19. Charlotte

19

CHARLOTTE

C harlotte headed up to her room the next night, after a full day of work that was busy, but never quite busy enough to distract her from the events of the weekend.

She had helped Olivia calm down enough to go eat dinner, but skipped the meal herself. It felt like a better idea to spend the evening in her room instead, trying to read and convince herself to relax.

Earlier, she had talked with Ellis Johnson to see how soon she could move in above the shop again. He’d explained that the apartment was on the middle floor, so he’d had to take up some floorboards as well as putting holes in the walls and ceiling in order to reach the rooms above and below. She was going to have to wait until the whole job was done before he could close it all back up.

I can do that, she told herself. I’m not going to run from my romantic disappointment again.

Not that it was ever all that romantic anyway. It had been one kiss. And even if that kiss had been life-changing for Charlotte, it was clear that Tag didn’t feel the same.

And other than Tag Lawrence, life here was good. She had actually turned the shop around, at least temporarily. And she was growing to love the town and the people.

She wasn’t going to let one grumpy cowboy run her off.

Besides, she had promised Olivia she would help her with the play, and she wasn’t about to break that promise.

On her way out to the bus this morning, Olivia had asked Charlotte if she could check the trunks in her room for an old-fashioned candleholder she needed for Scrooge. She thought her mom had used one in another play. So that was what Charlotte was planning to do with her night.

Charlotte opened the first trunk, feeling a little odd about going through someone else’s things. But Iris wasn’t here to help, so it was up to Charlotte.

“She’s such a special girl, Iris,” she said out loud as she looked through the items in the trunk. “You’d be incredibly proud of her. She’s funny and smart, and she would do anything for her little brother. The two of them are wonderful children.”

She lifted out a handmade quilt that was soft from use. The faint scent of lilac made her think of fresh laundry hung out on the line in summer. Was that Iris’s perfume?

Under the quilt she found a stack of well-worn paperbacks, and another stack of magazines, all Christmas issues. Charlotte smiled at evidence that she and Iris had some things in common.

“I love Christmas too,” she told her. “And romance novels.”

The children’s baby books were next, each one stuffed with photos and notes. Charlotte wanted badly to open them, but it felt like an invasion of privacy without permission from Tag, so she set them gently to the side, along with a box that said Wedding in neat, loopy handwriting.

Under that was another box that had the words Theatre Stuff handwritten on the top. She lifted it out and set it on the floor in front of her before opening the flaps.

Sure enough, inside were stacks of photos, and a few props, including a candleholder.

When she reached for it, she knocked over one of the photo stacks. A single picture slid a few inches across the floor.

Charlotte grabbed it and looked down at the image. In it, four teens about Olivia’s age were laughing, wearing clothing that had to be for a Shakespeare play, or something along those lines.

She almost gasped when she looked at the girl who seemed to be the main focus of the photo. It was clearly Iris. She looked almost exactly like Olivia, with her honey-colored hair and brown eyes that contrasted with her father and brother, who could have been carbon copies of each other.

She was laughing, her whole face lit up with joy—a beautiful expression that Charlotte wished she’d seen on Olivia more often.

She flipped the photo over, wondering if there was a date.

Instead, she found a whole paragraph, written in the same neat, loopy script that was on the boxes. And what she read made her think that Olivia had more in common with her mom than she probably knew.

Charlotte smiled down at the message and then flipped over the photo again to look at Iris—so young and so happy.

She knew she should put it back and pack up the trunk with only the candleholder put aside for Olivia.

But some instinct told her to hold out the photo, too. For all she knew, there were even better ones in there, but going through them didn’t feel right. This one had literally fallen at her feet.

She tucked the photo between the pages of one of her own books to keep it safe, then carefully repacked the trunk and slid it back into position against the wall, thinking more and more about Olivia as she did.

It would be easy to just show her the photo and encourage her to push on. But the girl had so much pent-up anger. Refusing to participate in the play would mean something different to Olivia than it would have to her mother. Charlotte decided it wouldn’t feel right to try and use the girl’s mom as leverage.

But she had a funny little feeling that at some point that photo might come in handy. And when the moment came around, Charlotte would be prepared.

She found herself humming “Deck the Halls” as she got ready for bed. It was funny how the moment she focused on helping someone else, her own hurt faded and her heart lifted.

But when she slipped under the covers and the darkness settled around her, Tag’s blue eyes were back in the front of her mind again, first flashing with heat and then cold as arctic ice.

Stop it, she told herself furiously. Stop letting some silly man take up space in your mind when the world has so many other wonderful things in it.