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Excerpt, Nothing New Under the Sun
Snapshot: Charlie Warner-Fletcher, 36; June 2009
“I want a divorce.” The words rang in her ear like a huge bell, as Charlie Fletcher held the phone with her mouth hung open in disbelief. He said it with such conviction, yet his reasoning couldn’t be farther from the truth. How could he think she didn’t care about him when she spent the last ten years of her life trying to make a good home and a comfortable life for her family? Lyle told his wife that he was moving out because he didn’t think it would work out between them. He hadn’t been happy for some time, and he felt they had made a mistake getting married in the first place. She would obviously be married to her family and no one else, according to him.
Charlie couldn’t understand where this was coming from, or what she had done to push him to this point. She tried and tried to come up with a scenario, an argument, or something that would have given her a hint that this was coming. There was nothing. She thought everything was fine. Their sex life was great. They weren’t having financial problems. Sure, they were both really busy lately, but that was par for the course. Still, he said the words and sounded like he believed them. He said she apparently cared nothing for him because she was too wrapped up in her family and she wasn’t willing to make the changes he wanted her to make.
Lyle had suggested to Charlie some weeks before that they move away from Maryland and start over somewhere else—Detroit, San Diego, and New York were options. They had discussed it, but there were so many reasons why this wouldn’t be a good time. The firm was doing so well for Charlie and her sisters; it was Charlie’s baby she had started years before. And with their parents traveling, Charlie wanted to be close to her family. She didn’t want to uproot the twins either, and she didn’t have a desire to live in any of those places where she would have to start over; she didn’t have anybody in any of those places. Her entire family was right here in the DC area, and for ten years she and Lyle were fine with being in Maryland. They met in Maryland, were married in Maryland, built a house in Maryland. This was home. Lyle couldn’t make her understand why he no longer wanted to be here. So they dropped the subject, and it was never brought up again—or so she thought.
She tried to speak, but only sobs came out. “You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong!” was all she could say. Lyle gave her his disapproving tone of voice and told her he had already found a place and moved his stuff out of the house, so she could stop with the theatrics. Charlie usually wasn’t the type to fall apart, but where Lyle was concerned, she had developed a real soft spot; getting married and starting a family was like completion for her. She had done everything else she set out to do. And now he wanted to end it? She lost it, briefly.
Charlie sat in her plush office chair, but found no comfort in it. Her mind spun, trying to grasp what Lyle was telling her, and trying to ascertain why. She asked again what the problem was, and it angered him. He sneered, “I told you; you don’t give a damn about me, and I’m tired of it. You don’t even listen. I’m gone.” Then he hung up—just like that. And before she got home that night, he was gone—just like that.
Charlie didn’t sleep much that night; she tried to bury her sobs in her pillow so the kids wouldn’t hear. She felt depleted, as if she had vomited all night and was leveled to dry heaves. Her pillow was anything but dry. What just happened? How would she tell their sons what she herself did not understand? So many questions filled her head, but there were no answers readily available.
Charlie had this fortitude in most situations that made her believe she would be able to hold it together through anything. She had seen some tough times; she lost her best friend several years before to an asthma attack. How does a young woman of twenty-six just drop dead after living with and managing an illness all her life? Charlie never understood that, but even though it broke her heart, she kept going.
When her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, she helped her mother care for Gran, while she nursed babies and ran the business too. When Gran died a few months after that, it was a devastating blow, but still she kept going. She didn’t slip inside herself and stop living; she kept making moves, working toward the business she wanted, and she got it done. R.A.G.E., Incorporated was a household name because Charlie started building it when she was in grad school—with blood, sweat, and tears—while working a crappy job she absolutely hated. But if she was to live out her dreams, it had to be done, and that was all there was to it. In a way, the two deaths propelled her to get it done; she wanted to finish what she started, because that’s what Gran and Kiara expected, and that’s what she said she would do.
Charlie Warner-Fletcher did what needed to be done whenever she had to—period. This time would be no different, she told herself. She was determined that with her faith and fortitude, she would get to the bottom of this thing and together she and her husband would turn it around. Lyle obviously loved her, and he would no doubt want to fight for her and with her. How did she get here anyway?
Once upon a time, Charlie Fletcher was on top of the world. At age thirty-five, she was married to one of the top attorneys in PG County. They had a set of nine-year-old twin boys, Logan and Lamar. They lived in Southern Maryland, where they had a home built some years before, with everything they both wanted in it, and a huge yard surrounding it. That was something Charlie had dreamed of for years. She was a successful businesswoman with a consulting firm she had started for herself and her three sisters.
The sisters all had specialties—Taylor specialized in hairstyling and beauty concepts, and was stylist to some of Maryland’s elite; Madison was a financial analyst; Peyton was an interior decorator and wedding coordinator; and Charlie had her collection of specialties—organizing, marketing, and an entrepreneurial spirit, with degrees in Business and Communications to boot. The family business was booming; the sisters had a service or a referral for anyone in need of anything, and Charlie was living out a dream of hers—working with her three best friends, with a lucrative business and a beautiful family.
Her marriage was like any normal one probably was, she thought. They occasionally argued about whatever, but then they made up all night. And it was never anything really serious. She and Lyle took trips all the time. It was nothing for them to sneak away for the weekend and leave the boys with his mom. They actually had a lot in common too. They were both passionate people, intelligent, and ambitious. They seemed to belong together….