Legal Legacy (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) by Kimball Lee

because of her. He should tell her not let herself be pulled out of their perfect orbit by his brother… had he told her to beware of Jude, did she already know?
    “Jude,” he said before he fell silent and travelled back again to the cottage where Charlotte waited for him and pleasure was intense and love for a woman was a gift from God.
    “Jude?” Charlotte asked shocked at Finn’s words, but his eyes stayed closed and he didn’t speak again until the very end.
    *
    Although Finn had slept soundly through the night Charlotte had tossed and turned. She was restless and she spent one minute curled next to him only to move to the far side of the bed and then return to his side as the night wore on. But she made sure that either her arms or legs or toes were always in contact with his hot skin or that her fingers were lost in his long silky hair. She got up and went into the bathroom as dawn broke through the wavy window-glass and Georgina and Hadley smiled sleepily as they came into the room. They had moved in with Charlotte when Finn stopped speaking and it had all gone quickly downhill. He had been unresponsive for five days and he wasn’t suffering, the caregivers from hospice assured them. Five short days were nothing at all, a blessing really, as Finn’s breathing became shallow and his heartbeat slowed.
    Georgina set a basin of warm water on the bedside table every morning and spoke sweet words to her son as she gently sponged his cheeks, his forehead, his beautiful lips. Hadley climbed on the bed and sat cross-legged looking into her father’s face, and she scrolled through Charlotte’s iPod searching for a song that might elicit some response from him.
    Charlotte padded quietly across the room and stood at the foot of the bed when a certain song played on the IPod and Finn opened his eyes and looked right at her and spoke two words.
    “My love!” He whispered and the song filled the room as Finn’s soul left the earth.
    “Oh Mom!” Hadley cried, tears washing over her cheeks as her fingers fumbled, trying to stop the music.
    “No, let it play,” Charlotte said as all the color drained from her face and Georgina wept. “He wanted us to hear the words and understand… he wanted me to know.”
    And so the song played and after that morning Charlotte would never listen to it again without reliving the saddest moment of her life.
    “If I could reach the stars, pull one down for you, shine it on my heart, so you could see the truth. That this love I have inside is everything it seems, but for now I find it’s only in my dreams. And I can change the world, I will be the sunlight in your universe. You would think my love was really something good, Baby if I could change the world. If I could be king, even for a day, I’d take you as my queen; I’d have it no other way. And our love would rule this kingdom we have made, until then I’d be a fool wishing for the day, that I can change the world .”
     
    *
    Charlie spent those last difficult days with Bly and Evangeline. Bly had settled him into Atticus’s room earlier in the week when Finn’s condition took a turn for the worse. Bly and Evangeline had done their very best to ease the boy’s anxiety and make him as happy as possible. Evangeline rose from her bed early that day and as she sat on the balcony looking out over the ocean she spotted a dozen large gray fins breaking through the waves. Spotting a school of whatever they were, sharks, she supposed, was an unusual sight for a woman who’d spent most of her life in land-locked Paris. Sharks or not, they were an astonishing sight, luminescent and shimmering as they circled just off shore. She woke Charlie and led him out onto the balcony and stood holding his hand. Bly joined them and Charlie looked up at him with unshed tears in his eyes and Bly knelt down and hugged him. Charlie wrapped his thin arms around Bly’s neck and held on as if his life depended on it. The three of them stayed on the