Fulfillment(95)

The bell sounded and children began finding their waiting parents. Nate spotted us first and excitedly jogged our way.

“Bryce!” he shouted, right before he kicked the football in his direction. Bryce was quick and took off, marking it before it hit any cars.

“Nate, not near the cars,” I rebuked.

“Sorry,” he called back.

I noticed Charli skipping happily toward us when a girl I did not recognise walked up beside her and said something Charli did not like, causing her to stop and turn toward the girl. I noticed Charli’s fists ball at her sides, and I knew that was not a good sign.

“You’re just mean,” she yelled at the girl.

The little girl shoved Charli nearly causing her to fall backward.

“Hey,” I called out ready to hop my way over there when Nate saw the commotion and went to Charli’s aid in my stead. The little girl saw him coming and ran off.

“What did she say?” Nate asked Charli as they walked closer.

“Nothing, she is just a bully. I hate her,” she answered.

“What was that all about?” I asked, as Charli pressed her head into my stomach and wrapped her arms around me.

“Nothing, Mum, she just sucks and she smells like cheese.” How does a child smell like cheese? I wasn’t sure.

“Charli, why did you yell at her?”

“Because she said babies are dumb. They are not dumb. My sister wasn’t dumb,” she said angrily, with her head still pressed against my abdomen.

Tash put her hand to her mouth, Bryce looked in the direction the little girl took off in and I just held Charli tightly.

“Little girls that smell like cheese are dumb, Charli. Not babies.”

“I hate cheese,” she said as Bryce opened the car door for her.

“No you don’t, silly rabbit.”

***

We sat around the breakfast bar watching Bryce make dinner after we got back to the apartment. It had taken a while to douse Charli’s raging anger toward the cheese-girl—who Charli refused to identify by real name. I decided to let it go because, like me, she was incredibly stubborn, and I knew from my own experience that constant probing would only make her clam up more.

Switching my attention from an uncooperative Charli, I offered to help Bryce with the dinner preparation instead. He refused, so I turned my offering into demanding and was rewarded with dicing the onions. I made a point never to offer or demand again, as the onion fumes singed my eyeballs, forcing tears to spill out onto my cheeks.

“So, Charli-Bear...God damn it! My eyes...” I wiped my sleeve across my face. “Urgh! Have you thought of a name for...who invented onions anyway? Stupid smelly things.”

Bryce was laughing as he the chopped carrots.

“Laugh all you want. I’m never offering to help you again.”

“Good,” he arrogantly replied.

I glared at him, but it must’ve resembled a winced, screwed up, ugly looking glare, as I could not yet open my eyes without them burning like fuck.

“Sorry, Charli. Have you thought of a name for your sister yet?”

“Yes,” she said happily.

“Well? Let’s hear it, Sweetheart.”

“Bianca,” she said confidently.

As soon as she said it I loved it. “That’s a beautiful choice. Why did you choose Bianca?”

“Because it’s pretty, and I like it, and it has all our initials in it.”

Bryce stopped chopping and just stared at Charli. I was speechless, too. She had put so much thought into it, much more thought than a six-year-old should have. It was so endearing.

She noticed our pause and continued. “And any way, I didn’t like Blanche or Cinba.”

I looked at Bryce and smiled, trying not to laugh and also thankful she had not chosen Cinba—it reminded me too much of the Lion King. He put his knife down, picked up Charli and sat her on the bench so that she was his height.

“Bianca is perfect, Charlotte, thank you.” He leaned in, kissed her on the head then went back to the chopping carrots.

I noticed a tear in his eye as I wiped my own. “I’m chopping onions, what’s you excuse?” I said to him, lovingly.

“I don’t have one,” he replied.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I’ve never liked cemeteries, even as a young teenager when it had been ‘cool’ to sneak into the local one at night and pretend to call upon the dead. I’d hated that game, and at the time I’d hated my brother for blackmailing me and my sister Jen to go along with him and his idiot friend. I can’t say as an adult that my dislike for cemeteries had decreased over the years, because it hadn’t, and as I hobbled along the gravel path in between row upon of row of headstones, that became hugely apparent. It wasn’t that cemeteries gave me the creeps—unless I was at one during the night with said stupid brother and idiot friend. No, it was more that they held such sadness and loss of people dearly missed.