Chapter 9: What Charlotte Left at the Door
Three days after Oliver moved to his mother's house, I found something outside my apartment door.
A small paper bag.
Inside it, a jar of honey and a handwritten note on plain white card.
*For the little one.
My grandmother always said honey in warm milk helps after a hard night.
— C*
I stood in the hallway in my socks holding the bag for a long moment.
Then I walked across the hall and knocked.
Charlotte opened the door in a paint-stained t-shirt, headphones around her neck.
She looked at the bag in my hand and then at my face.
"You didn't have to do that," I said.
"I know."
"Can I come in for a minute?"
She stepped back.
Her apartment was not what I had imagined.
I had imagined dark walls and heavy curtains.
What I found was a bright, cluttered space full of canvases — some finished, some not — stacked against every wall.
The furniture was mismatched and comfortable-looking.
A large orange cat was asleep on the windowsill.
"You paint," I said.
"It's what I do." She moved a stack of art books off a chair so I could sit.
"Coffee?"
"Please."
She made it without asking how I took it, which I found oddly comforting.
She brought two cups and sat across from me.
"How is she?" Charlotte asked.
"Good.
She's been at her grandmother's.
Patricia's been wonderful."
"And you?"
"Getting there." I wrapped my hands around the cup.
"I talked to a lawyer.
Oliver is staying at Patricia's for now.
We have an arrangement for him to see Daisy."
Charlotte nodded.
"I wanted to ask you something," I said.
"And you don't have to answer."
"Okay."
"When you said your sister — that someone didn't stop when she was four — what happened?"
Charlotte was quiet for a moment.
She looked at the cat on the windowsill.
"She wandered out of our yard," she said.
"We were at our aunt's house.
Big family gathering.
Nobody noticed she was gone for almost twenty minutes.
She made it three blocks." She paused.
"A man found her sitting on the curb.
He stayed with her until our aunt came running.
He was a stranger.
He didn't have to stop." She looked back at me.
"I was seven.
I remember thinking he was the most important person in the world."
"So you stopped," I said.
"Because of him."
"I stopped because of her." She looked at her coffee cup.
"Because she was two and she was crying and it was dark."
I thought about Oliver calling Charlotte creepy.
About a year of passing her in the hallway and feeling vaguely unsettled by her.
About all the judgments I had made based on eyeliner and silence and black clothing.
"I misjudged you," I said.
"I want you to know I know that."
Charlotte looked up.
Something in her expression shifted.
Not quite a smile.
Something quieter than that.
"Most people do," she said.
"It's fine."
"It's not, actually."
She considered that.
"No," she said.
"I suppose it's not."
We sat in her bright, paint-smelling apartment and drank our coffee, and the orange cat moved from the windowsill to the arm of my chair and settled there like it had always known me.
"I'd like to be your friend," I said.
"If that's something you'd want."
Charlotte looked at the cat.
Then at me.
"I don't have many of those," she said.
"Neither do I, apparently."
She almost smiled.
"Okay," she said.
May you like
"Yeah.
Okay."
