Letter Twenty-Two #7
Nic yanked both hands from his face, glaring at me.
“Oh, is this funny to you? You poured my scotch down the drain, I’m getting charged for scheduled therapy sessions you refuse to attend, you ordered all that stuff to fuck with me, and you walk around here giving me the silent treatment.
Why? What have I done to you? What did I do? ”
“You’re a liar,” I said.
“What did I lie about?”
“Everything. I can’t trust you to be honest with me—ever—about anything.”
“Listen,” Nic said, tossing out a hand, his voice cautious, “I lied about talking to your mom because I didn’t want to hurt you. We’ve been through this. I thought you understood.”
“That woman on the street—I saw you outside talking to her.”
“Forget about the woman, Elliot. She’s gone.”
“You obviously know each other. The way you got in each other’s faces? Your body language? She isn’t the person you said she was.”
“She’s someone off the opponent’s team. I’ve met her before. I told her to stay away after the first time you saw her, but she came back. I threatened to take legal action if she didn’t stop watching our house.”
“Oh, yeah?” I narrowed my gaze at him. “What’s her name?”
“Wren,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “Her name’s Wren.”
Wren didn’t seem like the type of name he could pull off the top of his head that quickly.
“See,” I said, “I want to believe you, but I don’t know if I can. Tell me, Nic. How would the Harrises react if they learned how many secrets you’ve been keeping from them?”
“Not well,” he admitted. “They’d be angry with me.”
“Would they break up with you?”
He pulled back. “Break up with me?”
“End your friendship.”
“I hope not. I like to think I’d be able to explain.”
“Would you beg them to forgive you?”
He nodded. “Probably. If they weren’t willing to. Yes.”
“Do you love them?”
“John and Libby? Of course I do. They’re family.”
“Do you love them more than you loved my mom?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“You didn’t beg her to stay.”
“You don’t know what I did.”
“Well, did you? Did you beg her to stay with us, Dad? Did you beg her to come back?”
“It was complicated.”
“What does that mean? You wanted her gone?”
“Is that what this is about? You think I’m lying about your mom?”
“Answer my question!”
“I didn’t beg her to stay, okay? I wanted her to want to stay. I wanted a lot of things, but she didn’t, and by the time she left, I’d had enough. I was done wanting things she couldn’t give me.”
“Why didn’t she want to stay?” I asked.
“She wasn’t happy.”
“Why not?”
Nic sighed. “She just wasn’t, Elliot.”
“Why? Did you ask her to do things she didn’t want to do?”
Nic looked away. “I did. I asked for things she didn’t want. I asked her to be someone she wasn’t. I asked for too much.”
“If you made her so unhappy, why was it selfish of her to leave? Why was she bad for wanting to be free?”
“Because she abandoned you.”
“Did she abandon me? Or did you force her to leave me?”
Nic leaned back, appalled by this question. “What?”
“You said you would never have let her take me away from you. Maybe she wanted to take me, and you said no. Maybe you wielded all that money and power you have to keep me here. Maybe I’m not allowed to have pictures of her—to see videos of her, to meet her—because I would see her being a normal person and that doesn’t fit your narrative.
Maybe you don’t want me to know her full name because I’ll look her up, and she’ll tell me a story much different than the one you’ve told me my whole life. ”
“Are you serious?” he asked, gaze flashing. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
“If you’re telling the truth about her, then why all the secrecy, Dad?”
“Elliot, we’ve been through this. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“But I’m already hurt!”
How could he not see? Why didn’t he understand? How screwed up my life was? Because of him?
“Growing up without a mom? Hurts! Being denied normal life experiences? Hurts! Having a phobia of being left alone because I’ve never been left alone? Hurts! Not being able to trust my father to be honest with me about anything? Fucking hurts!”
Nic watched me as I tried to regain my composure, his eyes huge—and sad, too.
“But do you want to know the number-one thing that hurt me the most?” I asked, my voice low and ominous. “Being abandoned by you. That one time.”
Surely you saw it, too: the cautious lean back, the fear in his eyes, the regret clouding his face. He didn’t even have to ask what I meant, Casey. He knew this was about the time he’d locked me in his office.
“But we don’t talk about that, do we? Hours of therapy. Hours of talking—you and me, sitting at the dining table, pouring over the horrible things I’ve done—but we don’t ever talk about the horrible thing you did. It’s easier to pretend that really horrible thing never happened.”
“You needed me,” Nic said quietly, “and I shut down. Believe me, if I could go back, I would. It’s one of my greatest failings as a parent.”
“One of? Meaning you have many? Is one of them making me hate my life?”
“You hate your life?” Nic whispered.
“What’s to like? I don’t actually know my father at all.
Even when you give me something normal, I’m not allowed to have it in a normal way.
I’ve been trapped inside this dark dungeon of a house—like a prisoner—my entire childhood, and you’ve made it impossible for me to leave.
My life is one giant freak show, and I hate it.
You do nothing but control, smother, and let me down, and I can’t wait until the day I finally get to be free of you, too. ”
Nic nodded, his eyes full of tears. He glanced away again, swiped at his face when one of those tears fell, then left the room.
I’d gone full throttle on my dad—and I didn’t feel good about it. I never did. In the end, lashing out never felt as liberating as I hoped it would.
“Jesus, Elliot,” you whispered. “Is that true? You hate your life?”
“I don’t know anymore.” I rushed upstairs before you could ask more questions.
A few days later, I found two boxes sitting on my desk.
One contained all the underwear I’d ordered, and the other contained the toys.
But opening them felt wrong after the way I’d used the items to mess with my dad—the toys seemed especially tainted and gross, considering they’d been purchased with my dad’s credit card—so I shoved the boxes under my bed, where one of them remains unopened to this day.