Page 201 of Every Almost

The smile stayed a moment longer, then eased. Charlie looked tired, but not in the same way she had when she walked in.

Charlie lifted her wrist, tugging on the bracelet again. "She made this at Helen's kitchen table. She made them for everyone. Frank wore his next to his watch like it was military issue. Helen said hers was the finest piece of jewelry she owned. But Katie couldn't get mine to hold. Helen told her that some things need more than one knot if they're meant to last."

Reyna looked down at Charlie's wrist, the double knot evident now that she looked closely. She raised her gaze back to Charlie. "It lasted," she said softly.

"Yeah," Charlie said in the same timbre. "Yeah, it did."

She was quiet for a moment, turning the bracelet once more.

"When Katie was born, I was six. I don't remember much about the hospital room or what my mother looked like. I just remember looking at her, this tiny human. And then, out ofnowhere, she grabbed my finger. Her hand was impossibly small and she held on like she meant it," Charlie sighed gently as her gaze dropped back to the bracelet on her wrist. "I said 'hi' to her because I didn't know what else to say. But it was the kind of 'hi' that meant something. I knew it."

Reyna didn't move.

"Somehow I just knew, at six years old, when Katie was only a day old, that she was going to be the exception," Charlie said. "My exception."

"It may come as no surprise that Ed and Diane didn't see me, not really. Frank and Helen did, later. But Katie," Charlie paused, the small smile returning. "Katie was there first. She saw me without me even teaching her what to look for." Her breath caught. "The nightmares I had as a kid woke Katie once. Just once. I immediately told her to go back to bed. But she refused. She didn't wait to be invited. She just decided that was what I needed without me saying a single thing, and she was completely right."

Reyna thought of Charlie in the doorway ten minutes ago. Barefoot, shaking, hand around the bracelet. And she thought of how it had been the easiest thing to cross the room.

"She also knew the terrible parts," Charlie said. "The tendency for me to want to fix everything. The panic I constantly dressed up as usefulness. She knew it all. And loved me anyway."

Charlie's voice thinned. "I mattered to her," Charlie whispered. "Not just loved. But mattered. It's an incredible feeling that can't be replaced by anything." A breath, almost a smile. "She knew and saw and reveled in the version of me. The same version that looked for Ed and Diane to notice, just as much as the version who, eventually, stopped wanting that."

Charlie looked down at the bracelet once again. "She knows the real me. Not a woman who has an uncanny ability to fix things, not the woman engineer who could work her way arounda carburetor, argue with some of the highest scientific minds in my field, and run circles around my professors. She knew me."

The silence in the room became big, but they both let it stretch.

"The last time I talked to her," Charlie said, her voice quiet now. "I called from my desk the same day I ended up here. I was hovering, even from far away, the way I always do when I feel helpless, when I can't be somewhere or doing something to channel my energy." She let out a laugh under her breath. "I called Katie every day, sometimes twice, asking about lawyers and insurance because, focusing on all the things that were on the checklist made it so I didn't have to say I missed her." Charlie's thumb pressed into the bracelet knot. "But finally, Katie told me, very kindly I might add, probably more kind than she should have really, to stop. She told me she had it handled, that I needed to trust her."

Charlie scoffed. "She was right. She was so completely right that, after we hung up, I sat there for a while, and then called back to apologize properly." Charlie's hands stopped moving. "She didn't pick up. The answering machine did instead." The smile was gone now. "I left her a message, apologizing as intended, letting her know that I did trust her, and that she was the strongest, smartest person I knew." Charlie's eyes closed. "I got a chance to tell her I loved her more than the sky, the stars, and the universe."

Reyna had heard Charlie say those words before, weeks ago on this bench. They'd hit her then, but they hit harder now. She realized Charlie was telling her she had said the biggest thing she knew how to say into an answering machine, not knowing if the recipient ever even heard it.

"The fragment activated before I could hang up," Charlie said. "Maybe she heard it while it was happening. Maybe she came back later and heard the whole thing after I was alreadygone." Her hand closed tighter. "I don't know if she got to hear me love her before I disappeared."

Reyna closed her eyes.

"If enough years pass, she'll keep changing. She'll have a whole life I'm not in. And I'll just keep carrying a Katie who's twenty-three." Reyna opened her eyes again and saw Charlie look up. But she wasn't crying, and Reyna realized that would have been easier to witness. "She could forget me someday. If time takes enough, if I become some story nobody can prove happened, there won't be anyone left who remembers all of me."

Reyna's fingers tightened once against the bench. "Charlie, she'll never forget?—"

"I know. I know that's not fair to say," Charlie interrupted. "Not just because of what it may mean, but also because I know there are people even here who care about me." Reyna fell silent again. "But they're not Katie."

Charlie trailed off, and somehow, Reyna knew anything she said right now wouldn't fit. So she didn't tell Charlie the thoughts that were running through her head. She didn't tell her that she wouldn't be forgotten, or it was because she was unforgettable. And that she mattered. Even away from Earth, Charlie Wickett mattered. Instead, she kept it to herself, where it would be safe, and where it would be utterly useless.

Instead, Reyna stayed beside her on the bench and let the quiet erase the chance for those words to escape.

For a long while Charlie stayed quiet. And then one moment, Charlie let go of the bracelet.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Always," Reyna said immediately.

Charlie kept her eyes on the floor. "A while back, when I first got here, you told me about someone." Then Charlie paused, careful with her next words. "You said his name was Jere. That he went to Earth and didn't come back."

Reyna went still.

"I saw your face when you said it, and I've thought about it since," Charlie went on, quieter now, almost like she was sorry for it. "I'm sorry," Charlie said, confirming Reyna's suspicion. "I didn't mean to pry. It wasn't mine to ask about."