TWENTY-SIX
CHARLIE
I’m sorry.
That’s all the text says.
Charlie is sorry, too. Sorry for getting his hopes up. Sorry for believing love and change were possible for a guy like him. Sorry for telling his family when nothing was set in stone.
Every response text fails to send. Every voice call goes unrung.
Is he being ghosted by a world-famous chocolate maker?
He fails not to look devastated over breakfast, which he barely touches. He stares into his watery Keurig coffee, watching as the creamer separates into clumps. His heart mirrors them, glopping off into tiny bits floating through the vacuous nothing of his body. On they swirl until—
“Charlie?” Mom asks.
“Huh?”
“The syrup. Can you pass the syrup?” she repeats.
He wakes up enough to perform the simple task that feels Herculean. What did they put in the bottle, cement?
Mom made pancakes. Dad griddled bacon. They both took paid days off from work to prepare the house for Dario’s arrival tomorrow morning. Grandma and Grandpa were too excited not to be up, showered, dressed and ready to be wheeled to the kitchen table to share a rare morning meal together. It’s a full house for the denouement, though it seems this isn’t the comedy that ends in a wedding they all hoped it would be.
Charlie slaps a pad of butter in the center of his pancake stack. It melts and oozes off the sides.
Mom opens a window to dissipate the overwhelming scent of frying grease that the barely functioning stovetop fan couldn’t handle. The early-morning air carries in the first traces of autumn—a nip and an earthy wetness. It mixes with the nearly tangible anticipation crowding the kitchen.
“Dario isn’t coming anymore,” Charlie says, unable to hold back for another second.
The room quiets save for Loretta Lynn crooning over the radio, a mid-tempo ditty about being a coal miner’s daughter.
“What’s happened, Charlie?” Grandpa asks.
Grandma clasps her hands together. “Is he in good health? Has something happened to Amorina?”
“I think so, and I don’t think so, and I don’t know what to think.” His brain is as fried as the bacon.
“What did he say?” Mom asks, standing beside the sink.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Charlie. It’s not your fault,” Grandpa is quick to add.
Charlie shakes his head. “That’s what he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Nothing else.”
“Why, that could mean anything!” Grandma says.
“Maybe there were other texts that didn’t go through,” Mom says.
Grandpa: “Perhaps that was meant for someone else.”
Grandma: “What if he had gifts to bring you and he forgot them all, and that’s what he’s sorry about?”
“There will always be a million reasons to think the worst,” Dad says, surprising everyone by jumping into the conversation. “If you can find even one reason to think the best, you can keep the faith.”
For someone who didn’t seem on board with having Dario come at all, he is the most helpful in leashing Charlie’s worry, which follows him like a mangy, stray dog for the rest of the day.
