"Do you remember Mom getting fired?" Noah's eyes stayed glued to the road, but Charlotte caught that familiar shifty look, the one he always gave when he was avoiding something. She thought it probably had to do with her outburst over the last question he had asked about their mother.
Charlotte's unease mirrored her brother's. Despite her own tangled thoughts and emotions, the question brought back a vivid memory from her early childhood. She was laying on what felt like a big bed but couldn't have been larger than a queen, looking at her mother's scrunched face. Her mom had been crying. It was somewhere between sobbing and the type of crying where tears leak from the eyes with an apathy that's hard to explain. She'd been crying too, curled into her mom. She remembered the fear that had come when her mother had cried. She remembered going into day care and telling the teacher that "Mama was sad, her was crying in her bed." Back to the memory on the bed, her own voice breaking, "Mama what's wrong?"
"Mama's scared honey and sad," Charlotte felt herself almost whispering the words as the memory came to her. "I lost my job, and I don't know when I'll find a new one. And it scares me because I want to take care of you and daddy and brother…"
Charlotte froze, her eyes still on the passing trees, but her mind locked onto her brother's words. He was quoting the memory—word for word. Her pulse quickened as they recited their mother's long-ago confession in unison.
"And I don't know who I am if I'm not taking care of you," she turned from the window and their eyes met before she scolded sharply, "Noah! Watch the road!"
Though she hadn't seen anything to make her worry about his driving, the truck swerved back and forth as he reacted to her yell. "Shit," he muttered, slowing down some as he straightened up his driving.
"What the hell…that was creepy." Charlotte's heart was racing faster than it ever did when she was on her motorcycle or competing in any sport. She tried to place a time where their mother had told them the story. She needed to get the surreal feeling of her brother seeing her own memories out of her head.
"Did she tell you about that?" As Charlotte processed what had just happened, her rational mind whispered doubts about the coincidence. However it was a traumatic memory, she supposed, that might make a difference. "Not exactly," Noah was saying, keeping his eyes on the road almost to an annoying level of dedication after her outburst. Little brothers could be so annoying.
The car ride stretched in awkward silence, Noah's grip tightening on the steering wheel. When they finally reached the house, he stayed quiet, collapsing onto the couch without a word. Charlotte didn't remind him that they were supposed to walk the dogs, dropping to her knees on the soft carpet and accepting all of the doggy kisses the two mutts would give. Luna, the younger golden retriever mix, lasted longer, rolling onto her back for belly rubs as the chocolate lab jumped onto the couch to rest his graying muzzle on Noah's leg. "Then you said 'Mama please don't cry.' and she told you she'd try not to cry anymore."
"It's why I asked about the drugs…well it's hard to explain but something's happening-"
"I think it happened to me," Charlotte blurted out, interrupting him, "when I kissed her goodbye. It was like someone started showing a flick in my brain." Flicks were the most recent version of what had once been known by an unending amount of names for short video clips shared on social media platforms. Noah was nodding slowly because that was exactly what it was like. "It was like she was showing it," he corrected.
"Charlotte, it's been happening since last week. Different memories. They're all from her perspective—or maybe from Mimi's, I'm not sure. At first, I thought it was just stress, like my brain needed a break. But it feels so real."
Noah was filled with so much relief that it almost felt like things were okay. He absently pet Teddy as he watched Charlotte sit down on the other side of the old lab. "That's why I asked before because there's that one and it felt like it was around the same time and it looked like we lived in this real shithole house…like plaster on the walls and floors were like plywood and it just had this feel to it." He tried to find the words but was distracted by his sister's face. She looked amused and also still skeptical. She looked like she might be thinking she was dreaming or they were having some shared delusion. She looked a bit superior too, he thought as she spoke next.
"I can't believe you don't remember," she shook her head, "it's in a ton of the baby pictures too. That was our house when we were babies, like really little, because mom inherited it from an uncle or something and was living in it while she tried to flip it. Anyway," she seemed to pick up on his impatience for her lecture, "things got stalled for one reason or another with the last reason being when she lost that job."
Charlotte paused, petting the dogs on either side of her on the large couch. "We had Scout and Princess back then too and another dog before you were born who I don't remember." She caught her digression and shook her head just slightly. Noah thought it looked like she was trying to talk herself out of it and he steeled himself to convince her.
"It was one of the worst times of her life. She told me that before, she didn't talk about it a lot but I remember her telling me that she had two or three really bad run ins with depression and one was when she lost that job." Charlotte was explaining, the look in her eyes threatening emotions that he knew she'd been trying to keep on a tight leash.
"I felt it," Noah added, wanting to encourage her and to keep her engaged. "But you too…she showed you one too, what was it?"
"Showed me? Mom? I mean I don't know, maybe it was more like an intuition. She can't show anyone anything, Noh." Charlotte had the stubborn look on her face that she always got when she dug her heels in, Noah could tell she was starting to talk herself out of what he knew she'd experienced, "It's crazy to think it was something paranormal."
"It's not paranormal," he explained with the patient measure he took with a new horse at the ranch he worked at part time. "I mean I guess, but not in the way you're saying it. I don't know it could have to do with something science just hasn't explained yet, or like faith."
He was losing her, he could tell from her face. As patient as he was, he was too eager to talk about this all to let it go, however. Noah licked his bottom lip, chewing on where it had become chapped. "Look," he tried a softer and less insistent tone, "just hear me out. I just need someone. I need my big sister. And if you think I'm crazy at the end of it all, we don't have to ever talk about it again and you can tell all your college friends about your psycho brother."
Noah pleaded with her with his eyes until she agreed. They decided to talk about it while they walked the dogs for a while and he explained what had been happening the best that he could. At first, he'd had to stop and start the story over again to explain something he'd forgotten but by the time they'd gotten off of their tree lined property and to the street, he'd found his footing.
He told her about how the first memory had been his own and that he hadn't really thought anything of it. It had been a memory of his early days of kindergarten and their mom dropping him off. It wasn't until later, after another jarring memory, that he realized—he hadn't been himself in that moment. He'd watched his own anxious, round face through the rectangular window of a classroom door, like he was seeing it all through their mother's eyes. The second memory had been of Charlotte, maybe 8 years old, watching her practice a back handspring over and over and over again in the backyard. He'd felt such a strong surge of complex emotions- pride and sadness and joy. When she finally landed it, she ran into his arms excitedly. That was when the surreal jolt of it happened, and he realized he wasn't himself but their mother, it was her emotions he was feeling, her eyes watching Charlotte. He was absent from the memory altogether.
"You're in the beginning stages of disbelief," he explained as they stopped for the dogs to sniff. Noah ignored her as she commented "that's not a thing," and continued.
"I felt the same way at first, I thought I was dreaming and fell asleep. I thought I was probably just remembering things that people told me or I saw in pictures. But I swear to you this is happening. It's real Charlotte. It's real and there's a reason. She's showing us stuff because she wants us to know something or do something. I can't explain it any better, I just know. I think if we were together on it we'd figure it out faster but if you don't want to talk about it or you can't be open to it I get it. It sucks, but I get it."
He'd laid it all out, it was up to her if she wanted to get invested. Noah's mind was made up though, he was going to figure out what their mom wanted from them and he would move heaven and earth to give it to her. Because she had given them everything.