Losing Charlotte by Heather Clay Read Free Book Online Page B

chair, faintly hurt, her feeling of disorientation growing stronger. She swiveled back around and glanced at the computer screen. She knew she should be rising into action, and yet remained where she was for a moment, then another. She clicked the report file closed, and, before she could think about it, clicked onto an e-mail attachment that Charlotte had sent her months before.
    The computer sputtered and hummed. The screen went blank for a moment, became a square shape that began to define itself by faint degrees as Knox watched. Two knobs, like the fat heads of fiddlehead ferns that grew by the pond, showed themselves inside the shape, grew brighter. Glowing type appeared at the bottom of the square. It read: Charlotte Bolling Tavert. Frat. M. M. New York Presbyterian Hospital. Digital Lab .
    It was an early sonogram of babies. The picture came a bit further into focus, then stopped refining itself. Knox stared. She brushed a strand of damp hair from the side of her face and tried not to be angry at herself for feeling so little every time—only a sensation of waiting for something in the image to become animated, for a tiny foot to kick through the frame at her, forcing her to duck. She could see the head-heavy, concave shape of one body curled in on itself; the other knob looked like a belly, or maybe a backside.
    “Little aliens,” Knox mouthed at the screen.
    Knox heard only the rustling of straw as the mare shifted her stance. She pictured the mare’s heavy bay head at the stall window, gazing out, wanting space, the light reflected in her wet eyes, threads of snot quivering in the soft caves of her nostrils as she breathed. She realized she did feel something. To see the twins like this was to imagine their pleasure at being suspended in the fluid and heat of her sister’s body, ultimately protected, and hadn’t she wanted, admit it, to be in exactly that place at points in her early life, to crawl inside her sister and rest, letting Charlotte be her mouth, eyes, ears, bed, blanket? Was she jealous, of all things? She didn’t want children of her own. She and Ned didn’t speak about this, but he knew, just as she knew that everyone, including Ned, assumed a woman could be talked into motherhood eventually. Well.
    Knox picked out an unseeing eye, a black bead that looked to her like a caper. It had all transpired so quickly. Charlotte had become a person with babies inside her, before Knox had even had a chance to get used to the weird enthusiasm with which she’d become a wife. She was spinning beyond Knox once again, uncatchable as mist.
    “Damn you,” Knox said to the screen, shocking herself. The words in her mouth sounded comical, strange enough to move her. She reached to shut the computer down, resolved to let Marlene finish the last reports if that became necessary. She rose from the chair, the material of her skirt gripping its cracked leather surface for a moment before nudging itself free. She walked out of the room, past the mare, down the barn aisle, and into the rosy evening.
    It wasn’t until she found herself outside that she remembered the unopened e-mail message from Ned. As she made her way toward the fence line, long grass whipping at her bare legs, she briefly wondered whether or not it contained something that he thought she’d read, or if he had been annoyed or disappointed when he realized, as he must have, that she hadn’t looked at it yet. Well, she thought, maybe that was what had been wrong with him.There wasn’t time to worry about it now. If Charlotte was about to be operated on, her parents would be packing for New York; she would be faced with whether or not to join them.
    Knox stopped against the fence, gripped a middle plank with both hands, and held on. It was still warm with the day’s heat. She stood still for a moment, suddenly more scared than displeased by the momentum she felt. She wanted nothing more than to remain here, curled against the post like a