartment the night before, still in shock from the bizarre and shameful events of the afternoon.
She hadn’t slept in her apartment since their trip to Key Largo months ago, and walking into it had emphasized a hollowness in the pit of her stomach.
She’d finally been feeling like her feet were under her just to find the rug pulled out again.
She wanted to throw up, thinking that her firm was the reason that Harper’s wife had died.
And not only that, it was someone who’d taken a payout, just like her, who was the reason it had happened. Fuck.
Charlie had already felt dirty about the payout—even after giving it all away—but this made it so much worse.
She hated herself for having been a part of it.
Even though her payout was not likely to have resulted in innocent people being hurt—at least not physically—the money she’d made for the company clearly had.
She hadn’t been able to sleep the night before at all.
It was around three in the morning when she’d come to the decision that she needed to step away from everything again.
She knew Harper was going to need more than twelve hours of space to process her emotions, and she didn’t think she could handle Harper ghosting her or telling her to her face that she didn’t want to be together anymore because Charlie was a horrible person.
Charlie had known for a long time that she used to dwell in a morally gray area at times, but that had been news to Harper. And based on what Harper had told her, it didn’t seem like it was morally gray; it was morally bankrupt, and she hadn’t known it. Or hadn’t wanted to see it.
Feeling worse about herself than she even had when she’d arrived in Key West, she packed most of her stuff at four in the morning and steeled herself to teach a yoga class.
She’d cried as she’d written the note explaining why she was leaving for a while.
She hoped Harper didn’t think her a coward for running away.
She was trying to give Harper the space she needed while she figured out what the fuck she could do to try to atone for her sins.
Thankfully, her only class that day was at six a.m., and then she was off the schedule for two days, so she texted a group chat of fellow instructors always looking to pick up extra classes to cover the next two weeks and called Talia to take her off the schedule.
Talia hadn’t pressed her on what was wrong but was kind and told Charlie if she needed anything to just call, and she’d put her back on the schedule whenever she was ready.
She’d cried again when she’d hung up. Talia had been the person to start Charlie’s healing when she’d gotten to Key West, so calling her last on her way off the chain of islands felt…weird.
She hadn’t known where she was going when she’d written that letter, but as she crossed the final bridge and left the Keys for the first time in nine months, she knew exactly where she was heading.
The original destination she’d had months ago when she’d been heading in the opposite direction: her parents’ house.
She’d been texting her mom every day and knew they would be home that evening since her father had an eight a.m. class the next morning.
They never went out the night before early classes.
He’d once said, “If those students are dragging themselves into my classroom at that ungodly hour, you’d damn well better believe I’m going to be there too, well rested and ready to teach. ”
She didn’t tell them she was coming, so nearly nine hours after she left the yoga studio, when her tires crunched on their gravel driveway, she saw the curtains move and her dad’s head pop into the gap. She watched his face go from brows knitted and lips pursed to a wide, relaxed smile.
She was pulling her small duffel bag out of her trunk when the front door opened.
“Charlie!” her mom said as she ran down the handful of front steps.
“We’re so happy to see you, but what are you doing here?
” The large smile that had been on her face fell as she seemingly caught the expression on Charlie’s. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Something about her mom’s immediate caring broke something in her. She dropped her bag and fell into her parents’ arms, tears pouring down her face, raw sobs racking her body.
She couldn’t see their faces, but their arms were around her, holding her tightly for what felt like an eternity.
Soft pats, soothing syllables. The moments all bled together with nothing but those sounds and sensations as all of Charlie’s hopelessness, horror at her own actions, and despair rushed out of her.
Finally, Charlie remembered that they were standing on her parents’ front lawn, and embarrassment started to creep in. She couldn’t have done this in the privacy of their house? “Sorry,” she finally managed. “Can we, uh, go inside?”
“Of course,” they said at the same time.
Charlie’s dad grabbed her forgotten bag, and her mom wrapped an arm around her shoulders and guided her in.
When they were settled at the kitchen table with a mug of herbal tea in everyone’s hands, her father said, “Talk to us, Charlie. What has you showing up unannounced and so upset. You’re always welcome here, but we weren’t expecting you for a few weeks.”
“I’ve ruined everything,” she said, knowing her words seemed like an exaggeration but feeling the truth of them.
“What do you mean?” Mom said.
“Things with Harper, the peace I’d found in Key West, the future I was starting to envision.” She choked back another sob. “Probably things with you all once you know the truth. And I don’t know how to fix any of it. I don’t know if I can.”
“There are never problems so big that we can’t figure them out,” her dad said. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, and we’ll put our heads together.”
Charlie was exhausted after such an emotional night and long day of driving, but she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep anyway and hoped maybe talking to them would help, at least enough that she might be able to sleep.