Letter Twenty-Nine
My days are numbered in here. Just twenty-one days left. Three Tuesdays.
Three hours left with you.
In neutral territory, anyway.
When I drop this bomb, you’ll finally know everything, and I’m scared of what the impact will be.
All this time, I’ve been waiting on you to show up angry, to confront me for revealing your secret to Michael. But you haven’t. Does that mean Michael never told you he knows who you are? Have you lost two more years with John? If so, how will I live with that, in addition to everything else?
Maybe you’ll give me a chance to win you back after you read these letters. Maybe you won’t. Maybe I’ll never be able to fix what I’ve broken, and we’ll be friends—like you said.
But I’ll need you either way.
To help me with what comes next.
In recounting our past, I’ve picked up on a few troubling details I’d overlooked during those three years we lived together—amidst all the drama and lies and other secrets.
For instance, Hal showing up to intercept me when I tried to leave the house on my own.
Everyone’s overreaction when I disappeared to Willoughby’s and turned off my phone.
The woman watching the house. The slip in the basement.
Even you—taking me to tennis practices, to therapy and dentist appointments, to and from school, to the park.
There’s this undercurrent of…something.
I can’t put my finger on it.
Did Nic hold me so close to keep me from hurting people? Or did he hold me close to keep something out there from hurting me?
Regardless, I have this gut feeling it’s all tied to my mom. If I can get to her, maybe I can get to the truth about everything.
During our visits now, you’re different. You’re putting up walls that haven’t been there the last two years—but I get it. When these jail walls come down, you want me to remember that your walls are still up. So I’ll know to stay back. To keep my distance.
But you know me and boundaries, Casey.
How I like to test them, just to see if they’ll hold.
“Can I just say something?” I asked you earlier today. “About before? About us?”
“Elliot,” you said—half plea, half warning—as you straightened in the chair, tugging at your jacket.
“I wanted to be perfect,” I blurted out. “I wanted to be good. I wanted to be the person you thought I was. But I couldn’t be any of those things, so I…”
“Ruined everything,” you said. Brutal. Hard. Matter-of-fact. “Like you always do.”
Like I’m still doing it. Like you believe I always will.
Coming from you, that stings like a bitch, Casey. Because why would you think any differently? Now that I’ve written it all down, I see how damaging my behavior was back then—not just to us. To everyone.
And I don’t want to be that girl anymore. I want to let people love me, even if I feel like I don’t deserve it.
“I didn’t want to ruin it,” I whispered. “I just didn’t think I was allowed to keep it.” I searched your gaze, waiting for you to soften, hoping to see a crack—however small—in your resolve. “To keep you.”
“You had me,” you said, jaw ticking, fingers curling into a fist against the table, “whether you thought you were allowed to have me or not. I gave you everything.”
Heat gathered behind my eyes, because the only thing cracking was me. My hope. My heart. My plan to win you back. “I know.”
“And that’s the part I hate,” you said. “How I gave, and you took, and I got very little in return. You didn’t have to be perfect. You didn’t have to be good. You just had to be honest.”
Honest. I wish I had been. Not just for us. For the way all those little lies I told stacked up, ultimately leading us here. To a crappy state jail. Brokenhearted and handcuffed.
I pressed my lips together so they wouldn’t tremble.
“I don’t know what hurts more,” you continued, almost conversationally, “not knowing who you really were in that house with me, or realizing how much I wanted to believe the version I saw.”
I could’ve argued with you. Could’ve said, yeah, I left a lot out, but you knew me. Knew me in ways most people never have or never will. Second only to him.
But I didn’t say any of that.
Because it’s all right here. In these letters.
And also because you’re right about one thing: I destroyed the only pure thing in my life by hiding, even though you’d never given me a reason to. You had wanted to accept all of me—you’d tried—but I’d never really given you the chance.
“You trusted me with your whole heart,” I said, “and I wasn’t brave enough to trust you with mine. I’m so sorry.”
You held my gaze for a moment, then released a slow exhale. “So,” you said, followed by a pause—long enough for me to feel the weight of it. “What do you want to do when you get out?”
The answer came quickly. “I want to go to the park.”
“Then we’ll do that,” you said with a little nod. “We’ll go to the park.”
It isn’t much. But it’s something.
And maybe—just maybe—it’s how I’ll build your trust again.
By doing what we’ve always done. Just doing it differently.
No more shutting out. No more taking. No more ruining what’s good.
The girl you get on the other side of all this will be the real one. Sometimes dark. Often messy. Never perfect.
But honest. Braver. More accountable.
And this time—if you’ll have her, Casey—determined to be more careful with your heart.
The next morning, I woke on Michael’s couch, feeling pried open and hollowed out, my eyes raw and swollen from crying. How much could one person take?
Sure, most of my problems were self-inflicted, but the stuff with my dad…
My eyes burned as I clutched the glass of water Michael handed me.
“Your dad’s been texting me all night, Elliot,” he said, taking a seat next to me. “He says you left your phone at the house. He wants you to call him.”
“Not happening,” I said.
“Maybe…” Michael shook his head. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
No. I felt relieved to know the crib story, even if knowing made the little pain junkie inside me talk even louder. It’s okay, the voice kept saying. You can’t help it.
Before I could tell Michael the same thing, someone pounded on his door. Our eyes met briefly before he rose to answer it.
John stepped inside first, his expression softening when he spotted me on the couch. My dad walked in next, looking haggard—shirt wrinkled, eyes red-rimmed—as if he’d spent the entire night pacing with his phone.
“Elliot,” John said, joining me on the couch. He gripped my knee. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. That’s on me.”
“On you?” Nic asked. “Why’s it on you?”
“I told Michael what Victoria did—years ago,” John admitted. “And he told Elliot.”
Nic’s mouth flattened into a grim line. He shook his head, clearly angered by this information. But what could he say? When he’d been keeping something so much bigger from John?
“But this is good, actually,” John said. “It needed to come out. And now…you can finally tell her everything.”
“Yeah?” Nic asked, an incredulous look on his face. “You don’t get to decide that, John.”
“We always said you’d tell her when she’s older. When it’s taken care of. When she’s—”
“Come on, Elliot,” Nic said, thrusting his hand out, begging me with his eyes to take it. “Let’s go home.”
I shrank back. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You can’t keep doing this, Nic,” John said. “You have to be honest with her.”
“This isn’t the time. She’s going through a lot right now. She just needs—”
“The truth,” John finished. “Before you completely destroy your relationship with her.”
Nic looked away.
“She’s an adult now. She can handle it.”
Handle what? Wasn’t the big, bad secret that my mom abandoned me as a baby? What more could there be?
Nic shook his head. “I don’t think she can. Not right now.”
“Then I’m done,” John said.
Panic fluttered across Nic’s face.
“Done?” Michael repeated. “What does that mean?”
“Done participating in the lie,” John said, still looking at Nic. “I can’t do it anymore.”
“You’re not walking away from this family, John,” Nic said. “Let’s be real.”
Michael shifted beside me. “Walking away?”
“Not from you,” John said to Michael. “Or your sister. Or Elliot. I’ll be available for you guys, but if Nic and your mom want to keep hiding behind lies that hurt this family, then I can’t be part of it. I have to move out.”
“And go where?” Michael demanded.
“Not far. I’ll stay in Boston.”
“Like you haven’t lied, John?” Nic asked, stepping closer. “Are you saying you’ve been completely honest over the last twenty-one years? You’ve told me everything?”
“No,” John said. “And that’s not okay, either. It’s like Elliot said at brunch that time: we’re all hiding things. And it stops right now. I won’t tolerate it anymore. I’m done lying.”
“John,” I whispered. “You can’t do that.”
“I have to.” His gaze slid back to Nic. “Unless your dad’s ready to to come clean. About everything.”
“I don’t appreciate being given an ultimatum,” Nic said, visibly shaken, his hands trembling slightly where they rested on his hips.
“I know this requires you to face some challenging emotions, but it’s time,” John said. “It’s past time. I can’t watch you hurt her anymore, and I can’t keep hurting her, either—by remaining silent. She needs to know the truth.”
Do you understand the significance of that moment, Casey? For the first time in my life, someone finally stood up for me. Finally drew a line in the sand and said, The damage stops here. Finally took my feelings into consideration.
John chose to put me first.
What a wonderful breakthrough that could’ve been…except for one small problem.
If John stepped away from our family, how would his absence affect you?
Nic stood there, tense as hell, staring at John.
“Tell her, Nic.”
“No,” Nic whispered. “You’re bluffing. You think if you threaten to leave, I’ll do what you want.”
“I’m definitely not bluffing. I already have a place lined up.”
“Where?” Nic demanded.
“Back Bay—in a building you don’t own.”
“I’ll fucking buy it, then,” Nic snapped.
“I’ll go somewhere else,” John said.