Chapter 76
76
Drew
It’s all going to come out now. The way Oliver pulled Evie and Harriet, inch by inch, from the family until he ripped that last shred of connection they’d all been clinging to. It was never just one thing. It was microwounds, inflicted over several years, always on top of scars that hadn’t yet healed. Withdrawing Harriet from their world, like they did from mine until I reached out to Chloe, wasn’t the only reason that, when we landed on their doorstep, they said they couldn’t do this anymore. It was a big one, but after years and years of Oliver chipping away, digging at them, planting suspicion in Evie’s mind, and manipulating emotions in both directions, it had been the last straw. They just had nothing left. Winning Evie back—only to risk losing her, and potentially Harriet, all over again—would take more emotional energy than they had.
“Once Harriet was well, Chloe and Oliver came to an arrangement,” I explain. “You two had Harriet every other weekend.”
Evie’s eyes widen at the idea of having been a part-time parent. The reality is that she’d reveled in it. Even in high school, though she had no experience with babies, they’d featured in her long-term life plan.
“When Harriet got a little older, she stayed with you for half the school holidays. You’d take her to Newcastle. She had the whole ‘Grandparent Experience,’ as your dad used to call it. It was far more love than she ever saw from the other side.”
Evie nods. “That makes a lot of sense. But I don’t understand how this went wrong.”
I sigh. She has to hear it. “Oliver became progressively jealous. He didn’t want to share Harriet with other people. He never got over the fact that I’d been able to help his daughter in a way that he couldn’t. He was already jealous enough before that, of you and me.”
“You and me?”
Always.
“We were never together, you and I. We had that one kiss after you’d broken up …” One kiss, before that kiss for the ages on the deck. “But he was jealous of everything. And everyone. Even Harriet, in the end, and the love everyone lavished on her, particularly when she was having treatment.”
And that was exactly the problem. The further Harriet wormed her way into all our lives, the more envious Oliver became. With a much older sister who was living overseas, he’d effectively grown up as an only child. And then along came someone who absorbed all the attention. It didn’t matter that she was his own child, and deathly ill. He was that narcissistic.
“The focus on Harriet ate him up,” I say.
“But she was his daughter! What kind of a person was I married to?” Evie asks. It’s such an innocent question, and I’m stuck for a response.
“It reached a point where he closed you both off from everyone. By that stage, I think you’d lost the will to fight for us. You all but said so in the last email you sent to your parents.”