Chasing Charlie

CHAPTER ELEVEN: FLEETING NOTIONS

  After their movie, Angela left for her room and Vince called Charlie, promising he would be home the next day and for the weekend. As he changed and crawled under the covers, his imagination was a confusing amalgam of recent memories. His oncologist giving him his diagnosis and prognosis. Telling Jenna, telling the team, telling Charlie. His flight with Angela, the failed interview, and his subsequent evening at the hotel, being stuck in a city too far from home.

  His formerly heavy eyes had been bluffing; he now lay wide awake, even though his bed was comfortable, the temperature in the room was just right, he wasn’t in any pain, and he no longer felt the least bit nauseous. He tried to figure what exactly was keeping him awake. He’d just spoken to Charlie, who hadn’t been all too thrilled with this particular goodnight, but who had at least seemed happy at the prospect of his dad turning down a case and staying home with him instead. It wasn’t Charlie that kept him awake, no.

  He hadn’t had much closure tonight with Angela, though he wasn’t sure he was supposed to have any. This was simply a trip for work that didn’t stand for anything more, at least it didn’t have to. Did it? Angela was loyal to those about whom she cared, almost to a fault. When it came to supporting them in times of trouble, she rarely sat idly by and watched her loved ones suffer. She stood by them, fought for them. She hadn’t wavered a bit in her faithfulness to Vince, though he knew she wouldn’t have had it been any of her friends, so he wasn’t sure if he should feel at all special. Even though he had been what he considered to be rather put together, all things considered, Angela had still insisted on being there for him for as much time as she could justify, and she’d finally shown some emotion over his predicament, which, he now realized, was almost as much her predicament as it was his own.

  It had slaughtered his heart to see the faces of the loved ones he’d told, and to think about breaking the news to his long-lost brother, who still didn’t know, but Angela’s face stuck with him most stubbornly of all the adults; her recent tears refused to let him forget that she had never lost anyone close before, that his passing would teach her the pain of saying a true goodbye.

  He knew better than to think he could help this, to think that he could change the outcome. He had some semblance of a choice as to how long he stayed, but no matter how much he hoped and prayed, he knew the oncologist’s prognosis wasn’t open to upward negotiation. And he knew a second opinion wouldn’t change things. Thankfully, eight months—if he was going to be optimistic, which he knew he had to be—was an eternity for someone Charlie’s age. But eight months was nothing for Vince. He knew that through the sickness, the pain, the deterioration, he would feel like time was dragging by, cruelly forcing him to experience the brutality of every single passing day, and in a likely bored state of mind for much of it. But once his time came, once his eyes closed for the last time and the final breath prepared to leave his body, he would be able to think back to the present moment and feel like it was just yesterday. And when he did that, he knew he would feel like it hadn’t been enough time at all. He would feel like he could have done more if given just a few extra days.

  It was this lack of power that must have been keeping Vince from sleeping. Knowing that he had no control over the emotions of those he loved, no control over whether he could make the pain go away for them and for himself, was one of the worst ways he could spend the rest of his life.

  Did he have a choice in anything at all, even the things not directly involving his death? He supposed he could stay at work if he wanted, but he didn’t know how long it would be before the cancer and the treatments meant to rid himself of it took such a toll on him that he was robbed of the physical stamina needed to make it through a typical day, let alone a longer day on a case and in a strange city. But none of that mattered, because he knew Charlie needed every moment he could get with his father. Vince couldn’t imagine depriving Charlie of that, depriving himself of that. Perhaps there was technically an element of choice involved there. He had two clear options—fight the cancer or back down—but one felt so obviously right, and the other just as obviously wrong. Leaving his job to give Charlie every second he could was the only choice.

  And what about the rest of his life? Two people had asked him that today, one of whom would be dead in forty-eight hours’ time. The other was no more than twenty feet away, probably worrying about him, because that was what she did best. In trying to gain Erica Whittaker’s cooperation, Vince had brought up an important point himself—that he had no plans for himself, that he didn’t have a bucket list. And Angela had been overly curious, too, though he wasn’t sure why. She had been able to tell that the subject made him somewhat uncomfortable, if only for the fact that he didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. So why had she brought it up more than once? She wasn’t the nagging type. She stopped at nothing to get what she wanted, but her methods didn’t typically revert to pestering, prying. Did the answer to her own question—whether there was anything Vince had denied himself over the years that he could now have if he went for it—lie in the fact that she kept on asking him?

  —

  Vince and Angela only had a few hours left in their workday once they made it back to the office. Another call to the warden in the morning had dashed their hopes of a last-minute change of heart on Whittaker’s part. Vince unknowingly gave off an air that he didn’t want conversation, and Angela didn’t force any on the flight home. She simply kept her eye on him. The questions about legacy and last-minute indulgence ceased. Even though those questions had perturbed Vince, their absence when he’d been expecting them was even more unsettling. Angela understood him quite well for someone he didn’t see outside of the workplace that often. He spent relatively little extracurricular time with any of them, really, since he already saw them almost daily. But tied with only Harry, Angela would probably be the best at stimulating Vince’s mind enough to get him thinking about what it was he wanted to do with the remainder of his days. Even if she got him thinking more seriously about romantic prospects, which he now suspected was on her mind, that would be preferable to the relative silence that had hung between them all day.

  Instead of interacting with him in reality, she had spent the entire day in Vince’s mind. His imagination stayed chaste but still teased him with notions that, without further hinting from her, he was pretty sure he was going to ignore. Terminal illness and blossoming romance didn’t exactly go hand-in-hand, especially when he wasn’t sure whether both parties even wanted the latter. Suspicions weren’t enough.

  Their day wasn’t lacking in responsibility by any means, as they always had plenty of work to do. However, no fewer than five times, Angela resisted the temptation to bring some of her paperwork into Vince’s office—the bullpen was empty, with Sophie locked up in the records room—or to invite him to come out and use Marshall’s desk for the day.

  “You all right in here?” she asked when she placed some files on Vince’s desk about an hour before her normal quitting time.

  “Fine,” Vince reported with a friendly quarter-grin. “How are you?”

  Angela shrugged. “All things considered…okay, I guess. Hey, umm, hopefully this isn’t too weird of a request, but would it be okay if I stopped by your place sometime this weekend, just to check in and say hi? I haven’t seen Charlie in a while…”

  Vince’s quarter-grin turned into a full but brief one as two thoughts crossed his mind at once. The first was that she’d been put up to this; the second was that she wasn’t severing the extra closeness they’d seemed to form during their trip. Both were reasons to smile, surely. “Did Harry have anything to do with this?” he asked dryly.

  “He did suggest I bring you a casserole, but he was being facetious. He made fun of me for going to the store for you last night.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  Angela shrugged. “Well, he’s not my boss. Not yet, anyway. So…would that be okay?”

  “You
know you don’t have to,” Vince said. “I know things seem kind of…raw right now, but I’ve got a long way to go. This isn’t rock bottom. Nowhere near it.”

  “So? Do you only want company when you’re down? I would’ve pinned you for exactly the opposite. That’s the way you usually are, anyway.”

  Vince folded his hands in his lap and thought. “You’re actually right, I guess. I’ll probably be refusing people left and right once things get down to the wire.”

  “So you won’t mind?”

  “No, I’d like that, actually. Just…don’t bring casserole. I’m still perfectly capable of cooking.”

  Angela smiled fleetingly. “Can I be frank?”

  “Since when do you ask permission?”

  “Touché. I think you should go home early, surprise Charlie. I won’t tell anyone you skipped out. You’re not your usual self, which is understandable, of course, but you just don’t seem to be getting any fulfillment out of staying here right now, so why not just take off for the day?”

  “Is that a nice way of telling me I don’t seem like I’m being productive?” Vince enjoyed himself a little too much when Angela, normally not gullible, opened her mouth to deny it. “I’m teasing. I do have some more things that need doing, but I appreciate the concern. If you want to take off, though, you can.”

  Angela shook her head. “No, no, I’m keeping busy. Hey, did you actually eat when you went out earlier?”

  “I got a sandwich, why?”

  “Just making sure.” As if Angela felt she had said too much, she drummed her fingers on her thighs and shut her eyes. “I’ll leave you alone now.” She turned on her heel and walked away, but stopped after only three steps. “Wait—is there a time that works better for you this weekend? Or a time that doesn’t work?”

  “I have no solid plans,” Vince said with a shrug. “I’ll let you know if anything pops up.” Angela nodded. Two steps later, it was Vince that stopped her. “Angela, one second.”

  “Yeah?” she said, turning at his doorway and grasping the jamb.

  Vince swallowed, finding it endlessly irritating that every moment with her lately, every word and every look that passed between them, carried so much more importance than before. He was supposed to be letting things go, pruning; he wasn’t supposed to be complicating things even further. His mouth dried up as he thought momentarily whether he should say what he wanted to say.

  To anyone else, it wouldn’t mean anything beyond face value. “Thank you…for keeping me company and for talking with me. And I’m sure Harry told you to stick around and would’ve had your head if you’d shown up in Boston without me, but I still appreciate it.”

  Angela’s lips parted, barely detectably. “Fitz didn’t need to ask me to stay. I would never dream of leaving you here all alone like this. Don’t be crazy.”

  Vince should have known better than to expect Angela to blush and stare at the floor, caught red-handed, not when she’d already openly established the fact that she cared. But he found himself a bit surprised at her offhandedness, and he didn’t know how to react to it. He decided not to delve any further into her motives right now. “Well, all the same, it’s been nice to have a familiar face around. So thanks.”

  “Any time…I mean it.”

  “Hey, any word from Whittaker?”

  Angela furrowed her brow. “Why would I have heard anything instead of you?”

  Vince shrugged. “I dunno, just…still hanging onto a thread of hope that we can get something else out of her.”

  Angela thought that perhaps they weren’t done talking after all. “Can I give you some advice?”

  Vince said nothing.

  “Let it go,” Angela said. “And I don’t mean that in a mean way. I just think you have a lot more important things to focus on now. You know, maybe she was just killing out of boredom and knows how to beat all the tests and appear mentally healthy. Whatever the case may be, I think you’re worried about it for the wrong reasons.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That we’ve had plenty of failed interviews before. This one’s only bothering you so much because it was your last one.”

  Vince shifted guiltily in his chair. “How would you feel?”

  “The same way you do,” Angela assured him. “But I’d want someone to tell me that it was okay to let it go. Do you think you can?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” Vince admitted. Then he chuckled. “You know me.”

  “I do.”