Letter Two
On Tuesdays, you’re becoming more and more agitated. You lean over the steel table, eyes wild, hand tugging at your hair.
“What is this?” you ask me. “Why are you just sitting there? Say something.”
Today, you said, “Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re shutting everyone out. You’re punishing yourself.”
And you’re right.
This is the price I pay for not telling you the truth when I should have.
I thought I’d be alone in here—that was the idea, anyway, when they handed me a form and told me to choose three visitors for the duration of my two-year sentence, and I chose to leave the visitor form blank. What I did warrants a harsher punishment. A real timeout. A ban from everyone.
But you got on my visitors’ list somehow, and if I had to guess, my dad had something to do with that.
A generous donation made to the jail, perhaps, or a little incentive money slipped to the director.
If I were talking, I’d ask how much your visiting privileges cost Nic.
Because if I know my dad—and I definitely do—he isn’t capable of leaving me alone. He has to monitor me somehow.
And while it would obviously suck less if I talked during our visits, it’s easier to talk to you here. On this crappy notebook paper. In the most tedious, torturous way possible.
So get ready, Casey. I’m about to bare my soul. Which is fitting, I guess, since it belongs to you, anyway.
Before you came along, it was just me and my dad.
He raised me in that big, beautiful townhouse, a Greek Revival built in the 1840s, with wisteria creeping up its red-brick facade and rich mahogany walls throughout most of the interior, and I loved our home, even if living there felt a bit like living in a dungeon, and certain paintings were more than a little creepy.
Nic made our house warm and inviting despite all of that, and for the seventeen years we lived there without you, we were almost happy.
When I was little, we watched old movies on lazy Saturday afternoons, brunched with the Harrises on Sundays, and reserved Sunday evenings for reading and board games in the Garland Room.
He walked me to school on balmy late-summer mornings and chilly spring ones and every morning in between, and when he got home from work, we’d sit down to a tea party with my stuffed animals gathered around and pink plastic teacups filled with sweet mint tea.
And my dad, hunched over my kid-sized table, his elbows awkwardly propped on his knees, would ask me to tell him all about my day.
Specifically, why my dolls were being punished, and where I’d found the tape—which he’d hidden—to stick them back to the walls.
Nic stepped into my grandfather’s role as president of the firm back then, but he never missed having dinner with me, never missed a school program or soccer game or piano recital, either, like many of the other busy dads at my school did.
He banished all the monsters from my closet—the witches, too, after I’d developed an irrational fear of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.
And when I stumbled into his bedroom on stormy nights, he’d kiss my forehead and carry me back to mine.
But he’d sit beside me until I fell asleep, his hand firmly pressed to the center of my back, a simple gesture that chased away the nightmares and made me feel safe.
Most single dads might’ve left the girly stuff to a nanny or my grandmother—but not Nic.
He took me dress shopping, doll shopping, and on weekend trips to New York just for shopping.
He helped me paint my nails, allowed me to practice on him, and I shit you not, Casey, when he took me for my first manicure, he got one, too.
He even learned to braid hair by watching online tutorials, practicing on me until he mastered the fishtail, French, and Dutch braids. It took him five whole weeks.
As for the other girly stuff, he didn’t leave it to anyone else to prepare me for the changes that would take place in my body.
We talked about menstrual cycles long before I ever had one, and when my period arrived much earlier than we both expected, and I still freaked out, he calmly reminded me that everything would be okay.
Over a giant scoop of chocolate ice cream, we talked through my complicated feelings on the matter (specifically: outrage) in a relaxed, matter-of-fact way that didn’t make me feel embarrassed at all.
But that was my dad—shaken by little and there when I needed him. I might’ve been the only person I knew without a mother, but I didn’t need one as long as I had him. He was my everything, and I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to make him proud.
The only problem was…
This dark fire raged inside me, and my dad—no matter how hard he tried—couldn’t seem to snuff it out.
The night you arrived, my dad was hosting a small get-together celebrating John Harris’s election to Boston City Council—after John’s wife had just finished serving three consecutive terms on the council herself.
I wonder what your first impressions of John and Elizabeth Harris were, because for me, they’ve always just been my perfectly put-together godparents.
Picture a suit and tie on him, a shift dress and pearls on her, a couple of manufactured smiles for the camera, and they’re literally Barbie and Ken.
And by that, I obviously mean the stereotypical blonde-and-blue-eyed versions.
But they serve the city of Boston well and believe in the importance of civic responsibility, so Bostonians exalt them—despite how very privileged they are—wherever they go.
They’re Politician Barbie and Politician Ken.
Maybe their only flaw is that they accidentally conceived a child in college, but that child is Michael: elected to the Student Advisory Council, star member of the Model UN and debate team, athlete extraordinaire, and current Harvard student who’ll eventually head to Harvard Law like his mom.
So even their one screwup polished their glowing reputation rather than tarnished it.
The same goes for Bree, the legitimate child they had three years later.
Here’s a truth for you, Casey—and it’s one that definitely shames me.
I gave the Harrises so much hell as a kid. All because I couldn’t stand how good they were. How idyllic their family was. Their perfection made me ragey, even though they’re such close friends, they’re practically my family, too.
In case Michael failed to give you a proper history lesson on that, allow me.
It all began with my dad and John, who were thrust together—the way many rich kids are—by the extravagant private schools their parents forced them to attend so they could be molded into obedient carbon copies of their dads.
At fifteen, their parents discarded them at the same boarding school outside Boston, where they met Libby and befriended her.
While their parents were off jet-setting across the world and campaigning for office and snatching up real estate faster than a game of jacks, they created their own family, and it’s been that way ever since.
I can’t think of a single holiday or birthday I haven’t celebrated with the Harrises, or a summer we haven’t spent together on the Cape—at the estate they share with my dad on Nantucket Sound.
So to say it was just me and my dad before you came along isn’t an accurate statement at all.
Our families have always been bound by the unshakeable bond the three of them formed as kids, which makes us one… unusual family.
The way I see it now, our family resembled an apple: the Harrises were that glossy red skin on the outside, my dad the core holding us all together, and me? I was the bad seed threatening to spoil the whole fruit.
I could take the analogy a step further by calling you the proverbial worm who slithered up out of nowhere and nibbled his way into the apple, but I won’t do that.
(Even though you totally did.)
Anyway.
Back to the night we met.
While all those stuffy people milled around my house, droning on about politics and stock portfolios and other equally boring shit, I sat on the stairs with Bree and Tinsley, blissfully unaware of your existence.
For a few more minutes, anyway.
“You’ll never guess who I saw while grabbing an iced latte this morning,” Tinsley said, scrolling through her phone. But she didn’t give us a chance to guess. She rarely did. “Willoughby Asher.”
“I’ll never understand what everyone sees in him,” Bree said, flicking her blonde hair over one shoulder.
Tinsley scoffed at this. “He’s one of the hottest guys in our whole school.”
“There’s more to a person than what they look like, Tinz,” singsonged Bree.
“Exactly. And have you met the other guys at our school? Willoughby’s the only hot one who’s genuinely nice.” Tinsley pondered this, tugging at one of her dark corkscrew curls. “Which, I have to admit, is a turnoff for me. Strangely, I’m more attracted to the assholes.”
“Probably because in ninety-nine percent of the smut and fan fiction you read, the heroes are all assholes,” I pointed out.
Smirking, Tinsley tapped a finger against her full, pink-glossed lips. “Touché.”
And that was it, Casey. The final before moment.
Before I ever knew that someone like you had been put on this planet expressly, it would turn out, to undo me.
Because that’s when I glanced downstairs, and there you were, striding into the entry hall with Michael and Sienna, all three of you smiling the way people do when they’ve just finished laughing—pearly whites on full display—only your smile faded while theirs remained.
Michael walked ahead and Sienna hung back, still clinging to your arm.
Odd, I thought, because she was Michael’s girlfriend.
But with her claws sinking into your black coat, she easily could’ve been mistaken for yours.