Letter Twenty-Eight #8
“It’s just a hunch—after hearing how you talked to him in your office the other day. You basically begged him to forgive you for lying.”
Nic looked away.
“See? You’re so used to hiding from me that you’re doing it right now. You’re still evading my questions.”
Nic met my gaze again. “I do. I love him more. I love that he loves you as much as I do. If something ever happened to me, I could trust him to make sure you’re okay. To be there for you in all the ways I couldn’t be.”
“And Libby?”
“I love her, too, but it’s different. She’s more career-driven. Which is fine—I admire that about her. But she doesn’t need me the way he does.”
“What about my mom? Did she need you?”
“Not like John. Not like I wanted her to need me.”
“Then why be with her at all? Why not just…be with John?”
“John had Michael. He had a family. You don’t give that up for…” He looked away again, swallowed hard, couldn’t seem to finish that sentence. “And I wanted a family of my own.”
“Maybe my mom sensed she wasn’t the person you really wanted. Maybe she thought you were settling for her.”
“I wasn’t settling for her,” he said tightly. Had I hit a nerve? “I loved her.”
“How?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“How did you love her if she wasn’t a good person?”
“She pretended to be good. She pretended to be a lot of things.”
“Tell me her name.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t, honey.”
“How did she abandon me?”
The horrible crib story—I wanted him to confirm it.
This one thing, I wanted him to tell me on his own—without any indication I already knew.
Of all the betrayals and lies and half-truths, this lie of omission had hurt me the most. I wanted to know what had really happened.
Why he’d walked away. Why he felt personally responsible.
“She left,” he said simply.
“How? When?”
“When you were a baby. Right after your first birthday. I came home one day and she was gone.”
“Where was I?”
Nic shrugged, like the answer should’ve been obvious. “With the nanny.”
“You’re lying.”
“No.”
I stared him down. “So you weren’t called back from New York when a neighbor called the police? Because I was left in my crib to scream and cry? To claw myself for over twenty-four hours?”
The color drained from Nic’s face. “Who told you that?”
“Is it true?”
His eyes flashed. “Who told you?”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you hide something so huge? Something that might help me understand? The panic attack on Casey’s birthday? Why I clawed myself? Why I need pain to feel better?”
Nic’s hand shook as he wiped it across his face, his eyes shining with the threat of tears. “Because it’s not a story I ever wanted to have to tell you,” he said, blinking them away. “I’ve spent every day since trying to protect you from that incident.”
“But I was shaped by this incident,” I said, pressing a hand to my chest. “It was there—inside me all along—whether you ever told me it happened or not.”
“I know,” he said, voice cracking on the words. “But if I said it out loud, it would become more real. I didn’t want it to define you. I didn’t want you to carry it like I did. I wanted to believe I could undo the damage.”
“By lying?”
“By loving you enough that it wouldn’t matter.”
“But it obviously fucking matters, Dad. It might’ve helped me to know this about myself. I might’ve felt less guilty. Instead, you shamed me for needing something I didn’t even understand.”
“I don’t like that you have to do it,” he said quietly, head shaking. “I want you to stop.”
“But how could I stop when I never knew why I was doing it in the first place? Sounds like you just don’t like being reminded.”
“Of course I don’t. Every time you hurt yourself, it brings back the memory of that day.
You don’t remember it—but I do, and it haunts me.
What she did to you was unforgivable. It took you years to recover.
You were alone, screaming and crying for me, and I didn’t come.
No one came. And I will never, ever forgive myself for that. ”
There it was. The admission of guilt.
“So you are responsible.”
“Of course I’m responsible. She’s at fault, but I should’ve known better. I should never have walked away.”
Walked away.
That’s when it clicked.
The sharp truth, sliding into place. He’d walked away then. And somehow, seven years later, he’d chosen to do it again.
“Oh, I see. You didn’t want me to know she abandoned me as a baby, because then I’d see how unforgivable it was of you to abandon me a second time—that day in your office.”
He flinched. “Elliot—”
“And then I’d realize how absolutely warped it was when you proceeded to make me beg for forgiveness every time I did something bad.”
Nic’s face fell. While he sat there, hunched over his lap, silent and guilt-ridden, I tried to take myself back there—to the gruesome scene in my crib.
The hopelessness I must’ve felt. The fear. The desperation. The rage. How does a child process something like that?
In my case, by clawing.
Clawing to escape. Clawing to be free.
The pain: a welcome distraction. The only thing I could control when no one came to rescue me.
The incident itself disturbed me, but what bothered me more? My mother being blamed for it. If she was capable of something so heinous, what about me?
Did I have the same wicked blood running through my veins?
Did I have the potential to be like her?
Libby had said: “You’re not exactly like her. Just so close that it scares us.”
Bad, maybe. But not that bad.
That’s what they needed to believe—what Nic needed to believe. My own father.
I watched him carefully, nails digging into my palms, hard enough to draw blood. But I barely even felt it. “Is that what it’s always been about? The therapy? The letters? The begging? When I stabbed Michael, you thought maybe I was bad like her?”
Nic’s gaze dropped to the floor.
I remembered your conversation with him, Casey.
How you’d questioned Nic’s motives after hearing me beg Sienna for forgiveness.
How you’d said, “I asked…if he let you go on saying you were sorry and begging because, for some fucked-up reason, he needed the begging, needed to hear how sorry you were.” How he’d gotten upset with you and stormed off.
“You made me beg so you could feel better,” I said, finally putting it all together. “So you could reassure yourself we weren’t the same, even though we look the same. That’s probably why you didn’t want me to know I look like her, either.”
Nic didn’t answer. Didn’t even try to deny it.
But that didn’t matter anymore. His silence—the tears now rolling down his face—told me everything I needed to know.
He’d been doing it since I was a child: failing to say what needed to be said.
But this? Holding me accountable for her actions? All to fulfill his own emotional needs? To soothe his own guilt?
That wasn’t love.
It was him projecting his fears and trauma onto me, and it was fucked up.
“When the truth is,” I went on, voice shaking, “I just didn’t know how to cope back then.
There was this dark thing raging inside me, and I didn’t know what it was.
” A pause while the full weight of his betrayal sank in, and I fought back tears of my own.
“But you did. You knew why it was there. You could’ve tried to help me overcome it, but you didn’t.
You stayed silent. You abandoned me, too—when I needed you most. You let me hate myself.
You let me believe I was broken, long before I ever heard you say so to the Harrises. How could you do that to me?”
“I was protecting you,” he whispered, wiping tears from his jaw.
“You were protecting yourself!” I cried.
“Everything I’ve ever done,” he said, much steadier now, “has been to protect you. I just did it the wrong way.”
And that was it.
The final straw for me, Casey.
The craving. The self-punishment. The shame. Every time I hurt myself, I reenacted something he’d never told me had happened—and he let me keep doing it. Let me believe it came from nowhere. Let me blame myself.
And now he wanted me to believe he’d done it to protect me? That he loved me too much to tell me the truth?
I needed to leave.
If I stayed, I’d start screaming or sobbing. Or worse—I’d hurt myself again.
I hopped off the bed, grabbed my crossbody bag, and made a move for the door.
“Elliot,” he said softly, standing up. “Don’t, okay? Let’s work through this.”
“Nope. We had eighteen years to work through it—and you failed.” I tried walking past him, but he blocked my path. “Get out of my way.”
“No,” he said, standing firm. “You’re staying here. You’re not leaving.”
Desperate, I went back to the bed, slipped those scissors out from under my pillow, and held them above my thigh. Nic’s eyes grew wide with fear. “Let me go,” I said, voice dipped dangerously low, “or I’ll do it.”
“Honey, please,” he whispered as he stepped out of my way. “Stay.”
“I can’t even look at you anymore.”
I dropped the scissors on my desk, then slung the bag across my chest on my way out the door.
Nic followed me downstairs, still pleading. “Don’t go like this,” he said behind me. “Please. We can fix it.”
The desperation in his voice nearly undid me.
But I didn’t stop. Didn’t dare look back.
Because if I stayed, I might let him try.
When Michael opened his door for me less than twenty minutes later, I rushed inside and collapsed on his couch.
Bree’s barbed words.
Nic’s heartbreaking admissions.
Your tentative plans to leave.
It all rushed out, in sobs and broken sentences. Michael asked me to slow down. He tried his best to calm me.
But I couldn’t be calmed.
There, in Michael’s apartment, I had another panic attack, the stress of the last few weeks catching up with me, the horrible weight of it all sitting on my chest, far too heavy, sucking the air from my lungs, making it difficult to breathe.
He placed his hand to my chest and gradually helped me out of it the same way Nic had on your birthday.
But long after he’d helped calm me down, I still felt like I was drowning.