say that.” His eyes found mine, sadness in their depths.
“What?” I asked. “Did you fight?”
He shook his head. “No, it was really great to see them. We had a really good weekend, actually. Got to catch up without pressure and I was glad they’d flown out.”
“Then what?”
“I found out something . . . well, something big.”
I grasped on to the chance to focus on something besides the fact that I was in the hospital waiting to hear word on whether my single living relative was alive. “What did you learn?”
Emerald eyes on mine. “I shouldn’t dump—”
“Dump away,” I said, waving a hand to the space around me. “What else do I have to do?” A beat then I added when it looked like he was going to protest, “Take my mind off it, Garret. Just let me focus on something, anything else.”
Silence . . . then a nod.
And then he told me.
About his dad leaving when he was a newborn, about feeling like the reason he’d gone.
“I used to feel that,” I murmured when he paused in the story. “That if we hadn’t gone to the fair, the one I’d begged and pleaded to go to, that they’d still be alive.”
His palm was still resting on my arm and it squeezed. “Baby.”
I covered it with my hand. “It’s okay,” I told him and then handed him the coffee. “Based on your expression, there’s more, and I think you need the caffeine more than me.”
He took a sip, handed it back. “You’re right. There’s more.”
And then he told me the more.
About Lorna and how she’d made him feel wanted then not, how he hadn’t wanted to let her go because he didn’t want to leave like his dad . . . and then finding out that the man he’d thought was his father, the one who’d left, wasn’t actually his dad.
Shit.
“I know,” he said, taking a look at my face. “I thought that, too. Like someone was going to jump out with cameras and say, ‘Surprise!’”
“Or maybe, a DNA test,” I muttered. “You are not the father.” Then horror flooded me as I processed what I’d said and I clamped a hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I said, dropping it again. “I’m an asshole. I shouldn’t—”
He started chuckling.
“Want to know what Lane and I said when everything was finally out in the open?”
I was still feeling disgusted that I’d said something so callous.
But I was also curious because it wasn’t horror on his face, nor hurt.
It was . . . light.
As though a burden he’d been carrying was gone.
“What did you guys say?” I asked carefully.
“That it was our own Maury moment.”
I froze then chuckled.
He smiled.
“That’s both dark and funny.”
“True.” He nodded, slid his hand down to my fingers, squeezing lightly. “Charlie, I—”
I froze, every cell aching to hear what he was going to say.
“Charlotte Roberts?”
My head spun toward the voice, Garret’s fingers slid free. I pushed myself out of my chair when I saw that it was a doctor and hurried over.
“Come on back,” she said. “Ms. Hancock wishes to see you.”
I glanced back at Garret.
“You okay?” he mouthed.
I nodded. “I’m good.”
I followed the doctor back, but by the time I’d gotten to Fran’s room, she’d fallen asleep. Still, I sat there for a few minutes, studying her, wondering why she’d decided to make a reappearance in my life after all these years.
And then realizing that it didn’t matter.
This was real life. Maybe we’d come to some sort of consensus on the estate, maybe we wouldn’t.
The difference was that I didn’t have that gaping wound inside me any longer.
Like Garret had looked, I felt a hundred pounds lighter.
The future would bring what it brought. The difference was that I wouldn’t let what might be define me.
I walked out into the waiting room.
Garret was gone.
That brought a pulse of sadness, but also . . . it was what it was. I couldn’t change it or him or the past.
I could only build the future I wanted if I kept moving forward.
Eighteen
Garret
I’d left Charlie at the hospital and . . . gone shopping.
And then I went to Charlie’s apartment.
Yes, I’d peeked at the envelope that had fallen out of her toolbox the other day. Yes, I’d memorized the address on the front.
Yes, I’d shown up at her place laden with every type of snack I remembered making me feel better as a kid. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference. Maybe it wasn’t a fancy artisan grilled cheese sandwich, but it was