This Is Not How It Ends(18)

July 2018, Present Day

NAET Clinic; Islamorada, Florida

“Did you hear me?” Liberty asked, crossing behind my desk, sending papers flying in her wake. The clock read 2:22. I still made wishes, though they were different now. World peace. Less cancer.

I responded to her as I reached for the papers. “Yes. My referral’s coming in.”

“Hectic morning?” she asked.

“You can say that.”

“Tell me about this Jimmy.”

“Anaphylactic. Eggs, peanuts, and gluten.”

“Poor kid.”

I recounted the market story and our visit to the hospital. “I’m surprised they called you so soon. People are usually far more skeptical.”

Liberty brushed it aside. “You were always better at drawing people in. I think it’s that wholesome charm of yours. You’d think I was a sorcerer.”

When I’d first been diagnosed with an almond allergy, Mom sent me to a doctor in Kansas City who’d performed a barrage of tests that almost drained us of our life savings. I’d left the office with tracks of Braille lining my arms and a life-saving EpiPen. Up until that day, I was a healthy eight-year-old with one nasty ear infection to my medical file.

Suddenly, I was under a doctor’s care and advised to return for cost-prohibitive monthly allergy shots. I had spent my early years unfazed by what I put in my mouth and hated that I had to be vigilant, restricted. I toted the pen around like a third arm, nixed the allergy shots, and avoided not only almonds, but all nuts.

Unless you counted Liberty.

At first, I’d fought hard against her treatment. Those who subscribed to it were bigger kooks than she was. But weeks into her voodoo of eating cauliflower and potato chips for breakfast while she massaged me with a mini massager, followed by a quiet slumber that included holding glass vials of allergic substances, I could safely eat almonds. I would never judge the witchery again. I had passed.

“What’s with the long face, Charlotte? Were you able to talk to Philip?” Her broad nose was stuck in a chart, giving me time to admire her boho style. With her flaming red hair falling past her shoulders, she could make wearing a tablecloth look chic. I never could guess her age. Some locals had her close to seventy, though her firm skin and childlike eyes gave her the illusion of fifty. She claimed her all-natural lifestyle—no alcohol or drugs, ten glasses of water a day, granola eating, organic, cage-free, preservative-free, gluten-free, I may as well eat kale for the rest of my existence—kept her young and unwrinkled. I believed it was more than that. Some people were put on this earth to do good, to be good. Liberty literally saved people. I think God had preserved her as a way of saying thanks.

“Philip and I are fine,” I said, avoiding her eyes.

“You’re a terrible liar, Charley.”

I had grown to love Liberty as both my friend and extended family. She was a big sister, a favored aunt, and the first person to return to me the comfort lost by my mother’s absence. She was all these things, but mostly, she was the person I couldn’t hide from: my truth spiller.

“Yesterday you said you were going to talk to him.” Her hands were planted on her hips. “Yesterday, you waltzed out of here with a plan. You were going to tell him how you felt . . . what you need from him.”

I fell silent, feeling her pluck at the strings that connected me to my fiancé. The argument felt like a lifetime ago. Then the call from Natasha set me off again.

“Maybe I’m being paranoid, maybe he’s just stressed . . . He works hard. I’m the last person he needs nagging from when he walks through the door.” I said all this in one convincing sentence, wondering if she could see through me, if her voodoo voyeurism read minds.

“Charlotte Myers.”

She called me that when she wanted my attention. I looked her in the eyes, and the warmth was meant to erase the clawing emotions.

“You promised me, Charlotte.”

Chimes filtered through the small office, and in walked the next patient. Liberty waltzed over and greeted her, which left me to return to the mundane tasks of filing, answering phones, and waiting for the father and son to arrive. I didn’t want to talk about Philip. Or the distance that had pervaded us since he slipped the ring on my finger three months ago.



When the office door jingled again, it meant Ben and Jimmy were here.

“Hey, Jimmy!” I brightened for the sullen boy with the full cheeks. Liberty made a big deal about their entrance, remarking on Jimmy’s bravery and his big trip to the hospital. The little boy was undeterred. She settled on his father. “I’m glad to see you here, Mr.—”

The man stuck out his hand. “Call me Ben.”

“You’ve met my associate, Charlotte,” she said, motioning in my direction.

We waved, and Liberty knelt to meet Jimmy’s pout. Her bracelets jangled, and his eyes reflected the shiny gold. His bottom lip quivered. “Am I getting a shot?”

Liberty placed her hands on his shoulders. “No shots, no more needles.” Then she held out her pinkie. Jimmy wrestled with her offer while his father looked on, nudging him until he curled his pinkie into hers.

Watching Liberty guide them down the hall filled me with deep longing. Ben’s loving arm across his son’s back brought it forth, and when the feeling emerged, it sent a ripple through my system. Philip’s traveling, once an acceptable part of our relationship, something I defended on more than one occasion because it made us better when we were together, was overshadowed by something else. Something that had been slowly giving way.