She knew they were coming—Oliver had messaged ahead—but when she heard Berty’s voice on the other side of the door, she felt suddenly paralyzed.I’m not ready, she thought,Oh, please, I’m not ready.The door swung open in the face of her silence, and there he was: brow furrowed in concern, cap backward, polo shirt a little too tight. He always did shrink things in the dryer, she found herself thinking—even at a time like this, Charlie’s brain would not entirely dedicate itself solely to one single thing.
“Berty?” she whispered.
It was too good to be true. She was not allowed to see him yet—she was not three months sober. But here he was, her gorgeous giant of a husband, in the Nicole family farmhouse. It was a scene she had painstakingly created on her mood board and thought of every single day. The farmhouse, the love of her life, and behind him…
Her sister.
“Oh,” she said, on an inhale. Everything ran through her head at once: her hair was in childish pigtails to keep it out of her face while she was reading, she wasn’t wearing the dress she’d set aside for meeting Rosie, she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t ready…
But it all evaporated within seconds, because Rosie’s eyes were just like her own, and they too were full of tears.
“It’s you,” Charlie choked out.
“You’re Charlie Jones?” Rosie breathed.
“Who isn’t?” Charlie said, grinning through her tears as she swung her legs off the bed and met Rosie halfway.
They stopped abruptly, face-to-face and just as breathless as each other. Charlie was ten years older than Rosie, and looking at her younger sister was dizzying—she had never seen herself in somebody else in this way, never known her own features on another face. Rosie’s curls were tighter than hers, and mousier; they were held back from her face with a yellow silk scarf, and her earrings were little wooden cherries. Charlie couldn’t get enough of the details: the slightly wonky eyeliner, the Charlie-like dip in the center of her chin, the tremble in her bottom lip. Everything about her was perfect.
“You know,” Rosie said, reaching a tentative hand to cup her sister’s cheek, “you might choose to call yourself Charlie Jones, but to me, you’re Charlie Nicole.”
—
They sat together on the back step, underneath a blanket Rosie said their mother had knitted, and they talked. Their hands met often—Rosie was affectionate, but tentative, a little afraid—Is it OK for me to say that?she’d say, stumbling over herself. There was just so much to tell.
Berty was there, a quiet, solid, reassuring presence in the corner of Charlie’s vision, as he had been for so much of her life—her nurturer of a husband, a sweetheart in a frat boy’s disguise. She knew he’d followed her out here to the island because he was worried about her, and she was fiercely proud that he had no need to be: she was seventy days sober. But she also knew that he was here because after two months of constant messaging, he was nudging her to take the step back to him. Charlie had always struggled with the final leap—Berty was the one who helped her jump.
Today, though, Berty hung back. This afternoon was about Charlie and Rosie.
Eventually the autumn chill drove the sisters back inside. On her way through, Charlie paused in the doorway of the farmhouse living room, looking at the back wall, which was painted in an extraordinary work of art. It was clearly about the island, though it was abstract enough that Charlie couldn’t pinpoint precisely why she knew that—it was the colors, the feeling. And through the golds and greens of its scenery were tiny scenes: figures conjured in a few brushstrokes, some meeting, some hand in hand, some walking away.
“It’s the story of our family,” Rosie said, moving past her to lift her hand to the wall. “Toby painted it for me. He’s an amazing local artist—he’ll be famous one day. Here.” She pressed her finger to a scene in the center. “This is you.”
“What?” Charlie said, her voice catching. She stepped forward.
“I didn’t tell Toby the specifics—Doc Laurry was the only one on the island who knew about you, and of course he wouldn’t tell a soul, because of patient confidentiality. Mum and Grandma moved to the mainland when they found out Mum was pregnant at sixteen, and the family kept the pregnancy a secret—Mum and Dad were so young, I suppose. I wanted to honor their choice to keep that part of their story back from the islanders. And I wanted to honor you, too. I wanted it to be your decision to make yourself known to your wider Ormer family once you were ready. But I did ask Toby to add in a baby.”
The tiny figure was wrapped in a cream brushstroke of blanket and caught in a swirl of sea spray, or cloud, perhaps.
“You were a secret, but you were always at the heart of the story. That’s how I see it.” She swallowed, tracing the baby’s tiny cheek. “I like to think they would have told me about you, one day, if they’d lived. I have to believe they would have.”
“Do you know…why…” The sentence died in Charlie’s throat.
Rosie shook her head, her eyes filling with tears again. “I’m sorry. I know so little. I felt so angry about that, after they died—the way they kept you from me. But if you’d like to, I’d love to try to find out more together. Lots of people here on the island knew Mum when she was a teenager, for instance. I’ve never started those conversations, because it didn’t feel right to without you, but…”
Charlie nodded, unable to speak. Rosie’s smile was soft. She looked back at the painting, pointing.
“And this is me,” she said.
There was a young woman—a teenage girl, maybe, wild haired in loose, bright clothes. She was shading her eyes with her hand, searching for something in the swirls of color around her.
“Looking for you,” Rosie said.
Charlie’s throat tightened. She pressed her fingertip to the baby at the center of the painting. Baby Charlie.I love you, she thought, as she looked at that helpless child, and it seemed so obvious that the tiny lost baby deserved nothingbutlove—a revelation to Charlie, who had always believed she was intrinsically, fundamentally unworthy of it.
When Charlie breathed in again and wiped her eyes, Rosie was there, smiling, waiting for her.
“There’s something else I’d like to show you. If you think you’re ready to see more?”
