Letter Twenty #6
As I studied his profile—shoulders slumped, soft green polo rippling in the breeze—I deeply regretted my behavior over the last couple of months. But then I remembered how my behavior was often tied to all the ways he prevented me from being happy. And how, still, he hadn’t acknowledged that.
“Maybe I’d care more about your happiness,” I said, “if you cared more about mine.”
“I do care about your happiness,” he said, briefly squeezing his eyes shut.
“Until I start asking the wrong questions. Start asking for normal things. Start telling you what I need in order to be happier.”
For the next few seconds, he stared at the horizon, silent, jaw working hard.
So I added, “I didn’t cut myself on purpose, but let’s say I did.
Rather than talk to me about it—rather than ask why I need to hurt myself, why it makes me feel better—you decide to ship me off to some fancy institution in Arizona, so someone else can ask me why, and you don’t have to face the answer. ”
“The answer’s me!” he yelled, snapping his gaze back to mine. “I’m the reason. Years of sitting in therapy with you have made me well aware of the fact, and believe me, I have faced it. But it still isn’t okay”—his voice shook, each word sharp and measured—“for you to do it.”
I turned away, the words slicing deep, like he’d peeled back my skin, exposing everything wrong with me. I might’ve burst into tears if he hadn’t filled the silence.
“And by the way,” he whispered, “I’m not sending you to Arizona.”
“I found the papers in your desk,” I whispered back.
Nic leaned against my shoulder. “I’m not sending you there—as long as you stop hurting yourself.
Not just around your birthday, like you promised Michael, but all the time.
” He grabbed my arm. “Promise me. Promise you won’t do anything to get back at Bree for letting us believe you hurt yourself on purpose. ”
These were big promises for me to make, but if they kept me from being sent to Arizona, then of course I had to agree. “I promise.”
“I also want you to go back to therapy this fall. It’s important with the one-year anniversary of your assault coming up—and I want Casey to go back, too, after spending his whole summer with that asshole.”
“Okay.” I might’ve agreed to anything right then, so long as I didn’t have to be checked into a psychiatric hospital. Then I thought of something. “Hey, Dad. Casey’s mom is the girl John spent the summer with after Libby broke up with him, right? Cassandra?”
Nic hesitated, and I worried it’d be like all the other times—when he avoided, deflected, and shut me down. “Dad, please. I’d like it if you could be honest with me about this.”
“I believe so, yes,” he finally said with a nod.
“Casey said you offered to find her, but he told you not to.” When he didn’t immediately respond, I added, “But you found her, anyway, didn’t you?”
“Of course.” He’d said it like duh.
“Well?” I asked, eager to know everything. “Where is she?”
“New York City. She’s a successful artist featured by a prominent art gallery there.”
“Wow.” I couldn’t believe this—but it fit. Somehow, it made a whole lot of sense. Your biological mother was an artist. A creative, like you. “Wait. The art gallery!” I leaned back, gaping at him. “You took Casey there to see her art.”
He smiled.
I narrowed my eyes. “I knew there was something weird about you wanting to visit an art gallery.”
“What do you mean? I like art.”
“Sure,” I said. “Must be why you chose to sit at that coffee shop answering emails while Casey and I walked through the Met.”
“Elliot, I’ve been to the Met fifty times.”
“But what if Casey’s mom had been there? What if we’d run into her?”
“She only comes in on Thursdays.”
I drew back. “Have you been stalking Casey’s mom?”
“I’ve just been”—he paused, stared past me, narrowed his gaze—“looking into her a little bit.”
“Is she married?”
Nic shook his head. “Divorced.”
“Kids?”
“No kids.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
“Holy crap. You talked to her?”
“It wasn’t like that. She recognized me at the gallery, so she came over to say hi.
We talked for a while, but I didn’t say a word about Casey.
I swear.” He bumped my shoulder. “She asked to see a picture of you when I told her I had a daughter. She couldn’t believe how much you look like your mom. ”
“What about her?” I asked. For once, I didn’t want to ruin the moment by asking about my mom. I wanted more info on yours. “What did she look like?”
“Honestly? Not much different than she did twenty years ago. She looked good.” He paused a moment, lost in thought. “God, just talking to her—I saw so many glimpses of Casey. It was wild.”
“Did she ask about John?”
“She did, but she already knew a lot about his career. I guess she’s been keeping up with him all these years.” At this, my dad’s jaw twitched. He stared past me for a while, pensive.
“But Casey asked you not to find her. Why’d you do it, anyway?”
“Because I need to know what I’m dealing with if Casey decides he wants to meet her someday.
I’ll have to let Cassandra know she isn’t allowed anywhere near Casey unless she plans on making it a pleasant experience for him.
I have to be sure. I promised Claire I wouldn’t let either of his biological parents hurt him. ”
“That’s sweet, Dad,” I said, tearing up. “But it’s still creepy that you stalked her.”
“I didn’t stalk her. I just—I needed to see her for myself. Otherwise, I would’ve had my guy check her out.”
“You have a guy?” Why any of this surprised me, I still don’t know.
“Of course I have a guy.” He paused, eyes twinkling. “How amazing was it, though, when Casey walked in there and went straight to her art? He was drawn to it.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Pretty amazing. But—wait—the artist’s name was Annette Sterling. Not Cassandra.”
“Cassandra goes by many names. At the bar where she worked with your mom, she went by Casey. To John, she was Cassandra. To the art world, in the beginning, she went by Sandra Sterling. Annette is a borrowed name—her mother’s name.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed. Sandra Sterling. SS. “The painting in John’s study. That’s hers.”
“Yeah.”
“And you knew?”
“Not until recently, no. I knew he had a fling with her that one summer, but I didn’t know she was an artist until I started looking into her.”
“Did you know he’d gotten her pregnant?”
Nic shook his head. “He never told me. I’m not sure he ever knew she was pregnant himself—and I can’t ask him. If I ask about her now, or even hint at a pregnancy, he’ll want to know why. So I’m keeping quiet about it.”
“But, Dad, I sent John pictures from the art gallery that day. I thought he’d be interested to see how similar her artwork was to the painting in his study. I didn’t realize…”
“That’s okay. I’m sure he figured out it was her, but he hasn’t said anything.”
“You don’t think it’s odd? That he has one of her paintings displayed so prominently in his house? Seems like Cassandra meant more to him than he let on at breakfast that day.”
Nic peered straight ahead, something like hurt—or maybe resentment—on his face. “Yeah.”
“I bet Libby would be pissed about the painting if she knew.”
“Probably,” Nic said. “So don’t say anything, okay? This stays between us.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Are we good?” he asked me.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t quite there yet. Good. But at least he’d opened up to me about your mom. For that brief flicker of honesty, I’d let myself forget about the things he wouldn’t tell me. Temporarily, anyway.
Nic pulled me into a sideways hug and kissed the top of my head. “Good.”
Back inside, we found John carrying Amber’s bags out to the car. Her summer romance with Bree had officially come to an end.
Amber hugged Libby goodbye while Bree stood off to the side, sulky and contrite, arms crossed over an old Boston College t-shirt of John’s.
When the door closed behind Amber, John ordered Bree to apologize to me, and she did, her voice quivering around the words.
I could’ve stalked upstairs, let her suffer in the uncertainty of my silence—and I definitely wanted that. I wanted her to feel my anger, to let her wonder how long it would last.
But John caught my eye from across the room, and that’s all it took.
Resilient girls didn’t hold grudges. They rose above them and moved on. They chose to do better.
“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “I forgive you.”
It wasn’t warm. Or kind. Or even all that convincing. But it felt like progress, and surely that counted for something.
John and Libby apologized for not believing me, and over the next week, my dad and I spent extra time together, going for ice cream and coffee and lunches out—back to the hiking trails we loved, too—just the two of us.
But I didn’t sulk like I had before, because that speech he’d given about the last summer of my childhood made me realize how precious those last few weeks were, and how deeply I’d regret it if I were to take them away from us.
So I put our differences aside and allowed us to have this: one final summer, unspoiled by past grievances, pettiness, or rage.
Little moments of laughter, where I asked safe questions—about his childhood, about college, about his life outside of my mom.
Little moments of honesty, where I confessed—over a pastry and coffee at our favorite French boulangerie on the Cape—that I couldn’t listen to certain music without reliving my assault.
The bass thumping through the floor. Greer’s pale eyes. The panic I’d felt with his hand around my throat. The humiliation.
Blinking back tears over an iced latte, I asked, “Whatever happened to him? Where is he?”
Because if anyone knew the whereabouts of Greer Johnson, it would be my dad.
“Right now?” he asked, lowering his latte—a hot one, despite the sun beating down on his back—to the white cafe table. “In Fiji with his family. Before that, he was at an all-boys boarding school in Switzerland. This fall, he’s headed to Boston University.”
“So he’s staying local,” I said.