The Dying Story (Chasing Illusions #3) | A Novel

Chapter 9

When comes to things that troubled me, there is only one thing I do—I place it out of sight.

For the rest of the week, what Charlotte sent to me laid on my desk, utterly untouched. When I wrote my new articles or end up doing research for them, my eyes always end up straying to those untouched items, but I never let myself think further about it. Instead, I diligently read the draft again and again, picking the smallest hint of a badly constructed sentence or a fact that wasn't placed in. I hate it when I make a mistake of the facts. As a journalist, I cannot afford to do that.

A week passed, and it almost feels as though the whole parcel being delivered to my home has never happened and all was a dream. I don't want to touch it at all.

But leaving them here do not feel right. These are the last parts of Charlotte, and while they were given to me, I feel as though it is best to give it to her family members. Especially the journals, since they most likely appreciate them more.

I looked at them, and I couldn't bear seeing them, as if they were a reminder of my mistake.

Whatever Charlotte thought, I didn't think I deserve this responsibility at all.

After all, in the time I could have done something, I failed her.

————

I called John the next day, her husband who took about three calls before he picked it up.

"Hello." I couldn't detect the emotion in his voice, but John had always been a lot more on the unemotional side. Even though I saw him at the funeral, he hadn't tried to interact with anybody at all, silently seating at the corner and staring at his wife's coffin.

"Hello, John."

"Emily?"

"Yeah."

"What do you want?" A sound of shuffling sheets reach my ears. I check the time. It's three p.m.

"I..." I don't know what to say—his voice sound so forlorn, so lost.

"Charlotte sent something to me. Before her death, I mean."

"Did she?"

"Yeah, and I want to give them to you. They are...her personal things."

"Personal things? Like what?"

I breathe in. "Her journals, John. She sent them to me. I feel like you are the one who should keep them over me."

John is silent for a moment. I probe him further, "John, I know Charlotte's death is hard on you. These journals are the last few pieces of her on earth. I'm sure you want them, don't you?"

"I don't."

"Huh?" What in the actual world? "What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly what I say, Emily. I don't want any of it. Charlotte sent it to you, not to me."

"But you are her husband. You should have it—"

"Husband, huh?" He laugh, bitter and utterly filled with defeat. "I don't fit to be one."

"John, what do you mean?"

But he didn't respond to my question. "Charlotte isn't the type to give that kind of thing to anybody. If she really wanted me to have them, she would have given to me directly or left them in this house. The fact that she didn't do that means I'm not qualified to read them at all."

"Still, you are her husband—"

"Doesn't matter." His tone got even more bitter. "She gave them to you. That means you are the one who should have them."

"I don't deserve to read them."

"Trust me, anybody is more deserving to read them than me." The phone hang up, and I close my eyes, feeling the urge to crush the phone to pieces with strength that I don't have. Then I try to call Charlotte's mom, but I cannot reach her—she's probably still bitter about me.

I slam the damn phone on the table, sitting on my office chair as I rub through my hair. I must look like a mad man now, if somebody sees me through a window or something. For a long time, I sit there, as still as possible, with the urge to scream but the awareness that it wouldn't do anything. Charlotte won't return back; this last thing would still be in my hands.

Why me?

You are the only person I trust.

"Trust?" I spoke out loud to the empty air. "What did I do to earn them? Why must it be me who write this? Why did you think I can do this?"

It seems like ages when I lean my head against the office chair, thinking and thinking. I once again go on the memory lane, replaying memories I had of Charlotte. The times we were together. The times we cared for each other. The times we learn to grow as a person.

Charlotte was my first friend I made in University back then, who I eventually became flat mate with to cope with the rent costs. We worked in the same place for our first jobs, we were interested in the same things, aka books, movies and our taste in philosophy. We got along very well, and she was almost like my real sister. It wasn't until she got together with John that we started to have less time together.

Five years of being with John—and done, she's gone. No more than this pile of journals, a barely started manuscript, and her cryptic suicide note.

I learned that some lives aren't meant to be lived.

That line from her suicide note jog me back to a distant memory.

"Hey Em?" Charlotte lied on the ground, with a book on her chest.

"Hmm?" Back then, I was typing into the computer, finishing up an assignment—Charlotte, as always, was far faster than me.

"Do you believe that life is precious?"

I looked up, staring at her. "What do you mean?" That's how a lot of our conversations come—she would ask the most controversial and unthinkable questions and make me answer them.

"It's a thing people believe in." She closed her eyes for a few seconds before sitting up. Tracing something on the floor, she softly spoke, "But something that nobody really questioned before. As if it's something obvious."

"Well," I didn't really know how to answer her but I gave her a half-assed answer anyway, "you only get one life to live. If you don't make it the best out of it, you won't have a second chance."

She gave me one of those mysterious smile, the kind that says "you are same as the rest". "Really? What if that one life you have is something you can't make the best out of it? A life, let's say, that's so full of pain that you can't find happiness."

"Well, we should always try nevertheless."

Usually she pushed for more. She would push me to think, push me to question my own inherent beliefs, push me to question whatever biases I had. But back then, she didn't. She just lied back down and said, "If it was that easy. I wish."

What could I have said then? If I was more interested in that conversation, would I have been able to know more? Would I have been able to change her mind about life? Would she have seen her own as precious? Would she have pulled through? Why? Why didn't she see her life as meaningful? I know how it felt, but...

But as I think about her draft, about her pleads, I feel like my old thinking about her death is replaced with the need to make sense of her death. As much as I understand what might have driven her to kill herself, I want to know the how and the why. No, I need to know. Because if anything, the draft of that story is a cry for help, a cry for a final chance to live and for some reason, Charlotte couldn't see any hope in continuing it.

She died, thinking there was no hope left to continue on.

I need to know what destroyed that hope.

I need to know the full story, even if it will hurt me the most.

With that in mind, I open the first journal.