Pain ripples through me in dreadful anticipation. Perhaps she won’t want to see me. But if she’s going to scream at me to leave, I figure I had better give her the opportunity to do so.
So I push open the door and allow it to creak.
The healer is packing up his materials, whistling to himself quietly. Charlie is in the bed, more upright than I have seen her.Pillows are stacked behind her back, keeping her torso at an incline. A rag still rests on her forehead to help clear the fever.
“Mads, are you—?” Her eyes are open, and she glimpses me in the doorway. “Winds? Winds, what are you…?”
For a moment she looks confused, and I fear what she might not recall. Is it possible that she’s lost the memory of what happened on the beach—that she doesn’t remember me shooting her?
I’ve heard of that happening sometimes, of people who suffer great physical trauma being unable to remember what happened leading up to the event. The mind’s way of protecting itself, John had used to say, when he was poring over his medical journals and books.
I step in. Of all the outcomes I’ve dreaded, I had never considered that I might have to confess to Charlie that I’m the one who put her in this bed. Worse than that, a fear has been creeping up inside of me. What if I wounded her for life? I’ve never felt that it was my place to ask the healer. And now that she’s awake and can ask him herself, it would feel like a worse invasion of her privacy.
I pad over to her bedside, and she puts out a hand.
“I’m so sorry, Winds,” she says.
My heart drops. “What are you apologizing for?” I ask, sure she must be delusional.
“I lost him,” she says. “I lost your son. If I had just gotten off the beach faster, you would still have him.”
Something stings at my throat. A lump I can’t quite swallow.
“Charlie, it wasn’t your fault,” I say. “Do you not remember?”
“I remember,” she says. “I hesitated. Had I not hesitated, I would have been able to get him away.”
I frown, my brow furrowing. “Charlie, I’m the one who shot you,” I say, glancing over at the healer too late. Now that the statement has already left my mouth, I wonder if I should haveeven said it. If it’s too much for her to handle in her current state. My doubt is only confirmed by the exasperated shaking of the healer’s head.
“I remember,” she says. “But had I gotten away earlier, you would have never been forced to do that. You wouldn’t have been forced to hand over your son.”
Something pierces my chest. Never in my life would I have anticipated that Charlie, of all people, would blame herself for what happened on the beach.
“It was my fault,” I say. “I should have known better than to enter that bargain. I put myself in that position. Put you in the way of danger. I should have never asked?—”
“You didn’t ask it of me,” she says, a soft smile on her lips. “Nolan and I went behind your back, remember? You couldn’t have known what we were planning.”
I frown. “How can you not be angry with me?”
“Your friends are not children, Wendy,” she says. “I knew what I was getting into. What I was agreeing to when I went to Nolan and told him I could take your son with me, that the two of us could disappear. I knew there was a possibility that I’d be hurt. Killed even.”
“But not by me,” I say.
“I don’t think of it that way,” she explains. “This is all the Sister’s doing. You’ve just been trying to do what’s right. For Nolan. For your family. For your son. It’s the same thing I was trying to do. But I failed. I thought I could help you, and it seems I only made things worse.
“I’m sorry that Maddox was horrible to you,” she adds. “I may have given him a stern talking to. There’s no sense in that, after all you’ve lost.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Besides, it gives you an excuse to further torture him, which I know you secretly have to be enjoying.”
Charlie offers me a devious smile.
CHAPTER 48
The next time Charlie gets up, she almost collapses in the doorway, but Maddox is there to catch her almost as soon as she falters. They exchange a glance I can’t quite read. I don’t understand the secret language between the two of them—but then again, I never have.
“You haven’t been being rude to Wendy now, have you?” she asks, to which Maddox answers by proceeding to help her stumble back to her room.
“How are you?” Nolan emerges in the doorway, fitting his hand between my shoulder blades. “Should we follow them or leave them be for a moment?” he whispers.
