Charlotte practically jumped back across the threshold at the end of the party, when Bobby had taken her arm to escort her out of the room – and back to 1968. She caught herself on the opposite wall, having to pause long enough to allow the customary dizziness to settle.
It had worked. She'd done it. And what's more, she remembered doing it.
"So…" Charlotte spoke aloud to herself, looking up and down the hall. "…What did that change, and how will I know it?"
She rushed toward her work room, still chattering nervously. "Will I remember the way things were before? Of course I will, I do now. I remember both versions at once, is that normal?" she hurriedly pushed the door open and went in, looking around, forcing her mind to be still long enough to think.
As if by instinct, her feet turned around and carried her back down the hall to the costume archives. She turned on the flickering fluorescent light and went to the very back, making her way forward, noting all of Bobby's vacuum-sealed costumes.
Peter Pan, B. Driscoll, 1953.
She pushed it back on the rack and kept going. If Bobby hadn't been fired by Disney, her first hope, then there would doubtlessly be more costumes after this, right?
She flipped through three times. Nothing past Peter Pan.
"O-Okay. Then you were fired after all, Bobby. But I warned you, I gave you time to find other work, to buffer your fall." She turned the light off and left the warehouse, thinking what to do next.
If she had truly altered time, then why weren't new memories settling in past the initial one from the re-do of the party? She paused, wondering if she needed to be still for the replacement thoughts to trickle down.
Bracing against the wall, she leaned her head back and waited.
The firing was still there in her mind from when it had happened, yes. She remembered going to Bobby's house. Then there was the move to North Carolina. The letters from him. Johnny Fedora. Joanna and Hazel. The drug-induced birthday card.
"Wait, no!" Charlotte shook her head to shake the memory loose. "That one doesn't belong. It didn't happen. It wouldn't have, not this time."
But the conversation she'd had with Aunt Lila about Bobby's drug-binge followed. Then came the letter about Marilyn Jean, his new wife.
Tears smarted at Charlotte's eyes as she ran through the rest of the memories, horrified.
She'd still come back to live with her mother after Aunt Lila had died, of course. She'd met Bobby at the motel. They had still been intimate, and the memories brought a flush to her cheeks. Then they'd lost touch again, and he'd left for New York. And…
"And what then? Bobby, I told you exactly what to do, I went back and fixed it for you! I made it so you'd know what to expect, so you'd make better decisions!" Charlotte took her dress in both fists, feeling powerful enough to rip it in half with her anger.
"But you're not dead. Tell me you're not dead, and not here. That you're up in New York, but you stopped the drugs. You got medical help. Something happened, something had to happen. Bobby!" she called out, hearing her voice echoing through the halls of the empty building. "Bobby, are you here?"
She was met by silence. But silence was good. Silence meant that surely he was still alive. He was living in New York, thriving, with the art community or a new wife. Maybe even on Broadway. Right? Was that a new memory she was getting, or just a wishful thought?
Oh please, be okay, Bobby. You have to be okay. You don't know how hard I fought for this.
Tentatively, Charlotte made her way back to her work room, begging a sudden tumble of new memories to land on the floor of her brain. Maybe it just took time, and all of those from the past she remembered simply hadn't faded away yet.
She opened her work room door again, closing her eyes and taking a few deep, calming breaths. How would she know for sure? Should she call Mrs. Driscoll? She had to do something, had to know.
"Lotte."
Giving a small shriek, Charlotte backed against the newly closed door, then reached over to flip on the light.
There he stood. Bobby. Beautiful, soulful-eyed, steady Bobby.
She beamed, rushing toward him and landing in his arms. All the air in her lungs seemed to let out at once.
"I'm here, Lotte. It's okay."
But something didn't feel right about the embrace. Bobby's arms were around her at once, but the standard warmth wasn't there. A little of it was, but not the same amount that always had been before. Something about him felt as airy as it did solid.
She blinked in confusion.
"I heard you calling for me."
His voice sounded clear enough, though. Maybe she was just being overly paranoid. "I was calling for you. I… were you in the building?" she asked hopefully. "What were you doing here? Visiting me from New York? Is that still where you live?"
Bobby paused. "I was living there, yes. But now, I… don't really live anywhere, Lotte. Because I'm not really living, see…" he spoke the last sentence delicately.
Charlotte's head jerked up. She felt sick to her stomach.
"It took me a little while to figure it all out and remember what happened. It seems I came here first thing, back to Disney. And I saw you. I'm so happy I did…"
She pulled away from him and began backing away, averting her eyes from his face as the bile rose in her throat. She couldn't stand to stare into his eyes while realizing that every bit of it, every last tear and second spent on fighting so hard to change the past – was for absolutely nothing.
"You are dead," she mumbled. "You're still dead, Bobby, and I want to know why."
"Lotte, I-"
"Why?!" she turned and picked up the decorative plate propped up on the end table beside her, throwing it at the door in a fit of rage she hadn't experienced in years. "Why would you do this?! Why, when I gave you every opportunity not to?!"
Completely undone, Charlotte went next for her work table, clearing her work pile in one swipe, sending a flurry of multi-colored fabrics to the floor. Next, she reached for the pair of pants lodged in her sewing machine, ripping them out and snapping the needle they were held on.
"Do you know what you were to me, to so many people?!" Charlotte's surge of fury come to a climax as she went to pick up the machine itself, feeling a perverse delight course through her veins at the thought of watching it shatter into a thousand pieces of plastic and metal coils.
"Charlotte."
Bobby suddenly appeared out of nowhere, inches from her face and somehow between her and the sewing machine. His eyes were uncharacteristically hard and his voice seemed to boom in her ear.
Charlotte left off her destruction, falling back onto the loveseat behind her and breaking into a sob. As many tears as she had cried over these last few weeks – and collectively they had been more than she'd cried in all of the twenty-nine years prior – she was sure that, this time, they would never stop coming.
Ever.
But after a few moments, the tears did quieten as her frayed nerves were soothed numb by the hand that brushed through her hair gently.
"Bobby," she murmured finally, not opening her eyes. "Why?"
"Bob," he corrected her. She could hear the smile in his voice, which still sounded so strangely present. Very unlike the first time he had appeared to her in her work room, when he'd seemed to only be a shadow of a person.
But the poison of Charlotte's anger seeped in once again, and she swallowed its bitter flavor down, still not daring to look at him.
"I know you're angry with me. You have every right to be."
"Angry?" She snorted, forcing herself to finally look over at Bobby. "I went back in time. I thought if I could tell you about Disney, if I could prepare you ahead of it, you wouldn't have been so devastated. You wouldn't have taken the leap into… into whatever it was we all lost you to."
Bobby nodded slowly. "I know."
She blinked. "You know? So… you watched me break that memory loop of the party, and it changed nothing at all?"
He sighed and closed his eyes, seeming to search hard for words to explain. "In my life, I only remembered the version you changed it to - where you had those words written on your hand, and you went on to tell me I was in danger of being fired by Disney. It wasn't until after I died that I was able to see both versions - the one I had always remembered, and the first one you'd... apparently changed. Overlapping each other, like…" he sat quietly for a moment. "… I can't explain how it is on this side of things. It's almost like, time is no longer exists. You can see what lays outside of it, different ways things could have happened. And so now, I know what you tried to do. And... I know why."
"Then why didn't it work? If, in your lifetime, you remembered what I said…"
Bobby reached up and rested a hand on Charlotte's wet cheek, the corners of his mouth turning up in a small smile. "Lotte, this wasn't about Disney. It wasn't about anyone else, really. It was about me, and some very bad decisions. But that's what you have to understand -I made them. No one else did it for me. I mean, yeah, I was hurt by Mr. Disney…" he shook his head… "but the things I did weren't just due to being fired from the Studio. It wasn't due to any one thing. I just… messed up, and by the time I was able to realize how bad it had gotten, it was too late…" he trailed off.
Charlotte looked down. "I really thought I could save you. I knew I could if I went back and held the caution flags right in front of your face…"
"You couldn't save me from myself, Lotte. Only I could do that, myself and God. And I obviously didn't do a lot of listening to Him during the times when it would have made the most difference." He paused. "I made a lot of people pay for that. My parents. You. All my other friends. Marilyn." Charlotte watched as he swallowed hard, and whispered, "Dan… Aaren… Kathy…"
Bringing her hand up to cover his, which still rested on her cheek, Charlotte felt her heart break all over again at the sound of Bobby's children's names - children who would never know their father the way she wished they could have. Before she could address this, however, she was distracted by the fact that his hand seemed to be cooler than it had been moments earlier. "You know, you were... a little warm a few minutes ago. But now, you're growing cooler again. How... does this work, you being here?"
Bobby pulled his hand back and began massaging the other one with it, as though trying to rub more warmth in. "It's hard to explain, but... think of it as, there are rules in the spirit world. I've been able to figure them out, little at a time I guess, and I'm actually having to work pretty hard right now - and really focus - in order to be this present. It feels almost like... I have a battery, and I can pull a little harder on it at times when I really want to appear more real. But... it does wind down after awhile. I have to go soon, probably even tonight." He slid closer to her. "But I do think I'm ready to see what's next. I wish I could move myself away from the Studio so I could see my kids, my parents. But being here with you, that's good too. I knew that after all I'd put you through unintentionally over the past few weeks, you needed me now."
"Bob, I've always needed you," Charlotte felt the tightness in her voice. She placed her hand on his cheek, then on his shoulder and down to take his hand firmly, as if it might keep him tethered to her longer.
"You've always had me, Lotte," he squeezed her hand. "Sure, the timing didn't ever seem to work out for us to be together the way we'd wanted to be. And I don't know why. But that doesn't mean that, just because we didn't find that traditional brand of 'happiness' here on earth, we were any less connected in the end."
Charlotte listened intently to his words - words she could feel slowly untying the knots inside her stomach.
"You've meant something incredible to me for years. My entire life, I knew I could always come back here, to you. To my friend. It was like… coming home. I remembered you everywhere I went. That's what true connection is, you know?" He studied her face earnestly. "I can see it so clearly now. I always thought that the one way you could be most attached to people was through these labels like wife, girlfriend, best friend, family… but those labels aren't the sole measure of closeness. They're still important, don't get me wrong... but they're not the only force that binds people."
Fresh tears began to sting Charlotte's eyes. "I didn't get nearly enough time with you. Not by half. And it's true that I could probably never have enough time with you, Bobby, but… I always felt so much of my heart went untended because of that. You were the only one who ever really had it."
Bobby's eyes shone. "I know, Lotte. I can see now just how much I really didn't know about the way you loved me. And I'm sorry we didn't have time. I really am. But you've got to remember, this isn't it. What's here on this earth, what we see and learn as living people, it's not all there is. And the longer I'm… this way… the more I can feel it. There is more, and it's saved up for later. Well… later for you, but it's about to open up wide for me."
He began to look upward slightly, as though he were suddenly seeing and hearing things Charlotte couldn't. It made her immeasurably sad, but also curious. "What kinds of things are you sensing?"
Bobby seemed to think for a moment, his eyes taking on a new sparkle. He finally stood up, reaching out a hand to take hers. "Come on. Let's go outside to the courtyard, I want to show you if I can."
Charlotte willingly gave him her hand, standing up to follow him.
The two of them made their way down the corridors and hallways of Disney Studios, along the same paths they'd walked together for years. Finally, they emerged in the courtyard. Bobby lead Charlotte to a spot close to the fountain, where they'd shared their first kisses, and came behind her to slip his arms around her waist, holding her close. The feeling was something like home, and it was bigger to her than it had been in all of their previous embraces combined.
His breath was warm in her ear, just as it had been when he was alive. It tickled, and felt wonderful. "Do you see?"
She felt his arms tighten around her as though he were trying to hang on to something from this earth. But she could now hear the tin, the hollowness in his voice once again. It was increasing. He was losing his energy.
"The stars – they're beautiful," her breath was taken when she was able to focus on the tiny dots above and how they seemed so innumerable… so endless. She had seen many starry nights in her lifetime, but tonight, the orbs seemed almost fluid, full of motion. "Is that where you'll be?"
"Yes. I can feel the pull, I can see it. And, Lotte, it's beautiful. One day, you'll know." She felt his head rest on hers. "And when that time comes, and you're about to find out, I'll be there. Waiting for you. I promise."
Charlotte smiled, staring mesmerized at the dizzying, dancing sky.
She and Bobby had danced. They had laughed, and cried, and been through so much together during his short lifetime. Would all those memories just go away? Would he just go away?
No. He would simply be in another room of time. Having untold adventures, gathering vast amounts of perspective, learning so many of the secrets that had probably kept him up wondering at night during his human years. But most importantly, he would be resting. He needed that. And for all the days and months and years to come that she would spend missing him, she could be confident that she would see him again.
So, with that knowledge, she could let him enjoy himself there… and she could set about enjoying herself here. Couldn't she?
"I love you, Bobby. And it's okay th—"
Charlotte reached down to where his arms had been looped around her waist.
They were gone.
His small warmth had disappeared, and left her standing alone.
Turning quickly, she surveyed the courtyard, her eyes scanning furiously for a glimpse of him walking away, wandering off toward a bright light…? A door?
But no… there was no trace of Bobby. He was just simply not there anymore.
Taking a shaky breath and swallowing hard, Charlotte closed her eyes. "You've gone on then, Bobby. And it's okay. You head on, where the air's sweet, and breathe it in. While you're gone, I promise I'll be all right. And your family will be too."
The most profound peace that could ever be suddenly settled over Charlotte's soul. Bobby might have been part of the reason for it – but not entirely. For there had to be Someone out there who had orchestrated this amazing story. She could feel it. Someone she had always believed in, but had not necessarily understood to be so involved in the little details of humans' lives. But this Someone must have been holding every bit of this in the palm of His hand the whole time - her, Bobby. So much of it was still difficult to grasp, but she knew she could rest there.
Charlotte smiled and opened her eyes, looking around the courtyard for one final time that night. Then she turned to head back to sanctuary of her little work room. There, she would find her purse and keys. In the parking lot, she would find her Corvaire, which she would take home to her mother. And maybe later, she would get around to other things, like a certain letter that had been left in the wastebasket in the corner of her bedroom.
After that, who knew? For the first time, the idea filled her with excitement.
