Blind Faith - Sharon Sala Page 0,51

an Uber to pick her up at Charlie’s apartment in thirty minutes. Now all she had to do was get there.

* * *

Charlie was going through the motions—sitting with the body, answering questions about her belongings. They had them packed and sitting beside his bag. He wondered when they’d done that, and then realized it didn’t matter.

“Can you just donate them?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, of course, if that’s your wish,” Doris said.

He nodded, thinking as he did that when he left her today, he’d never be back in this place again. There was a sense of relief about that. Annie was free of it, and now so was he.

An hour passed, and then another. Someone brought him a cup of coffee and then carried away the bag with her clothing.

He kept looking for Annie in the body on the bed, but she was gone. It didn’t even look like her anymore. How did that happen so fast?

It was going on the third hour when he heard voices, and then people were coming in the door. The men from the funeral home had finally arrived.

“Mr. Dodge, our sincere condolences,” they said. “Do you mind stepping out of the room?”

Charlie picked up his bag and walked out into the hall. When they wheeled the body out, it was fully covered beneath a sheet. Everything was becoming impersonal—the separation between life and death painfully blatant.

He walked with her all the way to the exit, and then they went one way with her and he went another. A nurse let him out of the residence area and he found himself standing in the lobby, trying to remember what to do next.

Pinkie was already on duty, and she was in tears.

“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” Pinkie said.

“Thank you. Thank you for everything,” Charlie said, and then walked out of the building in a daze.

He looked up at the sky. The fucking sun was out. How the hell did it keep shining when his light was gone?

He wiped a hand over his face and then looked for his car and saw Wyrick, arms folded, legs crossed, wearing a sheepskin coat and blue jeans, and leaning against the back of his Jeep.

She held out her hand as he approached.

“Give me your keys.”

He handed them over.

She unlocked the Jeep with the remote and took the bag from his shoulder.

“Get in. I’m driving,” she said, and tossed his bag in the back.

Charlie slid into the seat and buckled up, then leaned back and closed his eyes.

Wyrick started the engine, and shot out of the parking lot and onto the street like a bullet from a gun.

There was nothing to say that would make anything better, and so she said nothing at all. She wouldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him.

But when he finally put his hands over his face and doubled over in the seat like a broken child, she cried with him, silent tears rolling down her face, feeling every ounce of his pain as if it was her own.

Charlie Dodge’s world had come apart at the seams.

Time was the healer, but Charlie’s sentence had just begun.

Wyrick drove him all the way to his apartment building and up into the adjoining garage in total silence, then parked in his assigned parking place and got out.

Charlie was red-eyed and silent when he got out, but when she handed him his keys and his bag, he took them.

“Go to bed. Sleep until someone calls you with questions only you can answer. I’m safe. Boyington is dead. Someone flew a bomb onto his balcony while he was on it. It wasn’t me. Parks called a hit on the hit man. Don’t come back to work until you’re ready to kick ass again.”

Then she turned on her heel, jumped in her Mercedes and drove out of the parking garage, leaving Charlie and a layer of rubber from her tires.

Eleven

Charlie did what he’d been told, because conscious thought was beyond him, and when he got into his apartment, he locked the door behind him and then stood in the entryway, trying to remember what he was supposed to do.

Oh yes...bed.

Sunlight was streaming through the living room windows. It wasn’t time to sleep, but he was weary all the way to his bones, and so he went to the bedroom, stripped and showered, then fell into bed naked, with the water still drying on his skin.

There was no funeral to plan. Annie wanted to be cremated, and their social circle ended when Annie forgot her