Chapter 16: Gwen - Hunter or Hunted

“So, Zoey.” Charlotte plastered on a smile. It looked more like a grimace. Her thick lashes disguised her irises, making her even more unreadable. “You must be from the shelter.”

I pressed my lips together, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I guess you could put it like that. Allie and I, we were pretty good friends, and I really just wanted to come and say my goodbyes.”

“Right. Sure.” Another one of those tight-lipped, annoyed smiles. “I appreciate that. How was your trip?”

“As nice as any funeral trip can be,” I said. “It really is nice to meet you, though. Allie had your photo hanging in her apartment.”

Her eyebrow quirked. At first, I thought it was surprise that her daughter wanted to see her mother’s face each day. But then she said, “She had an apartment?”

Her voice ticked up at the end.

“A cute little studio, yeah. She had a bunch of photos strung up, and⁠—”

“I’m sure I’ll get the picture once her box of belongings arrives in the mail.” She gave me a once-over. “How close were you with my daughter?”

“Very, I think.” Where was she headed with this? “Why do you ask?”

She glanced around the room, waved at someone walking past, then reached out for my hand. Charlotte wrapped her clammy, trembling fingers around mine. “Let’s speak outside for a moment.”

* * *

A few steps ahead of me, Charlotte walked down the stone staircase of the back door. Her golden locks glimmered like rays of the sun on the brightest day, blowing in the wind. At the foot of the stairs, she reached into her black handbag and came out with a pack of cigarettes. She tapped them on her wrist. She took one out and held it to her lips. Covering a lighter at its end, she held the pack out to me. “You smoke?”

I shook my head, descending the stairs. “No, thanks.”

Charlotte pulled in a long drag, the stiff posture she held inside the funeral home curling inward. Rather than perfect and pristine, she hunched in on herself. Between the smell of the cigarette and the sudden heaviness in her gaze, she reminded me of my mom. “My Allie. She was a wildcard.”

“Really?” I cocked my head to the side. “I always thought of her as sweet. Maybe naïve, but I never put Allie and wildcard in the same sentence.”

“She was sweet. And naïve.” Charlotte’s satin dress wrinkled as she sat on the bottom step. “But cocky too. She was so sure of herself all the time. Sweet when she wanted to be, but a smartass the moment you said something she didn’t agree with.”

Why did she say it like that? Like voicing her opinion, like having opinions, made her daughter a problem.

“Sure,” I said. “I liked that about her.”

Charlotte made an odd little sound, wiggling her brows. “I assume you know why she left.”

“I’ve got a good idea.” I leaned against the metal railing that lined the sidewalk to the parking lot. “Do you know why she left?”

“I know enough.” She spoke that on a sigh, a gray cloud of smoke floating between us. “Look, Evan’s not perfect. He never has been. But Allie wasn’t either.”

My chest opened again, like it had last week when Sebastian and I got into that debate. Like a black hole dropped through the center of my body, and fire licked every inch of my skin as I collapsed backward into it.

“My babies are my world.” The words sounded honest, but anger touched the edge. “I know how this world works. I know that Evan could’ve been better, and that Allie could’ve been too. But we are all losing her for a second time, Zoey. I think it’s best that we don’t go picking apart the past right now.”

The gravity of that black hole still held onto me, but the flames burned brighter now. Stronger than the despair, the hurt, of Charlotte’s meaning. The words she wouldn’t say aloud.

I’d hoped she asked me out here to understand. To question where her daughter had been, what her life had been like, how she looked in her final days.

Instead, she was asking me to keep my mouth shut.

I would not. I could not.

Still, I tried to keep my voice even, compassionate, when I said, “He put her head through a wall, Charlotte.”

She rubbed her forehead. “And she kneed him so hard in the balls that he had to go to the hospital. Testicle torsion or some shit.”

A spark of pride radiated through my chest.

“They were bad for each other all the way around, but they loved each other. Love makes you crazy. We all say and do things we don’t mean.” She took another drag off the cigarette. “Evan can’t change what he did, just like I can’t change that she’s dead.” Fury tinged those last words, accented the slightest bit by pain. Grief. She spoke sharply, firmly, but when I listened close, when I watched her eyes beneath that thick layer of lashes, I knew with certainty that she loved her daughter. That’s what made it so difficult to understand the words that came out of her mouth. “I didn’t want her to leave. I would’ve done anything for her. But she left, then she killed herself, and we all have to figure out how to keep living.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She didn’t say anything, just took another drag and stared off into the distance.

“But I guess I just…” I didn’t want to come off accusatory. I wanted to make an impact, a positive one, on the psyche of someone so clearly deluded. “She told me she came to her dad after it went down with Evan. He told her to work it out.”

Charlotte’s jaw clenched, eyes squeezing shut. “He’s a stupid man. What do you expect?”

For him to be the protector that men like him claim they are. For him to defend his daughter. To show concern for her safety. She showed up with a black eye, and he turned her away, because he was a man? That’s the excuse?

“Look, Henry and I had our problems when we were young too,” Charlotte said. “I was fresh out of high school, I had an attitude, and I didn’t know how to control it. It caused problems. Problems like Evan and Allie had. It wasn’t always peaceful. We didn’t just argue. But we figured it out. Relationships are work, and we worked hard to get to where we are now. That’s what Henry thought he was telling Allie, and he got it wrong. He should’ve had that conversation with Evan, not her. And believe me, I will think about that interaction for the rest of my life, but he made a mistake. There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

She was a victim too.

In so many words, that’s what she said. It wasn’t always peaceful. We didn’t just argue. Those were the same code words I used because I couldn’t admit that I had allowed a man to treat me like garbage. That I stayed despite it.

It began with Charlotte and Henry. They normalized the cycle of abuse for their daughters. That’s why Delilah was lying in a casket, and Ava was wrapped in the arms of the man who did it. Because these girls knew no better. Because their mother knew no better.

“No, there isn’t,” I said, still soft, still compassionate. “But you can stop it from happening again. Ava is still a minor. You have a say in what she does. The way Evan looks at her…”

Laughing humorlessly, Charlotte tossed her cigarette to the ground and stomped it out with her black three-inch heels. “Are you gonna lecture me on how my family should mourn now?”

That black hole opened once more.

“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just saying that Ava is gonna have a lot on her plate right now, and she doesn’t need⁠—”

“They both loved her.” Charlotte stood, perfect posture snapping back into place. “They loved her in a way no one else can. They all knew each other all their lives, and one of them is gone now, so yeah. Of course they’re going to cling to each other. Of course they’re gonna find comfort in one another. And I don’t think that’s your place or mine to judge. So let’s leave it at that, alright?”

She turned and started back up the steps.

“Maybe if Ava knew why Allie left, she’d look at everything differently,” I said, my voice firmer now.

Charlotte narrowed her eyes. She gave me that grimace of a smile again. “I’m glad you got a moment to say your goodbyes. I hope to see you at the funeral tomorrow. Then I hope you have a wonderful flight home.”