Chapter 10 #2
“I just—First, I want to say that none of this is an excuse, because nothing can excuse what I did. It’s just context, I guess?
It’s like I was on some slow-moving, destiny conveyer belt and if one thing hadn’t happened, then the rest wouldn’t have, and I could have stopped it at some point, maybe, but I didn’t have the resources or the development yet to actually do it. ”
Addie nods. “Okay, so you were young and dumb.”
“I was young and dumb and angry at the world. I grew up here, but I think that’s where my similarities to everyone else in town end.
” I run the back of my free hand over my eyes.
“My parents shouldn’t have had kids. My mom met a guy second year university and got pregnant two months later.
She gave up her dreams to have me and never let me forget that. ”
Addie’s sharp intake of breath cuts me to the core. If that hurts her, the rest of this is only going to get worse.
“My dad was a mean son of a bitch,” I say with a harsh, bitter laugh.
“The only way I can picture his face is with a scowl. I don’t remember it any other way.
He had this look that would just stop you in your tracks.
You knew nothing good would come after that.
Everything I’ve read about abusive relationships tells me he wasn’t so bad to start.
My mom must have seen something in him. But he was a demon by the time I came around. ”
I pause. There are things I have never said, will never say, but they’re on the tip of my tongue now.
The slope of Addie’s eyebrows, the press of her glossy lips, the gentle hold on my hand: everything makes me want to reveal the worst of me because something tells me she won’t throw me away like a piece of garbage. Even if I deserve it.
“Did he hurt you?” she whispers.
“Both of us,” I say, matching her tone. “It started with her. By the time I was six, he’d turned to me.
By nine, she’d joined in. I could never do anything right.
One time, he broke my arm because I didn’t have any friends.
He couldn’t believe he had such a loner for a son; but I didn’t have any friends because of him.
I never had anyone over because I was never certain what they’d do, what mood they’d be in, what state the house would…
I started writing then. He didn’t like that, either. ”
“Of course not,” Addie says. Her thumb circles a freckle on my palm. “You didn’t deserve that. Did Peggy know?”
“No. Not then. They were very good at keeping things quiet, at first. My dad wouldn’t look at me the entire time I was in a cast because it was proof of what he’d done.
He was that close to getting caught. It was the best month of my childhood.
He didn’t touch me. But I could hear him taking it out on her. Gran found out when I was fifteen.”
“That’s when you left Beaver Creek, right?”
I take a shuddering breath. There is not enough air in the world.
“Yeah.” I roll up the hem of my sweater and show off the scar slicing across my lower abdomen.
“I fought back one day. I thought he was going to kill my mom, and even though she was just as bad as him sometimes, she didn’t deserve that.
I was bigger and taller than him. Thought I’d have the upper hand. He slammed me into a glass table.”
“Oh my God.” Addie reaches out, traces the white line running from my hipbone to my belly button. My body reacts to her instantly, in ways I’d prefer it wouldn’t when speaking about the abuse. “I’m so sorry, Zander.”
I lower my shirt and stare up at the cloudless sky. In an hour or two, we won't need these sweaters.
“I told a nurse everything and she had no choice but to call Children’s Aid Society. I didn’t know what would happen. I never looked up any process. I just—I remember thinking I couldn’t do it anymore, and lying there, bleeding…It felt like I could finally tell someone and they’d believe me.”
“And did they?”
“I was removed from their custody, and eventually they lost any right to me. Gran couldn’t take me in.
She was going through a lot on her own. I guess I thought I’d go there, but my life ended up being uprooted.
I’d dreamed of that moment for so long, but then it happened, and it was nothing like I thought.
I was fifteen.” My voice breaks on the word and I realize I still feel the betrayal, the failure, of abandonment when I was just beginning to know who I was.
Addie squeezes my hand. “I didn’t know what to make of the freedom from this—this cage I’d grown up in.
I didn’t have the toolkit to fully understand what was going on.
I had no one there for me. My social worker tried and one foster family was very invested in my well-being, but I was fifteen. I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen is a hard age to be abandoned.”
I meet her eyes. I go still, searching. Though our stories are different, there’s something in the set of her gaze that has me certain she gets it.
“Yeah, it is.” It’s a simple acknowledgment.
It makes my entire body go hot and I can’t tell if I’m embarrassed or, on some very weird level, in love.
Fuck. “I didn’t handle it well. I spent the remainder of high school getting in trouble, stealing, drinking just to feel something or feel nothing, becoming the bad boy all the good girls’ dads hated.
I realized I was about to age out of the system and I had nothing to fall back on, so I started selling drugs.
And then I got kicked out of my group home because I got caught.
I thought about going back to Beaver Creek, but what the fuck was I going to do here? ”
I exhale. I remember with stunning clarity how angry I felt all the time. I flex my fingers beneath Addie’s. She lets go and runs a hand up my arm. I tangle my fingers in Lucy’s fur, will myself to loosen. A child’s shriek, running from their sibling while playing tag, grounds me in the present.
“I wound up crashing on a couch for a year. This guy who’d also aged out.
He got me a job at the bar where he worked.
I was still dealing, just more careful this time.
I thought I was building an empire. I had a whole plan where I’d move out, go to university, find my parents once I graduated, and show them how bad they fucked up.
Because look at me. Look what I made of myself.
Instead, I’m sure they read the headline. ”
Man sustains serious head injury in Kitchener bar fight.
I close my eyes. “I never meant to turn into my father. I—I’d only ever been in one fight, if it even counts.
I broke up a fight at the bar, once, took a punch during it.
That was my frame of reference. I was just a kid, so out of my depth, involved with things I didn’t understand.
I pissed this one guy off. Sold him something that was too heavy for him.
Made him sick. He showed up at work one night, looking for a fight.
I could tell just by how he walked in, but I engaged anyway.
When I went on my break, he followed me to the alley outside.
It was my first real fight. He threw the first punch and I—I didn’t want to do it.
I blocked him the first few times. I was going to go back inside.
I regret staying out there every day of my life. ”
I don’t cry, though I feel it brimming under the surface. Crying feels like a disservice to the man whose life I ruined. Addie’s soft fingers caress my cheek. She gently wipes away a tear I’m furious I let out.
“He called me something. I don’t even remember what it was anymore, but it reminded me of my dad.
And suddenly, instead of seeing that man in front of me, all I could see was my dad’s face.
I snapped. I did what I hadn’t done four years earlier.
I absolutely laid into him. I only remember what I’ve been told about the fight.
My therapist says it’s a form of self-preservation and I may never fully unlock that memory, even if it haunts me in flashes.
” I inhale deeply as I tell her the part I can never reconcile as myself.
“This is where my boss came out. I guess we were making enough commotion. I’m told I hit his head against the exterior wall hard enough to fracture his skull. ”
“Oh my God,” she whispers in that same appalled voice from earlier. But she doesn’t move away. “Was he okay?”
“Last I heard, he was still getting debilitating headaches from it. But less so than in the immediate aftermath.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“Well, you went to prison. You wrote a memoir about it. You’re sitting here shaking because you’re so disappointed in yourself. Are you okay?”
I’ve never been asked that. Not in response to this story. It catches me so off guard that I laugh.
“Honestly? No. But it doesn’t matter. That’s how I should feel after doing something like that.”
“Not thirteen years later.”
“Yes, thirteen years later. I altered a man’s life forever.”
“And several people altered yours in the same way. Zander, you did your time, didn’t you?”
I grind my teeth together. “Yes. Two years. Early release for good behaviour on condition of no reoffence.”
“And you haven’t reoffended?”
“Well, no. But why should that matter?”
“Because if this was who you are and you were meant to carry this forever, you would have kept doing it. I don’t see that man.
I see a man who, yes, injured someone gravely, but carries all that guilt with him.
I see a man who somehow rebuilt himself after all he’s been through, which is extraordinary.
I see a man who made a mistake and doesn’t deserve to be defined by that one moment where he snapped after a lifetime of moments that could have permanently broken him. ”
No words come to me. My eyebrows draw together and I shake my head. Addie takes my face between the palms of her hands and leans in. I feel her breath on my lips, smell the lavender of her shampoo.
“I see you, Zander Browning,” she breathes. “You did something bad, but that is not who you are.” Her eyes dart down to my lips. “Can I kiss you?”
I bring my hand up to the back of her neck and draw her in.
I am a mess of swirling, conflicting emotions, but she somehow makes it all okay.
In her kiss, I find myself slowly unravelling the raw hatred and anger I’ve felt toward myself over the last thirteen years.
I run my tongue along her bottom lip, taste the bitter coffee, and chuckle.
We pull back at the same moment, our foreheads resting together. There’s a lazy smile on her lips.
“You’re sure?” I ask. “I know it’s a lot and that’s only scratching the surface. I come with a storage locker full of baggage and—”
“I’m sure. You can’t scare me away that easily.”