Saving Charlotte by Pia de Jong

Author:Pia de Jong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

The next day, after Robbert has left, I search the Web. But to my complete frustration, I can’t find the grandmother’s blog. That entire day I keep trying. It must be somewhere. After all, Robbert found it. But where is it?

“Could you please come home early today?” I beg Robbert. “I need to find this boy.”

But when he gets home, the children need all our attention. It’s not until late that evening that we can finally sit down. I watch eagerly while Robbert types in the same words that I had typed in earlier. Boy, congenital myeloid leukemia, eight, remission, grandmother. Nothing appears on the screen.

“How is this possible?” Robbert says. “Yesterday I searched a bit, and the grandmother’s blog just popped up.”

“Maybe add broken arm,” I say. “Soccer game.”

Still nothing comes up. We try for an hour, break for some tea, then try again.

“I don’t understand it,” Robbert says. “He was right there last night, looking at me from under his baseball cap.”

“We just have to search longer,” I say. “We will find him.”

But after midnight we give up. The little boy just seems to have disappeared, before he even arrived. But I cannot let go of him. The image Robbert described to me of him is so vivid, it is as if he is sleeping between Charlotte and me. He seems so close I can almost touch his skin, smell the grass under his shoes. When I’m about to fall asleep, I realize I am missing something crucial. Something so important I can’t believe I did not think of it earlier.

“What’s the boy’s name?” I ask aloud, waking up Robbert.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I try to remember, but I can’t.”

I am again wide awake. Through the window, I watch the stars, the moon, the shadows above the canal with its night-blue water. I am floating above all of them, weightless. I realize that the miracle boy with his broken arm is the answer to prayers I dared not make. I remember Robbert once telling me about the universe being wider and bigger than I could ever imagine. Somehow I am tumbling into that unimaginable space, and yet at the same time I suddenly have a sense of direction. I have to find a small kid who must be somewhere in that vast universe.

When I eventually do fall asleep, he appears to me. The boy with the dark brown curls and a broken arm. He puts his hands on either side of my head and turns my face toward him. He looks undaunted, as only an eight-year-old boy can be. Ready to conquer the world.

“So there you are,” I say. “I was looking for you in the wrong place. Why did I even think I would find you in my computer?”

He smiles at me with huge eyes, looking exactly as I imagined. “Hey, a soccer ball,” he says, picking up the Ajax ball my boys left on the floor and bouncing it up and down. “Glad to meet Charlotte’s mom,” he says.

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