I'm happy people like reading this as much as I like writing it, so I'd appreciate if you kept reviewing what you think ;)
"Hey..." Harry glances at Charlotte as he walks through the room. She hadn't been beside in bed when he woke up that morning, instead she's been coiled up on the living room sofa, clasping an unidentifiable picture in her hands. He walks over and sits down gently next to her, placing his hand softly on her thigh, "how you holdin' up?"
Charlotte lifts her head up slowly, revealing smear marks on the arm the sofa from the mascara trailing down her face. The picture she's holding comes into Harry's view - it's a joyful, pig-tailed Chinese baby, the one they both stared down at for the first time just months previously. Their baby.
"I always look at this when I get upset," Charlotte says quietly, not taking her eyes from the picture, "It always makes me feel better."
"Yeah, well, I'm not surprised..." Harry points at the baby's face affectionately, "...that's one happy face."
"Yeah, it is,"Charlotte smiles slightly, but it vanishes almost immediately after, "for some reason it's just not making me feel the same way today."
"Hey..." Harry looks concerned, "...we'll be seeing that face in a couple of weeks, that's gotta make you feel better right?" He smiles hopefully, "Some much-needed joy to the house... to our lives, huh?"
"I know," Charlotte puts her hand on Harry's, "I know what you're saying, it's just..."
Harry squeezes her hand, "it's just what? Tell me."
"You know that I've always believed that everything happens for a reason?"
"Sure," Harry thinks back, smiling, "if you hadn't gotten a divorce you wouldn't have met me - I remember you telling me that. What about it?"
"It's just..." Charlotte takes a moment to answer and turns her attention to the TV, which is flaunting some trashy show on E! she put on earlier to distract herself, "I can't think of a reason for this."
Harry thinks for a second, "a reason for what?"
"For this," She turns back to Harry swiftly, it was the fastest she'd moved all morning, "Samantha. Everything. How can God put someone through that? Twice? Just to let them be killed by it? It doesn't make any sense." Harry knows she's talking about the cancer. "She was a good person, Harry. She was, she didn't deserve that, and I'm trying so hard to think of a reason - any explanation - why something like this would happen and I can't." Charlotte's tear-streaked face has now become fully lines with fresh ones, "I just can't, Harry."
Harry stares back, helplessness washes over him... drowns him; watching Charlotte lose her belief system before his eyes, the one thing she'd been carrying all though her life and had got her through so much, was one of the most difficult things he'd ever had to endure. Even more terrible than having to watch her in the waiting room of the UCLA Medical Center the night before just after Samantha had died. His heart was breaking in front of her.
"Honey, shitty things like this just happen..." He tries his best to mask this inner-turmoil, "...no one knows why, like that miscarriage you had last year. You were so strong getting through that, and you didn't lose faith then, huh?"
"That wasn't our baby," Charlotte replies unshakably, shaking her head side to side, "I could feel it... but this... this is my friend," she glances back down at the picture, still in her hands but gripped not near as tight. "And now I'm looking at this picture of our daughter and..."
"And what? What is it?"
"I don't know if I can do it, Harry," she blurts out.
"What are you saying?
"How can I raise a child in this world? A world where people suffer so much and die for no good reason? I don't know if I can do that," she gives a last look to Harry and rests her head back down, tightening her coil like a wounded, defenseless animal, creating newly produced mascara smears on the arm of the creme fabric sofa. "I don't even know if I want to," she mutters quietly to herself, but Harry hears every word. She closes her eyes, and the picture falls from her loose grip onto the beige rug below. Harry looks down at it, at the beautiful baby girl within their grasp, and despite her being the same one she doesn't seem like a "happy face" anymore.
Harry had been wrong, this was more harrowing to watch; a woman who'd previously found it impossible to envision her life without children, who'd fought with such remarkable force and ferocity for the last six years to obtain one, finally has one approaching her from across the globe... and now she didn't want it. In a way, Charlotte had died too, and for a minute Harry considers placing a blanket over her, perhaps sitting Elizabeth Taylor and her puppies next to her for comfort and letting her sleep. Instead, he reaches and down and picks up the picture, the picture his wife once stared down at with immediate adoration and stated with tearful determination, "that's our baby, I know it. That's really our baby."
"No," Harry says out loud, shaking his head side-to-side.
Charlotte opens her eyes, "what?"
"I'm not letting this happen, I'm not letting something like this ruin everything for us."
"Harry..."
"No, Charlotte. Listen, the world is a fucked up place sometimes, we know it is... but this baby is here..." he holds up the picture to her face, "...in this world, living in it, waiting to be raised by somebody who will love it with everything they have, and to be honest, I can't think of a better woman to do that than the one sitting in front of me on this creme sofa." Charlotte stares at him, her eyes wide and mouth open. "You can teach her the good things in life," Harry carries on intensely, "the things worth fighting through these hard times for. The world can be a dark place if you want it to be, Charlotte, but you're the light in it, one of its brightest. I knew that the first time I saw you in that divorce lawyers office. So, don't destroy that - don't let it go out. Please."
"Harry, that's..." Charlotte gasps, she's more than overwhelmed, "...that's the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me."
"It's the truth," He replies matter-of-factly. Charlotte lifts herself up and wraps her arms around him lovingly, enveloping him in a passionate embrace. "You're a mother, Charlotte," Harry continues over her shoulder, "and don't let anything let you think otherwise." She nods devotedly, her trickling tears cascading down her porcelain skin onto his naked back.