Epilogue Three
ASHER
The coffee is bitter, but I drink it anyway. Black coffee has become my new addiction. I'm sitting at an outdoor café on Whidbey Island, wearing a baseball hat pulled low, jeans, and a long sleeved cotton shirt. The newspaper is spread out in front of me, and I'm half people watching, half reading.
It's been three months since I got out of rehab.
Three months of trying to figure out what the fuck I'm supposed to do with myself now.
I moved back to Washington from Beverly Hills because I didn't know where else to go.
But living in Seattle comes with its own problems, mostly my history, so I came out to Whidbey.
The air is crisp and clean. It's peaceful here.
The kind of place where you can think. I take another sip of coffee and turn the page of the newspaper.
That's when I hear a laugh. One I know. Julie. My breath catches. I look up slowly, and there she is. Walking down the street with Ryan.
She's heavily pregnant, but also glowing in a way I never saw when she was with me. Ryan is beside her, and on his shoulders is a little girl with blonde hair and a bright pink jean jacket. The three of them look like a family. A real one.
I lift the newspaper quickly, concealing the lower portion of my face. The little girl taps Ryan's head. "Daddy, can we have pancakes with butta and whip cream?"
Ryan laughs. He looks at Julie. "Buttercup, you in the mood for pancakes with whipped cream and butter?"
Julie laughs too. “Always.”
Ryan grins. "As you wish."
And then he takes his girls into the restaurant next door.
I sit there, frozen. As you wish. The Princess Bride. Julie's favorite movie.
He's her Wesley.
I lower the newspaper slowly. They're gone now, inside the restaurant, being a family. I knew they were married. Knew they'd had a kid. But seeing them, seeing it for myself, I feel... relieved.
I understand that I'll never get to directly make amends—step nine of my recovery—with them. It wouldn't be appropriate and they don't need me in their lives. So seeing them happy, knowing they're living a good life, it matters. She deserves that. So does he.
I was never like Ryan. That's not how I was raised. I was never going to be a good friend much less a husband or father. I had no idea how to be a good partner. It's why both of my marriages imploded.
Devon left me for a famous record producer who lived down the street from us in Beverly Hills.
Older guy, big connections. She wants to be a singer, even though she can’t carry a tune.
I found out she was cheating when their sex tape got leaked.
Hearing her call him daddy was like a slap in the face.
But nothing compared to how fucking humiliating it wound up being because it brought all of the bad publicity back about the way she and I had gotten together.
Social media had a fucking field day with that one.
And the more shit they talked, the harder I tried to shut out the voices in my head.
I was already drinking too much, using too much, but after that it got worse.
I ended up in rehab six months ago after I blacked out at a party.
The doctors said my liver was failing. The idea of dying was a wake up call.
I got help. I got clean. And through that, I got clarity too.
Because the not at all surprising truth is that Devon and I were never healthy.
It was toxic from the beginning. I never loved her.
Truthfully, I've never really loved anyone but my mother.
Not even myself. Maybe especially not myself.
My therapist is helping me to process the fact that my father used the love I felt for my mom against me.
He taught me that love is weakness, and I internalized that.
So I always kept pieces of myself detached.
I didn't love Devon because I couldn't. But she was there, and I knew she needed me.
And I liked the idea of being necessary to someone.
The problem is two broken people who start on a lie and who don't get help can never have a shot at anything good.
I'm glad we're separate now. We were destroying each other.
Or I was destroying her because I was already at rock bottom and had been there for months by the time Julie threw me out of the house.
Julie and I were already well on the way to done by the time my dad died.
The starting gun to our rapid demise went off when dad married Caroline.
I lost my mind when that happened. Because I knew he was going to change his will.
Leave everything to her. I turned it over in my head a million times and the answer was never different.
He was a piece of shit who manipulated everyone he ever met.
What better way to fuck me over than to change his will and leave everything to his new wife?
That snapped something inside of me. It wasn't that I needed the money.
It was that I couldn't let him keep fucking pushing me around.
I was so sick of being his favorite thing to destroy.
And the solution was right fucking there.
Do to him what he'd done to so many others.
Remove him before he could do any more damage.
I had the money. I had the hitman. It was all ready to go.
It had to be done fast, before he could finalize the changes to his will.
And then the hit and run happened. I could hardly fucking believe it.
The police asked if my father had enemies. I admitted that he did, and the list was long. A few days later, detectives came to my office and asked me to name them. I gave them twenty-three people I genuinely believed might have wanted my father dead.
Nothing came of it. The accident remained an unsolved hit-and-run. Ancre even offered a million-dollar reward for information, but nothing credible ever came in. Just a parade of crackpots calling the tip line, each convinced they knew something that led nowhere.
Years passed without a single lead. Then someone confessed: Jim Lewis, the man who'd helped build the program that made Ancre what it was. He wasn't even on the list I'd given the police.
The thing all of us missed was how significant it was that Caroline had been in the car too. We'd spent years assuming that if the hit-and-run had been intentional, my father was the target. He was, but so was she.
I never considered Jim for two reasons. First, I believed he'd retired voluntarily. He hadn't. Second, I had no idea why he'd really left Ancre. I didn’t know he’d had something my father wanted. His fiancee. Caroline.
So Dad fired Jim, gave him a generous settlement and company stock, then married the woman he'd taken from him.
Turns out, Caroline was exactly the gold digger I'd always suspected she was.
Jim was wealthy, but he wasn't Dean Stevens wealthy.
If she'd married Jim instead, they'd probably both still be alive.
Instead, my father destroyed his career, stole the woman he loved, and expected him to move on.
Jim never did.
That was my father’s karma. I told Julie once that he was a killer.
I wasn't lying. My father saw himself as someone almost damn near God-like.
And when people got in the way, he made them disappear.
Not by his own hand, of course. Nothing so common as that.
But money can buy anything. Including people with certain skill sets.
He never tried to hide it from me. I was raised to understand that someday, those decisions would fall to me.
Having him killed was going to be my maiden voyage, so to speak. I was playing judge and executioner. And then life stepped in and did it for me.
The difference matters, but not much. Because I have to live with the soul deep understanding that if there had been no accident, I was absolutely going to do it.
That I'm capable of that. I'm not unlike my father at all.
Not in the ways that matter. I wouldn't do it now.
But back then, without a doubt. It's no wonder I'm fucked up.
I fold the newspaper and set it on the table. The sun is shining. The world is moving on.
My father was a man who literally killed the competition and got away with it. Julie never would have married into my family if she'd known what he really was. And if I had been a better person, I never would've put her at risk the way that I did. Exposure to my father was dangerous.
Everything I learned—the manipulation, the cruelty, the cold calculation—I learned from him. Even all his bullshit with the trust was pure manipulation. From beyond the grave he was exerting his power. A final fuck you from him to me, letting me know that I never met his standards.
A piece of shit and a failure as a father to the bitter fucking end.
I stand up, leaving bills on the table. Seeing Julie and Ryan feels like a sign.
They found happiness. I didn't ruin their lives.
And I feel like now that I'm sober and working on breaking the cycle, I have a shot at something better, too.
Because I'm tired of being my father's son.
It won't be easy. It won't erase what I've done.
But it's a start. And right now, a start is all I've got.
I walk away from the café, the sound of seagulls overhead, the salt air filling my lungs. A weight has been lifted. For the first time in years, I feel like I can fully breathe.
And that has to count for something.
The End
Thank you so very much for reading The Illusion.