I pointed my chin at Charlotte. “She seems to be doing well. How are you holding up?”
“It’s odd to be here, but I’m fine. I’m glad that I got a moment alone with Lydia before it got too busy. I had a lot to thank her for.”
I nodded. “I wasn’t sure how Charlotte was going to handle today. She had a tough week. But she seems good, too.”
“Ah. Rookie mistake. You’ll learn,” Nancy teased, only she wasn’t really kidding. “Don’t let the smile on my daughter’s face fool you. It’s not the emotion she shows during a trying time that makes me worry about her.”
I squinted at Charlotte, watching her smile yet again. It looked like she was okay. “What do you mean?”
Nancy hesitated. “You two seem close, and since you work together, you’ll be around her a lot more than I will. So perhaps you can keep an eye on her for me.”
“Okay . . .”
“I’m not sure you’re aware, but Charlotte has some latent abandonment issues. It’s not uncommon in adopted children. But how each person’s anxieties manifest can be very different. Abandonment is a trauma and causes post-traumatic stress disorder—most people don’t realize that.”
“I didn’t realize she suffered from any long-term issues,” I said.
“Everyone has issues. Charlotte just has a tendency to bury hers and then act impulsively to avoid feeling what she’s really feeling.”
Fuck. Impulsively. Like going from crying to wanting to have sex in the shower.
“The hardest time for people who suffer a loss is usually after everything is over,” Nancy said. “No more hospital vigils or family bonding together. Everything gets buried—literally and figuratively. Then everyone around you goes back to normal, and you’re not ready yet. That’s when I’ll worry most about Charlotte.”
“What can I do to help?”
Nancy patted my leg. “Just be there for her. When the person who is supposed to be there most for you in life leaves you behind, you tend to be a little skittish. Her relationship with that jackass, Todd, didn’t help reassure her that people stick around, either. The best thing we can offer Charlotte is continuity—be reliable when she needs us most, in whatever form that may be.”CHAPTER 34
REED
We were back in New York, but nothing resembled the way things were before we’d gone to Texas. It felt like everything had changed.
Charlotte was taking a much-needed break from work, some time to clear her head after everything she’d endured in Houston. The office was completely lackluster without her around. She’d decided to stay with her parents up in Poughkeepsie for a while, and I fully supported that idea. It was a reluctant but much-needed break, one I intended to use to figure out what I was going to do when it came to her.
It pleased me that she was choosing to lean on her parents and not me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be there for her. I ached to be able to comfort her. But being physically around her after what we’d done in that hotel room in Texas would have been too much. My rational brain was useless whenever she was around. And I had big decisions to make that I needed my brain for.
Alone in my office, I kept hearing Charlotte’s mother’s words repeating in my head.
“The best thing we can offer Charlotte is continuity—be reliable when she needs us most.”
Nancy Darling likely had no clue that while I could offer her daughter short-term continuity and reliability, my being there for her now would be to Charlotte’s detriment later in life. Charlotte thought she knew what was best for herself. She was young, bright-eyed, and naive. The situation with me wasn’t as simple as she was making it out to be. She’d said she’d rather have a limited amount of time with someone than none at all. She couldn’t possibly make that decision for herself now. It’s easy to say something like that when everyone is in good health. Would she feel the same if I weren’t healthy and if my slow deterioration went on for years of her life?
I had to be careful. We’d crossed a very big line when we had sex.
Incredible, mind-blowing, raw sex that I would never forget for as long as I lived.
I’d told her it would only be one night, and I had the opportunity to stick to my word and not fuck everything up for good.
Unless I was going to be with Charlotte long-term, it was imperative that I never have sex with her again. Once we broke the one-time rule . . . that would be it. It would be extremely difficult to go back from that. Not to mention, she would become even more attached to me.
But I want her attached to me, don’t I?
That was the fucked-up thing. I was so incredibly torn between the selfish desire to give in to my need for Charlotte and the smart choice of letting her go.