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“Well, I’m not telling her he’s dead. I’ll see if I can get her the bird, and if not, I’ll find a way around it.”
“You could just say it flew off.”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t even have feathers.”
He chuckles to himself. “She once rescued a squirrel. Did she tell you?”
“No.”
“We’d just got back from the lodges. Vinny went to start the cars, just to make sure all was okay for the morning, and he found this baby squirrel. Ave caught it and brought it inside. Mangy looking thing. She kept it for over a month, hand feeding it, before she let it out into the wild. She thinks it comes back every year, but…” He looks over at me and smiles. And the fondness in that smile, the way I’ve never seen him smile that way, it tells me what I already knew. “I don’t know. It could be any squirrel.”
“She’s so much like Scar,” I say, chuckling.
“She is,” he agrees, and the gentleness in his tone, it’s confident, it’s knowing. Because he made a promise to look after her, and he did.
“You went above and beyond for them.” We don’t look at one another, but I see the grip Charlie has on the steering wheel turn white-knuckled. “Scarlet wrote about you in her letters, told me how you travelled out to the prison every day. I haven’t read many of them yet. I’m still trying to get my head around it all.” I readjust in the seat, focusing on the road ahead. “I guess thank you feels… not enough.”
“It’s enough,” he interjects.
I nod, swallowing around the guilt lodged in my throat. “How about I’m sorry?”
His cheek tics, the only tell he’s pissed off with me. Or hurt. I’m pretty sure I hurt my friend.
“Aldridge, I could sit here and explain my reasoning, but what good is it to you now? I just want you to know that I’m aware of how badly I fucked up. That I know you were there for Scarlet when I shut her out. That you still showed up when I shut you out. And I’m sorry. I regret it more than anything. It’s done, and I don’t expect a thing from you or your friendship. The same as I don’t expect a thing from Scarlet and Waverley.” I crack my neck, my tongue swiping across my teeth. “I just need you to know that I’ve never taken your friendship for granted. I know it probably seemed like I didn’t care and that it was easy for me to just block you all out, but—”
“Do you think I think that? That it was easy?”
I look toward him, not bothering to mask the emotion I know is painted across my face. “I don’t know what you thought. You’ve barely muttered five words to me since I got out.”
He sniggers and looks away again. “The number of nights I lay in my bed cursing you for not talking to us. Needing you to just pick up the phone if nothing else and explain that you wanted her to move on. I’d spend the day doing everything I could to see you and then go home and would have to tell Scarlet there was still nothing. I’d go over it constantly, trying to figure out what you were thinking. Why you were doing it. For a while, I was angry at you for hurting her, but you know what pissed me off more? What makes me want to clobber you in the face every time I look at you, even now?” He looks from me to the road. “It’s the fact you did what you did to yourself. That you knew we’d be here for you, but you didn’t know yourself well enough to see you deserved it.”
I stare at him, my chest going tight.
“Years of friendship, of family, and you treated yourself no better than a fucking criminal.”
His words cut deep. Too deep. “You’d have let me tell her to move on? You think she’d have even listened? I needed her to find a shred of happiness, Charlie. To come out the other side of the shitstorm that was hanging over her.”
“And what about you?” he snaps, making my heart sink. “What about you, Lance? Are you unscathed? Scarlet had all of us. You knew that. You knew she was going to be okay because you knew she had me!” He shakes his head as he tries to compose himself. “I spent months watching her struggle after Ave was born. Watched her fight her way back to her feet, too,” he rasps, lowering his tone. “But what about you? Who did you have?”
I clench my jaw, not having an answer.
“You had nobody. Because you couldn’t bear the idea of burdening us, your family, with a life we’d long decided to walk with you.” He turns into the old mill rescue centre and sits for a minute, just staring straight ahead. “Of course it’s fucking enough.” He nods toward the entrance. “Go get your bird.”
The rescue centre doesn’t give me a bird. I climb back into the car, feeling defeated and a little fucked physically and mentally.
“Did you tell them it was for a child?”
I side-eye Charlie, and he sighs. “I tried everything. It’s against theirmoral code.”
He passes me his phone. “Put that address into the navigation.”
I run my hand through my hair and type in the address. “Wings Ridge Rescue.”
He looks across at me and nods. “There’s a list of at least fifty centres around the UK in my Notes app.”
I check the address he’s given me, noting the centre is an hour’s drive. “But you’ve—”
“But nothing,” Charlie interjects, glancing at me again. “Put in the address, Sullivan.”
