Page 109 of One More Chance
It made me want to punch him.
"No, I'm not. I'm just curious how you pulled it off is all."
He stood there, smiling like he knew the punchline to a great joke he was about to share, before he said, "Well, I suppose I did the same thing you did. Sloane told me about your own 'well-timed and lucky investments' as you called them."
This fucking guy.
"Fair," I said before I moved on to my next point. "Sloane also told me about how you've managed to diagnose and identify cases that no other veterinarian could figure out. How you've always seemed to know what's wrong with your patients, even when there's no sensible way you could or should know. She said you were a Sherlock Holmes for pets."
That lit up his face, replacing the shit-eating-grin he'd had with a genuine, warm smile. "She said that? Sloane said that about me?"
"Not in those exact words," I lied, then asked, "But how do you do it?"
He shrugged as his mask of cordial calm slipped back over his face. "I'm a good doctor. There is no mystery to it."
We stood there in silence for awhile, watching one another, his unreadable smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
Fuck beating around the bush, big guy.
I asked, “How do you know things before they happen? You’re not normal, are you?”
I was so blunt that the briefest flicker of aghast panic flashed across his face. But he just deepened his smile and shook his head. "What is normal, Levi? Which of us are normal?" He picked up a clipboard off the desk and turned to leave. "As stimulating as this has been, you are here to collect Sloane's things and I need-"
"You remember what your life with her was like, don't you?"
The smothering silence in the clinic became a tangible thing, enveloping, entombing us like flies in amber.
Then he exhaled a ragged and stuttering breath as he sat his clipboard back on the desk, running a hand through his golden hair. I saw a brief flicker of guilt in his eyes.
"Yes, I remember," he said.
"Because you're from the future," I said.
To which, he laughed in my face.
"Oh, good god, Levi! What?" he asked as he gasped for breaths. "Did you just ask me if I'm from the future? Like a time traveler?"
My face burned and I knew I had to be fire engine red at that moment. I scrambled for what to say, how to turn this into a joke, or make a lame excuse about it being an idea for one of Sloane's paranormal romance books. I stood there, mouth agape, looking like a fish gasping for air.
Charlie managed to compose himself to say, "Levi, whatever happened to me obviously happened to both you and Angie… but it wasn't time travel."
I stared at him as if he'd lost his goddamn mind and said, "I know what happens over the next twelve years, because I've already lived through it and I know that you did, too. What the fuck would you that?"
"With the utmost respect, Levi, you don't know shit."
He must have seen my anger rising: brow furrowed, jaw clenched, hands balled into fists.
Charlie raised his hands in surrender as he said, "It's okay. I don't know shit, either. Too much has changed, and we have changed too much, for our futures to be the same."
How is it I refrained from killing Angie, but I'm about to murder this guy?
"Let's take this slow and walk through it step by step," I said.
"Sure. But if we're doing this, let's at least do it over coffee," he said as he walked down the hall and gestured for me to follow him.
"You remember living another life, one in which you married Sloane?"
He took a heavy breath and wistfully said, "Yes."
