About Time (Broken Vows #4)

Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Hattie Past- Age 19

There are moments in life where it’s hard to understand that the world didn’t stop for everyone. When you experience a loss so profound it feels like it should. How is it fair that I get to wake up to see the sun rise and set again and again when my baby will never even see it once?

There are so many questions I’ll never have the answers to. I won’t know if my baby was a boy or a girl, and I won’t know if they would have looked more like me or Charlie. The not knowing plagues me, but the biggest question is why I can’t cry.

“Doll, you’re freaking me out,” Charlie says as he helps me get out of the truck.

“Hmm?” I blink my eyes and try to push through the fog that surrounds me. “The doctor said I’ll be okay.”

The bed dips down as he sits next to me. “I know he did, I have been here. I’ve been watching you all night, but it has felt like you’ve been somewhere else.”

Charlie rubs his hand down my hair, tucking some of it behind my ear. “Where have you been going inside that head of yours?”

I try to lick my lips. They’re cracked, and my tongue feels thick. Without me even having to ask Charlie leans over me and grabs the glass of water he put on the nightstand.

“Thank you,” I say, my voice still scratchy.

My thoughts move slowly through the sludge inside my brain. It takes me several seconds to remember he asked me a question. “I’m sorry I keep zoning out.”

He bends down and kisses me on the head. “It’s perfectly understandable.”

The days fly by, especially since I spend at least half of them inside my head. Charlie sets me up in our room and then leaves me to rest. That first night it’s hard to sleep alone in our bed. I can hear the hum of the television in the living room. I don’t know if he’s fallen asleep with the TV on, or if he never intended on coming to bed.

Time is supposed to heal wounds, but a week clearly isn’t long enough to recover emotionally from losing a baby. It sure as hell hasn’t done any good for my marriage. Each hour that passes I can feel a divide between Charlie and me growing, and I don’t know how to stop it. Every night I go to bed alone, so I can, “have space to recover,” as he keeps telling me.

Nighttime is confusing. It’s horrible and wonderful at the same time. For brief moments I have peace, but to get them I also have to survive moments of absolute terror. I never get one without the other and somewhere in the middle of the night I keep waking up screaming.

“Doll, wake up. C’mon you’re okay,” Charlie’s voice is pleading as he shakes me awake.

Charlie has pulled me into his arms and rocks me back and forth. This is part of the peace. For the briefest of moments, I let go of the pain and just absorb the feeling of warmth and security of having his arms around me.

He gently moves me off his lap to look me over, and just like that, I know the moment is over. The first couple of nights I had hope that we’d fall into each other’s arms and hold on through this pain until it didn’t weigh so heavy. I gave up on that idea after the fifth night.

Charlie hasn’t slept beside me since we lost our baby. I’m starting to fear it was also the night I lost my husband. There are a lot of things I’m actively ignoring, but one thing I can’t is that I haven’t been to school in a week.

Monday morning, eight days after I lost the baby, I force myself out of bed and into the shower. It’s time to rejoin the world, whether I want to or not. I’m not going to be a mother right now, so I should at least try and remain a student.

A forty-five-minute drive, ten-minute walk across campus, and a fifteen-minute wait to speak to my advisor is all the time I get to hold on to the delusion that I can actually salvage any part of my life. Instead, I leave with a withdrawal slip and her hopes that I’ll re-register next semester.

I hear Charlie’s truck pull into the driveway. He’s late. Again.

I’m in the kitchen trying to keep myself busy. That’s all I’ve done since I made it back home. Now every surface in the kitchen is covered in baked goods, and I’ve got dinner in the oven. My mind hasn’t given me the courtesy of quieting down though. The baby, my marriage, and my education have gone up in smoke. My life is falling apart in front of my eyes, and the only thing I can think to do is make brownies.

It’s safe to say if I haven’t cracked completely, I’m pretty damn close.

After waiting in the truck for several minutes, probably dreading seeing me, Charlie walks past me and drops his keys on the counter. He doesn’t say a single word. He moves through the house, avoiding me.

The shower kicks on. Normally I wouldn’t even question it, because with his job he gets really dirty, but that was before he started staying later and later every night.

I really don’t know what he was doing those few weeks we were apart. Maybe he started seeing someone new, or maybe he just doesn’t want me now that there’s no baby tying us together.

Like everything else, I shove down my worries and check on dinner. Of course, my lasagna is perfect. I also made a tossed salad and garlic bread. As far as coping mechanisms go, avoidance isn’t doing either of us any favors. The scary fact is, Charlie and I need to have a real talk tonight. No more tip-toeing around the status of our marriage. If this is going to hurt, I need to face it now before the pain catches up to me.

One thing I know for certain after losing my mom is that numbness doesn’t last forever.

“Charlie, dinner is ready,” I call out as I walk into the bedroom.

He’s staring at a piece of paper from my pile of schoolwork. He holds it up to me as if I don’t already know what it is.

“Why do you have a withdrawal slip?” he asks. There’s an edge to his question that has a bite of anger to it.

“Because, according to my advisor I’m too far behind, and she wants me to withdraw and come back next semester,” I explain.

He swallows hard. There’s a hardness behind his brown eyes. I don’t know how such a warm color can appear so cold, but I’m watching him pull away from me.

Charlie drops the paper and I watch as it floats on its way to the floor. “We need to talk,” he says, stealing my line.

I bite my lip and nod. Though, now I don’t want to talk anymore. This isn’t going to lead to anything good. I may have miscalculated my ability to recover from yet another blow.

“I made dinner,” I say and gesture toward the kitchen.

His jaw hardens. I’m not sure how me making food has offended him, but it appears he’s determined to be pissed off tonight.

“This isn’t working, Hattie. You need to go back to school,” he says.

My eyebrows scrunch together. “That’s what I’m doing,” I agree and look pointedly at my stack of books.

“We’re not good together. I think we wanted this to work so bad we tried to force it, but the truth is we’re too different. You’re always going to be ten years younger than me. We’re just at two different places in life. I think it would be best if you return to your apartment.” His voice is flat and devoid of emotion.

I think maybe part of me always feared this day would come. That’s why I’ve continued to pay rent for a place I haven’t lived in for three months.

My fingers clutch desperately at his shirt. “Don’t do this, Charlie. I don’t believe this is what you want. Everything was great until I lost our baby. The doctor said that I can get pregnant again. We will have a family someday.”

He grabs my wrists and pulls my hands off of him. “You were supposed to be a casual fuck. You’re great, and I think I let myself believe it could be more. The truth is we were tied by the baby, and there’s no more baby. It’s time for me to find a playmate my own age, and for you to go back to your classes.”

My eyes fill with tears, and I look up to the ceiling willing them not to fall. Not yet. Not in front of him. I won’t beg him to change his mind, but there’s one thing I need to know.

“Is that where you’ve been late every night this last week? While I have been laid up, recovering from almost dying when I lost our baby, have you been out fucking other women?”

He doesn’t say anything, not even to deny it.

Almost dying didn’t even hurt this bad. Death has finality, an ending where nothing matters anymore. When a relationship dies, somehow your heart doesn’t actually stop beating, even though it feels like it should.

I shake my head. “What a disappointment you turned out to be.” I shove all of my books haphazardly into my book bag.

“I’ll pack my things tomorrow when you’re at work.” I don’t wait for him to say anything. What could there be left to say?

I go into our bedroom, I guess it’s just his bedroom now, and throw some things in a duffle bag I had in the closet. Hefting both bags on opposite shoulders, I make my way to the door.

Charlie tries to take one of them, but I shove him away.

“I needed you for the last week, and you left me here alone. Don’t you dare try to step in now. You want us to be done, so congratulations you get your wish. I don’t ever want to see you again.” I don’t turn around to look back at him when I walk out the door.

My eyes sting all the way down the driveway to my car, but I don’t shed a tear. At least not until I pull away from the curb and head back to my one-room apartment. I haven’t been there since the night of the fair, and it’s just as depressing as it was when I left.

A hysterical laugh pushes out of me. I can feel everything inside of me crack and shatter. In one week I lost almost everything important to me.

“I never should have come back,” I say to my empty apartment.

The tears I’ve been waiting a week for finally start to fall. I don’t fight them, instead I crawl into my cold bed and let them take me over. “These will be the last tears I shed for Charlie Storm.”

A plan starts to form, and I figure out how to survive when it feels like my heart has been ripped from my chest.

The next morning I go back to Charlie’s house, I’ll never think of it as my home again, and pack up my few possessions. With that chore taken care of, I pack up my apartment too. I follow my advisor’s advice and fill out the withdrawal papers for all of my classes. However, I will not be re-enrolling. Not next semester, not ever. I was right the night I came back to my studio, I never should have come back home.

My next stop is to a divorce lawyer while I’m still in Centralia. There’s a firm that can get the papers drafted while I’m gone, and I can keep the gossip mill of Harriston still. I’m not particularly eager to be a twenty-year-old divorcée, but I’d rather that than remain tied to the person who has hurt me worse than anyone ever has.

There are no assets to divide, and I never changed my name which leaves very little to do other than inform the government that Charlie and I are no longer a couple. I guess it’s a blessing that he never wanted to tell anyone about us. Now I don’t have to tell anyone that we’re over. It’ll be like it never happened.

I wonder if in time I’ll forget all about this chapter of my life. Somehow I fear the scars left by Charlie Storm will last far longer than my love for him did.

I have a few loose ends to clear up, and then my new life begins.

I paste a smile on my face when I go over to my sister’s house. She immediately knows something is off when she opens the door to let me in.

“Hattie, what’s going on? Shouldn’t you be in school?” Elisa asks me.

I’ve been thinking over the last few days about how to handle this. If I tell her I’m withdrawing from my classes she is going to go ballistic on me, but she needs to be told something.

“I came down with the flu for over a week. I missed so much school that they are offering to let me withdraw this semester and start over next semester rather than let my GPA suffer. It’s actually lucky because I was approached by the clinic in Florida, and they would like me to come back and do another internship. They’re wanting me to attend classes at the University of Florida. It’s a good opportunity.”

I hold my breath and wait for Elisa’s reaction. She looks at me sadly, but I can see pride in her expression too. “As much as I want you to stay, I think it’s best that you don’t. This town works for me. Marrying Martin and having a family is the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I know that sounds rather old-fashioned, but I love my life as it is. But what works for me won’t for you. You’ll never be satisfied with a quiet life in a small town.”

I want to tell her that she’s wrong, but that would risk confessing about my failed relationship with her husband’s friend. There is no point in letting her know about that now. It’s bad enough that Donovan knows. He and I haven’t spoken much since Charlie and I got married. He made it clear he didn’t think being with Charlie was a good idea. I just don’t have it in me to tell him he was right.

“You’re not upset with me?” I refocus my attention back on my sister.

Elisa shakes her head. “I’d never be upset with you going after your dreams. I’m proud of you, but I will miss you. That’s not a reason for you to stay here though. We’ll make do with phone calls and visits. Now there’s a reason for Martin to take us to Florida, so there’s a silver lining.”

I smile and reach for her hand. “You’re the best big sister ever, you know that?”

She nods at me like she does, in fact, know that. “Are you okay though? I could be far off, but you seem a little sad.”

I should remember for the future that Elisa never misses anything. She’s got a supernatural radar for people’s emotions. I try to smile, but it probably looks more like a grimace. “I’m just a bit homesick already. As excited as I am to get a fresh start, I am scared to leave everything behind here.”

“We’ll all be here for you if you ever choose to come home, and if not we’ll just have to come to you,” she promises.

If only it were that easy.

“I’m supposed to be there in a week, so I thought it best to leave tomorrow,” I say and wince while I await her response.

Three, two, one. “Harriet Jean Parker! That doesn’t give me any time to throw together a goodbye party.”

“Exactly,” I reply. “Now you’ve uncovered my evil plan.” This lighter banter helps me smile for real.

“Martin is going to be so sad. You know how much he loves an excuse to throw a barbecue.”

I did, and that is precisely what I’m trying to prevent. “Well, that’s too bad,” I say instead. “I’m sure he can throw one in my honor after I’m gone.” And then I won’t have to fear running into my soon-to-be ex-husband.

Running away might be cowardly, but I know my limits. I can’t move on if I’m always looking around every corner expecting to see Charlie. I really wouldn’t be able to handle seeing him with someone else. It would kill something inside of me, and there isn’t much left he hasn’t already taken.

“At least stay for dinner,” my sister pushes.

This is easy for me to agree to. “Only if you make your meatloaf.”

She sets a box of stuffing on the counter in front of me. It’s her secret ingredient. “One step ahead of you.”

Dinner with Elisa, Martin, and Wren is cathartic. I connect with them like I haven’t for the months I’ve been hiding my relationship. Watching my sister engage with her family stings a little, but only because I was so close to having that for myself.

Elisa is usually right about most things, but she’s wrong about me needing a big life. She and I are different in that I want a career, but she’s wrong about the rest. Doesn’t look like I’m going to get that here though. Florida worked for me before, might as well try it again.

I wave off leftovers when Elisa tries to load me down. “I’m hitting the road in the morning.”

After multiple hugs from all three of them, and a solemn promise to keep them updated on my trip, I say goodbye to my family. I know I’ll see them again, but not here. When I hit the road, I’m never coming back to this town.

There is only one more thing I need to do before I hit the road. I drive across Harriston, and pull over across the street from Charlie’s house. I almost thought of it as our house, but it isn’t that anymore.

My breath catches in my throat when I see a woman walk past the window and close the blinds. Any doubts I had about what I’m doing evaporate. I vow to harden my heart to never feel this pain again.

I turn the key, shutting off the engine. From the glovebox I take out a folded manilla envelope. I’m not sure why I haven’t signed these yet, but I guess until this moment I held out hope that this was fixable. I can see now there’s no turning back. I quickly scrawl my name on all the spots my lawyer flagged for me, and pull off the tabs as I go, leaving only the ones for him to sign.

I pull away from the house and finally drop the documents in my lawyer’s after-hours drop box. By the time the process server hands Charlie these divorce papers, I’ll be long gone.