The Last September: A Novel

THAT NIGHT AS I finally slept, my body contained the rhythm of the ocean, waves rising and falling beneath me. And I dreamt I was at a carnival. The light was insanely bright, nearly blinding, and the rides and people were festooned in festive hues of blue, red and yellow. Best of all, Charlie was beside me. Happiness doesn’t begin to describe the emotion I felt when I saw him. Because he was there. He was so vivid, so exactly as he had been all those years I lived with him. Exactly as intoxicating as the first time I’d seen or kissed him. And he was so happy to see me, in his old Charlie way, picking me up off the ground as he hugged me. I could feel the teeth of his smile against my bare shoulder. Charlie was alive, and he loved me, and I loved him so much that for once I couldn’t be bothered, measuring amounts against each other. He was here. My husband was back.

Charlie lifted his face from my shoulder and looked at me a while. There was still the air of a smile about him, but his expression had become serious. He looked intent, as if he wanted to make sure he committed everything about me to memory. So I looked back at him, realizing this might be my last chance. I took in the fair stubble across his chin, and the round blue eyes, and the unruly blond curls. More than that, I took in the Charliness of him, the aspect that transcended his features, and I realized with a rush of comfort that I didn’t have to memorize him. That was already done, everything about him having long ago taken up residence in the system of tunnels between my brain and heart.

Charlie kissed me. The carnival noise swelled all around us. I smelled the ocean, and cotton candy. Girls screamed from a roller coaster. Bad music blasted from speakers, the first chords of “Smoke on the Water.” While Charlie and I kissed and kissed. It went on forever, his lips on mine, the sense of beyond-joy rising rather than abating, until finally the crowd began jostling us apart.

I held on as long as I could. Charlie did, too. But before long we’d been separated so that only our fingers touched. I watched his face ride away on the sea of people, wanting to call out to him, and knowing I should feel sad, but still relishing this, the last moment I would ever see him.

“Charlie,” I finally called out.

He didn’t have a chance to call back to me. By now, I stood beside a low wall that bordered a river. Charlie stood a good hundred feet away. People of varying heights stepped in front of him, all around him. He kept moving backward. I got one last glimpse—clear as the last time he’d really stood in front of me. But this time I knew to appreciate the moment, to keep it and cling to it, for as long as I could.

And then the crowd closed in, and Charlie was gone.





Acknowledgments Thanks to Peter Steinberg, who has worked so hard for me and has been such a trusted advocate from the very beginning.

Kathy Pories has been so smart and patient with this book. More than an editor, she’s been a friend and collaborator, and I could not be more grateful, or feel more blessed.

Thank you, Chuck Adams, for helping me reshape my ideas about this story. Thanks to everyone at Algonquin, including Elisabeth Scharlatt, Brunson Hoole, Brooke Csuka, and Jude Grant.

Danae Woodward, as usual, read first and offered endless encouragement. Thanks to second readers, Abby Jones and Tara Thompson.

Thank you everyone in the Creative Writing Department at UNCW.

And thanks to David and Hadley, for everything, always.





NINA DE GRAMONT is the author of the story collection Of Cats and Men, which was a Book Sense selection and the winner of a Discovery Award from the New England Booksellers Association. Her first novel, Gossip of the Starlings, was also a Book Sense pick. She is coeditor of Choice, an anthology, and the author of several young adult novels. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina–Wilmington. Visit her online at ninadegramont.com. (Author photo by Harry Taylor.)