Letter Twelve #4
The disappointment on my face must’ve troubled you, because you quickly placed your kettle on the counter and pulled me into a hug.
Brunch that Sunday turned out to be an interesting ordeal.
You were fidgety and restless all morning, constantly adjusting your clothes, patting your pockets, and telling my dad you needed a smoke—just one smoke. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”
You tried helping Henriette in the kitchen, and when she kicked you out, like she often did, I caught Nic leading you into his office, where I suspect he gave you a shot (or two) of something to calm your nerves. Because you seemed a lot less jittery by the time you joined me and Garland later.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“It’s ridiculous,” you said. “I’ve seen them a hundred times now. I’ve known them a whole year, for Christ’s sake. Why am I so nervous?”
“Because you’re about to see them for who they really are.” I squeezed your hand. “Your family.”
You swallowed hard, fear flickering across your face.
“Hey,” I said softly. “As far as they know, you’re just Casey—Michael’s friend.” I rolled my eyes. “And Elliot’s, like, keeper or whatever.”
That made you crack a smile. “Right. I’m just Casey—some strange foreign guy.”
“Exactly.” I laughed, grabbing your hands and pulling you up from the sofa.
And I can’t say for sure what made me do it—your smile fading, or that terrified look crossing your face again, or maybe the way my heart squeezed at seeing you that nervous—but I lifted up and pressed a kiss to your cheek.
You leaned back, caught off guard. But it certainly wiped the the look of fear off your face.
“Come on,” I added, pulling you with me. “It’ll be okay.”
Before we all sat down to eat, John greeted you in his normal way: big grin, hand on your shoulder, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Casey,” he said. “How was your time at home? Did you enjoy seeing your family?”
What a bizarre thing, seeing a father glow in the presence of his own child. To know John could look at you, his firstborn, without realizing exactly who you were. To hold a secret this powerful without dropping it.
The weight of that moment pressed hard against my ribs. I wondered how my dad carried it. How he didn’t just…blurt the truth out.
You quietly said, “I did. Thank you for asking. It was great.”
John’s very perceptive. He’s a lot like you that way. He narrowed his eyes and said, “Everything good, I hope? Everything okay?”
“Of course,” you told him, forcing a smile.
The normal seating arrangement at brunch goes like this: you, Michael, John.
All three in a row. And me? I’m directly across.
You know that. So I studied you guys. I looked for the similarities.
And they were there—if you knew to look for them, those similarities presented themselves in small, meaningful ways.
The hands. You, Michael, and John have hands that are identical. Their shape and size. The long fingers that aren’t too long—or too slender.
The noses. Yours, Michael’s and John’s—Bree’s, too. The flattened point at the tip, clearly a dominant trait. How had I never noticed that before?
The eyes. All blue. Yours a touch brighter than theirs.
If I squinted, I could definitely see a likeness there, between you and John, especially when you smiled. The teeth—yours and John’s—almost identical, your incisors a tad longer than his.
In the looks department, Michael favors John, there’s no doubt about it. But—if I’m right about your biological mother—you favor that beautiful, dark-haired girl in the picture.
The mannerisms are where you and John are most alike.
John sometimes chews on his bottom lip, and you do, too.
That deep groove between your eyebrows? John has that, too.
The way you really look at someone when they talk to you, eyes slightly narrowed?
John—he does that, as well. John twists his wedding band around his finger the same way you twist the bracelet on your wrist.
But the biggest thing—the similarity that didn’t hit me until that Sunday at brunch—is how you and John have a gift. For tugging the truth loose.
I’m good at lying. I do it well. So well that people can’t always tell my lies from the truth.
Which is why, my whole life, when Nic or Libby couldn’t get an honest answer out of me, they’d sit me in front of John.
And something about John’s voice—the calm, quiet, almost melodic tone of his voice—would make me feel safe enough to talk.
Until, slowly but surely, he worked the truth loose.
In fact, it was John who first pulled the truth out of me when I stabbed Michael.
John, who asked me to explain the reason I’d felt compelled to stab Michael in the first place.
John, who suggested I write a letter, explaining those same reasons to Michael when I asked him to forgive me.
My dad mentioned this to my therapist, Dr. Goldstein, who agreed a heartfelt letter was the perfect way to express remorse for my actions.
The letters became an important step in absolving me.
A cleansing device, if you will. All that darkness and rage had to be purged onto paper, where it could be sifted through and examined, made sense of.
Where it could be understood for what it was and not what it looked like, because often it looked like something too cold and callous to be forgiven.
But on paper, it seemed less bad. On paper, there was a reason, and once purged, the whole thing could be shut away in a drawer and forgotten.
I’ve been writing letters a long time, and it all started with your dad—with John. Because my dad couldn’t deal. My dad could barely look at me after the stabbing, let alone have a conversation about it.
When I first told you the story of the stabbing, I’d glossed over the part about my dad locking me in his office. I brushed over it so quickly you might not remember I said it at all.
But here’s the truth I couldn’t admit to Michael in bed that time at the beach—when he said I needed to forgive myself.
My dad locked me in his office after the stabbing, and he didn’t come back to let me out, and I’m not sure how long he left me in there, just that it was a really long time.
So long I began to panic and beat on the door.
So long my voice grew hoarse from shouting and crying.
So long my mouth became dry, my bladder almost full to bursting.
I’d been curled against the bottom of the door, softly begging—please, please let me out—when a key finally rattled in the lock.
When he knelt down, I sprang up and buried my face in his neck, so distraught it took me a few moments to realize: it wasn’t his voice shushing me, nor was it his citrusy bergamot scent I smelled, but a sandalwood scent instead.
While both comforting and familiar, this person was wrong.
Because the person holding me wasn’t my dad—it was John.
I spotted my dad over John’s shoulder, sitting directly across from his office door, slumped against the wall with his head tossed back and tears streaming down his face.
Even at eight, I understood: he’d been there all along, listening to me cry and call his name, and he hadn’t answered. And that felt like a punishment of the harshest kind. The kind of punishment fit for a monster.