She led Charlie through to the kitchen and bent to pull a small keepsake box from the bottom of the large dresser behind the well-worn dog bed. Charlie thought for an instant of the box under the sink in her flat, packed with vodka, whisky and gin, and another warm wave of pride moved through her. So many parts of Charlie had been hidden away, waiting for her to be brave enough to show them. And now she had nothing left to face. Charlie had owned her drinking problem. She had come here to meet her sister, and Rosie had welcomed her with warmth and love. She had lost Berty, and then she had lost Fearne, and through the awful days of grief she had discovered the priceless truth that she could exist without the two of them to bolster her.
“I’m ready,” she said.
The box held many details of Rosie’s search for Charlie, but it also contained everything Rosie had found when their parents had died. A tiny gray knitted hat. A photograph of a baby, fingered so many times the little bundle was almost unrecognizable as a baby at all. And a note.
I want you to know, it read,that I will always love you. I can’t be your mama. But you will always be my baby.
“I think she wanted it to go with you, to your new family,” Rosie said. “But for whatever reason—oh, sweetheart.”
Charlie could hold it in no longer. She had begun to sob.
Rosie held her. She smelled of roses and Parma Violets, and she hugged Charlie the way Charlie longed to be hugged—like she would never let her go.
—
The rest of the afternoon was an extraordinary, glorious blur. New faces, a newhome, as she was assured it was—a whole farm that she had imagined a million times but that turned out to be both more beautiful and considerably muddier than she had ever anticipated.
And Aspen. Aspen was a surprise.
Charlie had been given a very brief rundown of the whole situation after meeting Rosie, and had absorbed approximately ten percent of it, registering only the important fact that Berty seemed as displeased by Aspen’s presence on Ormer as she was. It was only later, when she caught sight of Aspen talking quietly with Berty in the living room, that she dedicated any time and energy to the woman who had, apparently, decided to steal her dream life.
She folded her arms as she entered the room, leveling her gaze at Aspen. As adults, they’d only spoken properly once, at Brianna and Stuart’s wedding; Charlie had liked her, then. She was beautiful, just like Brianna—the resemblance was uncanny, despite Aspen having dyed that amazing ginger hair brown. Charlie marveled to feel none of the usual envy pass through her. Siblings used to fill her with longing, but now, she had her own.
She scanned Aspen, trying to compile everything she knew about her. She was a midwife; she’d always done well in school, the good-girl counterpoint to Brianna’s rebelliousness. She wasperpetually dating, never with much success. And, judging by Oliver’s recent emails, she was pregnant.
With a dizzying shot of fear, Charlie considered the possibility that it could be Berty’s baby. But no, he’d broken up with Aspen in July, and it was October now. Surely Aspen would be showing, and her stomach was conspicuously flat in her low-rise jeans and tank top. She didn’t look pregnant at all, in fact.
“So. You stole my job,” Charlie said to Aspen. “It was Brianna who came up with the whole plan, presumably?”
It was hardly surprising—Bri had been the one who’d planted the idea in Charlie’s head, too.That’s it? You just turn up with this letter and say “Hi, I’m Charlie Jones”?she’d said, and when Charlie had looked across the kitchen table at Oliver, her kind, sad, broken friend, those words had come back to her.
“I’m so sorry,” Aspen said. Her eyes were wet; she was holding back tears. “If I’d had any idea that this place meant so much to you…”
“It’s fraud, you know, what you did,” Charlie said.
“And what I did,” Oliver said from behind her.
She turned to look at him. Berty-lite, as she’d thought of him—but with Berty actually here, the contrast was more apparent. Berty was taller, more assertively muscular; Oliver had the compact build of a mountain biker, just as Fearne had had, and his energy was milder, more subtle. He paled beside Berty’s clear-cut edges. Charlie immediately scolded herself for the comparison—Oliver was her friend, and she loved him dearly.
“You could have told me, you know,” Oliver said gently. “I would still have come, and told you everything you wanted to know.”
“Nobody knew about Rosie but Fearne and Berty,” she said.
She locked eyes with Berty. There was a fierce pleasure in hisface that made her shiver with delight. They had always been like this—all fire and strength and unity. Even now, with Oliver and Aspen in the room, she felt and resented every centimeter of the space between them.
“I see,” Oliver said.
And he probably did. Charlie had never met anybody asunderstandingas Oliver. Could she have stopped drinking without that? She wasn’t sure, but for a brief moment in their lives, Berty had not been able to reach her, and Oliver had. Charlie returned her attention to Aspen. Had she been that for Berty? Had she given him something Charlie couldn’t? She loathed the very thought, but Berty did seem a little different, somehow. Less inclined to step in and save her, perhaps—and that would be good for them, now that Charlie had learned she could save herself.
“I’m so glad you decided to come here,” Aspen said, “and I’m so happy for you and Rosie.”
“All’s well that ends well, is that what you’re trying to say?” Charlie said, but she didn’t like the sharpness in her own voice, and felt her shoulders sag.
She did not actually feel particularly angry with Aspen for stealing her job and her name. It was the kind of joyfully chaotic, ballsy thing Charlie herself might dream of doing. She just hated her because she’d had some small piece of Berty, and Charlie would never be able to abide that.
But it seemed that Aspen had found a home here. She had her own shit to deal with, if she really was pregnant—Charlie found herself feeling a little sorry for her. Plus everyone else seemed to like her, interestingly, even Marly, Rosie’s delightfully take-no-shit wife, and that woman everyone called Galoshes, who Charlie had thus far only heard complaining about things.
And Oliver. Oliver definitely liked her, which Charliebegrudgingly had to admit was a point in her favor—Oliver was an excellent judge of character. After all, he’d chosen her, and Fearne.
