Page 19 of Charlie and Her Sweet Escape
She waved with a smirk as she drove off, and I closed my eyes for patience. Patience for this whole dang town that couldn’t stay out of anyone’s business.
I headed toward the Forrester Expeditions storefront, a small wooden structure that had been there for the past fifty years and was starting to show every minute of its age. The door swung inward on creaking, rusty hinges. It kept going long past when it should have stopped, and then the top hinge pulled apart from the frame. My door hung there like a loose snaggle tooth.
I’d have to add it to the repair list, along with the three leaks in the roof, currently being managed by buckets; the sketchy stair I was worried a client was going to fall through someday; and the window that wouldn’t close all the way in my office—which wasn’t a huge problem right now but was going to be a real headache in a few months when the snow came. It smelled musty and wet in here, and every morning I expected to discover that the whole building had crumbled into a heap of rotted lumber.
I could operate without a storefront, but due to some out-of-towners coming into Winterhaven and attempting to poach all our customers, we had voted in an ordinance that businesses couldn’t operate on the docks without a license. A license that required a fully operational storefront in a nonresidential area.
I’d voted for it enthusiastically. And then my building had betrayed me.
I was heading into my slow season, where I could go weeks between clients. I’d need every penny of my savings to get through the winter, as usual, which left almost nothing for structural repairs.
I grabbed my bag from my locker at the office. I turned my phone on, and it dinged with notifications after not checking it for days.
The family group chat was active, as usual. Everyone was giving our older brother, Haydn, a hard time for one of his wife’s new songs that referenced a lover’s velvet lips. Haydn first tried to defend his velvet lips, then leaned into it, and then banned their use of the word velvet for all time. I chuckled and went back to my messages page, where a new text from my dad was at the top.
Orin
Hey, son. It’s been a long time, but …
I deleted it before reading more than just the preview, my hands shaking.
He and I had been in sporadic contact since we’d all moved to Winterhaven. A text or two a year, maybe, that I’d reply back to, but then nothing for the last year, after he’d betrayed my little sister, Rosie. It had broken her heart and tarnished all the sheen I’d managed to still see in him, even after everything he’d done.
I needed to block him, but every time I went to do so, I recalled some great adventure he’d taken me on when I was a kid. Or all the late-night talks we’d have while gutting fish or exploring a tiny animal trail that always led somewhere amazing. There’d been a lot of bad, but it hadn’t beenallbad. I didn’t know how to reconcile the good times with how awful he’d been for the last decade.
Guilt sat heavy in my gut. I would do anything for my siblings—had doneeverythingfor them. It shouldn’t be this hard to cut Dad out of my life.
I swiped his name away. I needed to focus on bookkeeping, not this.
Charlie, who I wasnotlooking at in any particular way—no matter what Mrs. Mabel said—was coming over tomorrow with Hansel. I didn’t want to have to come into work while I was getting used to my new, furry roommate.
I went to sit at my desk, relieved to relax into the steady work of inputting data, when my chair collapsed beneath me.
Charlie arrived the next day at my townhouse, clutching her tiny, three-legged Chihuahua in her arms. Her hair was pulled into a falling-down, sideways ponytail, and she looked like she hadn’t slept for a week.
Hansel was a trembling mess, and the second Charlie set him down, he peed and huddled at Charlie’s feet.
What in the world had possessed me to offer to take in her dog? I was out at sea all the time and would need to find someone to watch him while I was gone. But the devastated look on Charlie’s face had been enough for me to decide I could jump through any hoops necessary.
“Charlie!” My baby sister, Rosie, squeezed past me and launched herself into Charlie’s arms, nearly knocking her over in her enthusiasm.
“What are you doing here? I didn’t think you were coming until next week!” Charlie’s voice was just as loud and high.
“I changed my flight!”
Hansel jumped around their feet, his tail wagging, a perfect little tripping hazard.
While the girls jumped and hugged, I skirted around them and went down to Charlie’s SUV to get the box filled with food, bowls, a leash, and an alarming number of green prescription bottles. I snagged the dog bed with my free hand and took it intothe house, past the girls, whose heads were bent close together as they whispered about something.
When they got immediately quiet and they both looked at me as I walked past, I had a pretty good idea of who they were whispering about.
“What?” I ran my tongue over my teeth. Maybe spinach from my omelet got caught in them.
“Nothing,” Rosie said, but she had a way of sayingnothingthat was calculating and implied a whole lot ofeverything.
A whole lot of everything I probably didn’t want to know.
I went past them into my townhouse and set Hansel’s things on the linoleum floor. Hansel followed the girls inside on shaky legs, stopping to sniff every corner of my place.
