When fear won…
I’ve spent so many years being afraid of you, Stephen. Not afraid that you would hurt me. Never that. Afraid that one day you would know the real me.
The man I loved was brave enough to face anything. Violence. Loss. Betrayal. Death. You never backed away from hard truths. You looked them in the eye and dealt with them. And I have spent half my life running from one.
Every time I put pen to paper, I tell myself this will be the entry where I finally write it all down.
The entry where I stop hiding and tell you everything.
But then I imagine your face. I imagine you reading these pages.
I imagine your hands shaking. I imagine that look in your eyes disappearing.
The one that always made me feel like maybe I wasn’t as broken as I thought I was.
And I stop. Because if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there are some wounds love cannot survive.
I’ve spent years convincing myself that what I did was necessary.
That every choice I made was for our daughter.
That every compromise had a purpose. That every sacrifice bought her another day of safety.
Maybe some of that is true. Maybe none of it is.
When you’re drowning, you stop worrying about whether you’re swimming in the right direction.
You just fight to keep your head above water.
That was my life, Stephen. One crisis after another. One impossible choice after another. One lie followed by another lie until eventually I couldn’t remember where the truth ended and the deception began. And somehow, through all of it, I never stopped loving you.
That’s the part that makes the least sense.
You should have faded. You should have become a memory.
A mistake. A chapter in my life that ended when I ran.
But you never did. You were there every morning when I opened my eyes.
Every birthday. Every Christmas. Every time I looked into our daughter’s eyes.
Your eyes.
Every time she laughed. Every time she cried. Every milestone you should have witnessed. You were there. Not beside me. Not where you belonged. But in my heart.
Always.
Do you know how many times I almost called you?
Hundreds. Maybe thousands. I’d pick up the phone and stare at it.
I’d imagine hearing your voice. Imagine telling you where we were.
Imagine hearing you say my name. And then I would remember what I’d done.
What I was still hiding. And I would hang up.
A coward.
That’s what I was. A coward pretending she was protecting everyone else when, really, I was protecting myself.
Protecting myself from your disappointment.
Your anger. Your disgust. Because I could survive almost anything, Stephen.
But I don’t think I could survive you looking at me and realizing I wasn’t the woman you loved.
I couldn’t survive you taking our daughter away from me.
The cruelest part is that I still don’t know which version of me was real.
Was I the girl who loved books and quiet afternoons and dreamed about a future that didn’t involve clubs and violence?
Was I the woman who loved you so much it physically hurt sometimes?
Was I the mother who would have burned the world down for her children?
Or was I the Dougal? The liar. The manipulator.
The woman willing to sacrifice anyone, including herself, to get the outcome she wanted.
Maybe all of them are true. Maybe that’s what people are. Not good or evil. Just collections of choices.
But if all of them were real, then none of them were me. If I could be every version depending on what was needed, then there was no core underneath. No true self. Just a hollow space that filled itself with whatever shape the moment demanded.
The thing is, Stephen, my name is Christina.
That part was real. But Christina was never really...
me. Not in any way that mattered. I was always just one half of the Dougal twins.
Interchangeable. Replaceable. Caroline and I looked so alike that sometimes I don’t think people saw us as separate people at all.
That made it easy to hide. Easy to disappear.
When the Golden Skulls came for my family, when they wanted to wipe us out, James and Caroline were the only ones strong enough to survive.
Only them. They hid me. They protected me.
And from that moment on, I was indebted to them in a way I could never fully repay.
That debt meant I belonged to them. I owed them loyalty.
Obedience. Whatever they needed from me, I became.
Because that’s what you do when someone saves your life.
You become theirs. You become whatever they need.
And I was so used to being interchangeable with Caroline, so used to being defined by the Dougal name, that becoming something for them felt natural.
Easy. Like I was finally fulfilling my purpose.
I was never a person, Stephen. I was a role.
I was the girl that needed protecting. The woman who owed a debt.
The mother who had to keep her children safe.
The woman you loved. But underneath all of that?
There was nothing. Just a hollow space where a real person should have been.
That made it so easy to hide what I became.
Because I had nothing to hide behind. I was always just what was required in the moment.
And God knows I’ve made enough choices for ten lifetimes.
I keep thinking about our daughter. About what happens when I’m gone.
I know Gator will protect her. I’ve asked him to keep this journal hidden from her, to give it only to you if you ever come looking for her.
She’s always been too much like both of us not to ask questions.
Stubborn like you. Relentless like me. And I am terrified of what she might discover.
Not because she’ll hate me. I think children always find a way to love their parents despite their failings. No, I’m afraid she’ll hate herself.
She’ll blame herself for my choices.
Because that’s who she is.
Because that’s what secrets do. They spread.
They infect everything they touch. And this final one...
This last truth... It reaches farther than all the others.
Farther than Caroline. Farther than James.
Farther than the clubs. Farther than the years I spent running.
It changes things. It changes everything.
Sometimes I tell myself I should take it to my grave.
That maybe some truths don’t deserve daylight.
Maybe some sins should die with the people who committed them.
But then I remember you. I remember the way you always demanded honesty.
The way you believed truth mattered, even when it hurt.
Especially when it hurt. And I loved that about you.
Even when I was busy proving I wasn’t worthy of it.
I wish I could tell you that if I had my life to do over again, I would make different choices. That I would be stronger.
Braver.
Better.
But I don’t know if that’s true. Because changing the past means risking our daughter. And every road in my life somehow leads back to her. Maybe that’s another excuse. Maybe I’ve spent my entire life wrapping ugly decisions in beautiful intentions. I honestly don’t know anymore.
Cancer gives you a lot of time to think.
Too much time. The nights are the worst. When the house is quiet and our daughter is asleep and there’s nothing to distract me from myself.
That’s when I think about you. I wonder if your hair is gray now.
I wonder if your knees hurt when it rains.
I wonder if you still drink your coffee too strong.
I wonder if you’ve been happy. I pray you’ve been happy.
You deserved that much, at least. You deserved so much more than what I gave you.
You deserved honesty. Loyalty. Trust. Instead, I gave you secrets.
And now I’m about to give you one more. The biggest one.
The one I’ve spent years trying not to think about.
The one that wakes me up in the middle of the night.
The one that sits in my chest heavier than the cancer ever could.
I can feel it there now. Waiting. Demanding to be written. Demanding to finally be acknowledged.
And I’m terrified. Terrified that once you know this, you’ll hate me.
Terrified that understanding who I really am will kill whatever feelings are left.
Terrified that after everything we’ve survived together, this final secret will be the thing that finally destroys us.
But most of all? I’m terrified that you’ll realize you should have stopped loving me a very long time ago.
And if that’s true, Stephen, if that’s what happens after you read the next pages, please know this one thing. Every terrible thing I have ever done. Every mistake. Every betrayal. Every secret. Every lie. None of it ever changed how much I loved you. Not for a single second.
You and our daughter were the best thing that ever happened to me. And I was the worst thing that ever happened to you both.
That’s the truth.
At least it’s part of it.
The rest is coming, Stephen.
God help me.
The rest is coming.