A Heart of Time (22 page)

“Mishandled paperwork? What the hell does that mean?” I bark at her, as I pace back and forth with my hands on my hips. Did he do something to Ellie? I know that sounds absurd but what can be mishandled with organ transplant papers?

She shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. Regardless, he now sells scripts underground to international sources, making more money than he did as a surgeon. Except, he doesn’t have to file taxes or let anyone know he’s making a dime. That is why I’m here, living with you, in case you forgot.”

Stunned, at a loss, and trying to piece together this garbled information, Charlotte sweeps by me, grabs the platter of sliced turkey and takes it out into the dining room.

“I know what she’s talking about,” Ari speaks up after Charlotte is out of hearing distance.

I huff a soft laugh. “What?”

“I didn’t know he got fired because of me.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask again.

“I shouldn’t have gotten Ellie’s heart, Hunter.”

“Didn’t you say she wanted you to have it?” The oxygen left in my lungs feels like it’s being sucked out through a tiny straw. “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“She did but I guess a living donor can’t promise a heart to a particular person. It’s against medical ethics or something.”

I’m trying to think my words through before they spew off the tip of my tongue, ultimately putting Ari in a corner and emotionally beating her senseless. “Then how did you end up receiving her heart?” The question I form is much better than many of the other thoughts I had to choose from.

“Dr. Drake sort of had a thing for me…”

I can feel my face burning from the inside. I know I’m red. I know I look like steam should be coming from my ears. And I’m not sure I can handle whatever is about to come out of her mouth next. “You can’t be serious…”

“I never gave in, Hunter, but he made his feelings pretty clear,” she says, breaking her gaze from my face.

“You didn’t tell anyone?” I ask, trying to keep calm regardless of how flaming angry I am right now.

“He wanted to save me more than any other doctor. I—”

“I get it,” I cut her off.

“When Ellie and I figured out we had the same blood-type, she came with me to meet with him and told him she would only donate her heart if it went to me. She played him, knowing she could easily blackmail him with what I told her about Dr. Drake—the things he had said to me, the moments he tried to…” She sighs and swallows hard. “In any case, it worked. There was no paperwork. Everything was a verbal agreement.”

I squeeze my hand around my chin, feeling my head begin to pound. It feels like someone just slapped me upside the head with a frying pan. “Jesus.”

“There would have been no other donors—my chances were less than two percent. He didn’t even put up a fight. I can only imagine what you’re thinking right now, but if you were me, wouldn’t you have done questionable things to save your own life?”

Guilt. That is what Ari is surviving with. Owning the heart from my dead wife, being the reason the chief of heart surgery conducted malpractice and subsequently lost his medical license. He should have lost it, regardless.
Piece of shit.
I wonder if the answer to her last question would be different if she asked herself that right this second. To live or die? I think most people would choose to live, regardless of what the repercussions might be.

“I get it,” I tell her. I still don’t get why Ellie didn’t tell me any of this, though. I would have told her not to get involved.

“I don’t expect you to understand. Ellie kept this from you and you have every right to be angry and heartbroken, but I promise you she kept this from you because she loved you.” It doesn’t matter how many times she says this, the thought of secrets, secrets this fucking big, between us, hurts like hell.

“I need a break from this conversation. My head might explode trying to come to terms with all of this.” Ellie was a strong-minded woman. If there was something she wanted to accomplish, nothing was getting in her way. It doesn’t come as a surprise that she would bust her way into the chief of surgery’s office just to tell him what’s what. Only
my wife
could control what happens to her organs after she dies. The thought brings a proud smile to my face—a foreign feeling when considering the unknown details of Ellie’s life I’ve come to learn in recent months. What I do know is that she wanted Ari to live. She made that happen.

“We should join everyone. The food is going to get cold,” Ari says. I place my arm around her and lead her out to the dining room, pulling out a seat for her.

“I want to sit next to Ari,” Olive says breathlessly, as she runs into the dining room. “And Daddy, you can sit on the other side of Ari.”

Everyone circled around the table is quiet except AJ, who is chewing his bread obnoxiously loud while taking the time to stare at each one of us for several seconds.

“So,” he says, pointing with his butter knife. “You two know each other?” He points back and forth between Charlotte and Ari. “Small world, huh?” The room goes utterly silent.
Oh God, AJ. Shut the hell up!
I yell, inside my head, while trying to catch his eye.

“I would hardly say we know each other,” Ari responds. “Charlotte was just a lovely person who brought me flowers on occasion.”

“Did you know Ari received Ellie’s heart?” AJ continues with a question to Charlotte, a question I considered asking but decided to hold off on after the way the last conversation ended.

“You and Ellie were friends, right?” Charlotte asks Ari, redirecting from AJ’s question.

“We just worked together, but yes, you could call us friends.” Keeping my thoughts to myself. Keeping my thoughts to myself. I knew all of Ellie’s friends. All of them except Ari.
Why did you keep this from me, Ellie?

“And Ellie promised you her heart once she died?” Charlotte continues.

“Well—” Ari stumbles.

“Ah,” Charlotte says. “Don made it very clear he was not going to lose you. I assumed the mishandling of papers might have had something to do with your case but I never knew for sure.” Charlotte isn’t being rude with the way in which she’s stating her realization. Instead, her jaw is grinding back and forth, suppressing what looks like a possible grin. “That man was a total a-hole to me and never failed to let me down, but to his patients—some of his patients—he would
never
let a beautiful girl like yourself down.”

“I’m sorry you had to find out like this,” Ari says, cautiously.

“It doesn’t really matter now,” Charlotte says. “It’s actually nice to finally have an answer to what happened.”

“Nothing happened…” Ari says, sounding on the brink of tears.

Charlotte allows a slight smile to form over her lips, almost as if she’s grateful for the answers. “Thank you.”

Silence consumes the table and the discomfort grows ten-fold. Lana and Olive are staring at each other with perplexity, and AJ and Lance are probably trying to figure out what the hell everyone is talking about. I never intended for tonight to end up like this. I didn’t think tonight through very well, obviously, and we have gotten way off track from celebrating Lana’s birthday.

“We have a birthday girl here tonight,” I say. “That’s why we’re all here so let’s put everything else aside so we can let Lana enjoy her favorite dinner.”

“You started it,” Olive says, her nose crunched up and her bottom lip pursed over her top.

Charlotte snorts and mutters something under her breath, which I’m assuming is some type of sarcasm.

“So,” Ari says, following my lead, “how old are you today, Lana?”

Lana holds up a hand full of fingers and then two more fingers on her other hand, but doesn’t speak up.
She’s upset
. Lana is always talking unless something is bothering her.

“Sweetie, is something wrong?” Charlotte asks her.

“Is Daddy a bad man?” she asks, fingering a hole into the piece of bread in her hand.

Again, we’re all silent. Normally, we’re careful about what we say out loud but things slip in anger. “No, Lana, your dad is not a bad man.” Charlotte closes her eyes and clasps her fingers together. My attention is drawn to her hands, noticing the red polish coating her nails. I have never seen her nails done before tonight. She’s a t-shirt and jeans girl. I take a better look at her face and see she’s wearing way more makeup than usual, too. Is she trying to impress this dickwad?

“Are you lying?” Lana asks.

“Do I lie to you?” Charlotte snaps back.

“No,” Lana replies.

“I want you to tell me what you want for your birthday. What have you been asking me for since September?” Charlotte asks her.

A wide grin unfurls across Lana’s lips while her thoughts of her shitty dad melt away. “Ummm, a bike?” she squeals.

“Lance, could you grab Lana’s gift?” Charlotte had asked me to help her with the bike and I obviously said yes but when she never followed up, I assumed she went in a different direction. Now, I realize, she just had Lance-a-lot help her.
Douche
.

“Sure, babe.”
Is that all he says?

Lance stands up, pressing his chest out to make a show of it, and groans as he pulls his chair away from the table. He points a finger at Lana and winks. “Wait until you see this, little girl.”
That doesn’t sound creepy at all.

Lance slips out the front door and returns a minute later carrying a turquoise bike with a big hot pink ribbon on the handle bar. Lana lets out a shriek that could be confused for a pterodactyl screaming.

Olive looks excited for Lana because I just bought her a bike for her birthday, too, and the two girls have many plans to go bike riding all summer.

“Sweet ride, kid,” AJ says in his tough guy voice. “How many different speeds you got on that thing?”

Charlotte thwacks AJ in the chest, forcing him to choke with laughter. “Do you like it, sweetie?”

“I love this so much, mommy!” Lana croons. With her arms flung around Charlotte’s chest and Charlotte’s head resting over hers, my heart warms up from the past hour of coldness. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Lana releases her arms from Charlotte and hops over to Lance, giving him the same hug. And that hurts me. It shouldn’t. I’m not her father and I’m not her mother’s boyfriend, I’m only the person she is staying with right now. But I love her, regardless.

“Olive, you should go get Lana’s gift now,” I tell her.

“Yay!” Olive shouts while skipping up the steps. I hear her wrestling with the wrapped package in her bedroom before she returns.

“What is it? What is it?” Lana asks, gleefully.

“Two-way radios!” Olive spills the beans before Lana can open the gift but it doesn’t seem to take away from the excitement. The two girls have been asking for these for the last couple of months so I thought it might be a nice gift.

After the gifts are opened and the girls have settled back down, we’re digging into our cold dinner. Everyone seems content for the moment so I think we’re all okay right now.

I scrape up my plate first, looking up at Charlotte just because she’s sitting across from me. I catch her looking back at me with a small, almost unrecognizable grin. AJ, Ari, and Lance are all caught up in a conversation about flowers and Ari’s shop, the girls are in the living room playing with their radios and Charlotte and I are lost in a staring contest. “I never wanted to cause you any more pain, Hunt,” she says softly. “When you first told me Ellie’s full name, I did put two and two together but with the amount of pain I saw in your eyes after so many years had passed, I didn’t see the purpose of telling you who my ex-husband was. I wasn’t withholding the information for any reason other than not causing you more stress.”

I want to reach across the table and take her hand but that would be inappropriate right now. I believe what she’s saying. “I know,” I tell her.

“This town is so small it’s hard not to come across someone who you haven’t had some degree of connection with.”

“Oh,” I laugh, “I know.”

I stand up from the table and collect as many plates as I can hold at once. Charlotte does the same on her side of the table and we meet in the kitchen.

“This all feels wrong,” she says to me, once behind the wall between the kitchen and dining room.

“What does?”

“This whole situation tonight. I don’t like Lance and I think I’ve come to realize that I need to fix some algorithms on my dating site because it matched us together.” She looks somewhat embarrassed, and yet, humored at the same time.

“Yeah, you might want to get on that,” I say, placing my hand on her shoulder. Charlotte looks over at my hand as if it is strange for me to be touching her at all. Which it is, once again, considering our current status.

“Are things still in limbo with you and Ari?” she asks.

I close my eyes briefly, unsure how to respond. “Yeah, pretty much. But she has Ellie’s heart. I’m in love with that heart and I don’t know if it has anything to do with Ari but I’m in no shape to push her away after wondering who she was for so long.”

Charlotte places her hands on the outsides of my arms and looks up at me. “I get it,” she says, her eyes squinting slightly with the sense of understanding. “I really, really get it.”