Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears. “You? You’re obviously enough.”
“I don’t know,” he said, palming the back of his neck.
Charlotte reached over and gripped his other hand. Her fingers laced through his. Her eyes became enormous.
“I’ve wanted to do this every single day since I first saw you,” she whispered.
She then bridged the space between them and kissed him. Her heart thudded and her thoughts raced as his lips opened and accepted her, and his hand traced her shoulder and tugged her against him.
When their kiss broke, he whispered, “Why did you wait so long?”
Chapter One
The Present
Charlotte awoke to a grey and drizzly morning. She stretched her legs out, till her toes poked up on the other side of the thick comforter. The red numbers on the alarm clock read: 8:42. It was time for coffee. It was time for another day in this era, which she had decided to call “the rest of her life.” Fun.
Charlotte brewed a large pot of coffee and checked her email, standing up at the kitchen counter. Since it was early November, the majority of her current work was for next spring, summer, and early fall—wedding season on Martha’s Vineyard. As an event and wedding coordinator, November meant time to think, to breathe.
Since Jason’s death, of course, she hadn’t been particularly into the whole “time to think” thing. If anything, she needed more to fill her mind with. Dwelling on the past—according to grief books she had read—wasn’t doing her any favors, but that’s what her brain gave her: images of Jason as that handsome seventeen-year-old; Jason, age twenty-one, getting down on one knee to ask her to marry him; Jason, carrying baby Rachel around the house, rocking her to sleep; Jason—age forty, wearing his finest suit, lying back in the coffin.
No.
Rachel walked into the little kitchen area, Charlotte’s saving grace from her darker thoughts. She yawned into the words, “Good morning,” then reached for a banana in the fruit bowl. “How did you sleep?”
“Not bad,” Charlotte lied. In truth, she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept like a normal person. “Do you have anything going on today?”
“Just a little bit of homework, I guess,” Rachel said. “Oh! And Abby and Gail asked if they could come over. And I kind of said yes.”
“What time?”
“Um...”
At that moment, knocks rang out from the front door. Charlotte grumbled and cut through the kitchen toward the foyer. On the route, she spotted no fewer than three photographs of Jason through the years. The photos taunted her, but she couldn’t bring herself to take them down. She wanted him there, as much as he could be there.
When Charlotte opened the door on the drizzly morning, she found her dear fifteen-year-old nieces, Abby and Gail, along with their mother, Claire, Charlotte’s younger sister. Claire lifted a gorgeous bouquet of flowers skyward and said, “Do you have any coffee? I’m dying.”
“All right. Everyone come in,” Charlotte said, heaving a sigh and moving aside to allow them to walk in.
The girls scampered in and hugged Rachel, then collapsed at the kitchen table and began the first of what would surely be a number of hours of gossip. Charlotte leaned forward, hugging Claire.
“They’re beautiful. Thank you,” she said, taking the bouquet.
“I take it, Rachel didn’t communicate this little meeting?”
“Not quite,” Charlotte said. “But I didn’t have plans today, anyway. What do you think? Pancakes?”
“Sounds perfect to me,” Claire said. She stretched her legs toward the far end of the kitchen, grabbed a vase from the top shelf, and placed the flowers within. When she turned her eyes back toward Charlotte, she said, “You look like you haven’t been eating.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
Charlotte had a hunch, now, that this whole “getting the girls together” thing was secretly a check-in on Charlotte, the depressed sister thing. In Charlotte’s mind, she had every right to be depressed. One day, her husband had gone out to fish for the morning; the next, she’d had to make preparations to put him in the ground.
Charlotte whipped up a large batch of pancakes. If there was anything she’d had to learn, it was that teenage girls liked to eat. As she stirred in the blueberries, she commented on this to Claire, who laughed.
“Don’t you remember? We ate anything that wasn’t nailed down,” she said.
“I hardly remember that. Once your metabolism dies out, I guess your brain makes you forget about the good times.”
Charlotte splayed blueberry pancakes in a big pile on a large red plate. She placed the platter before the three girls and watched as they tore into them, smearing butter and drizzling syrup.
“What the heck. I want one, too,” Claire said. “Join me, Charlotte. It’s November. Who cares about our thighs till April, right?”
Charlotte laughed and nodded in agreement. In seconds, she had her own thick, doughy, blueberry pancake out in front of her. Rachel poured syrup for her and winked at her mom.
“It’s best if it’s like your pancake went swimming in syrup,” she said.
“Great,” Charlotte said with an ironic laugh. “Can’t wait for the sugar coma.”
Abby, Rachel, and Gail seemed secretive about something. They used a code word to refer to someone. “Code Red.”
Finally, Charlotte couldn’t take it anymore and said, “If you’re going to use spy terms around here, you’d better tell Claire and I what you’re up to.”
Abby grimaced. Finally, she said, “Okay. If you must know, Rachel’s in love.”
“Come on! Don’t just tell my mom that...” Rachel said.
Charlotte and Claire locked eyes—Charlotte could more-or-less remember a similar conversation between herself and Claire a million years ago. Probably, Charlotte had been obsessive about Jason at the time.
“This is so exciting,” Claire said, her eyes sparkling. “You have to tell us more. Where did you meet him? What’s he like?”
Rachel’s cheeks reddened. She glared at Abby, and then said, “He’s in my history class. But it’s not a big deal.”
“Everything that’s not a big deal is always a huge deal,” Charlotte
