I don’t feel sorry for him. At all.
“You really don’t remember us,” he says. “I saw you. Working in the garden with your father, climbing into your tree house. I would come with my father when the men met to talk about plans for the end.”
I shake my head. I was lost in my own world, and the only friend I remember was imaginary. The property was vast. We didn’t mingle with anyone. If he was really there, I never saw him.
“What happened to your parents?”
“Deaths of despair,” he says. “My father died in a bar fight. Can you imagine anything more ignoble? My mother overdosed on oxy.”
He wrinkles his nose in disgust. I notice with a shock that there’s a skein of blood down his shirt. “I don’t talk to my sister. Haven’t seen or heard from her in ten years. Sometimes I look on her social media feeds. She seems solid enough—husband, kids, stay-at-home mom. Normal. Bland.”
“Is that so bad?”
You shrug, eyes glassy. Just another broken man who resorts to hurting women to ease your pain.
“Maybe not. Comparatively.”
The metal of the gun has warmed in my grip.
“I remember those days on your family’s land as a kind of paradise. Peaceful. Easy. My mother was a good teacher. Homeschooling came easily to her. My father loved working the land. We had some sheep, sold the wool. A vegetable garden, fruit trees. It was beautiful there, wasn’t it?”
“I remember it differently. For my family, it was far from heaven.”
“Not always though, right?” he says. “There were good days, too.”
“There are always good days, too,” I concede.
You draw and release a breath, move closer still.
“I wrote to him,” you say. I see the hint of smile.
“Who?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Your father. After I went to MIT, found some venture capitalists to invest in my cybersecurity software, and was making a go of it, I wrote to him in prison. To thank him for that time and space in my life.”
A letter, to thank him for all he’d done. My stomach roils with disgust.
“He killed my brother and my mother. He’s a murderer.”
You lift your palms. “He’s sorry for the things he’s done. I am, too.”
The ease with which you forgive him and yourself stokes my rage, which is burning bright in my middle, growing hotter by the second.
“How nice.” The words feel like poison on my tongue.
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“Don’t tell me what suits me,” I say mildly. “I’m the one holding the gun.”
A smile, the easy turning up of the corners of your mouth; it’s mirthless and cruel.
“It was you,” he says. “You called the police.”
“That’s right,” I say.
I have taken the journey of self-blame, only to realize if the choice played out before me again and again, I’d do the same. I thought that I was saving my family. I was calling for help. That it went another way does not rest with me. It rests with my father. I have Dr. Cooper to thank for that bit of mental clarity.
“You destroyed that place. If the police hadn’t come, your brother and mother would still be alive. Maybe my family wouldn’t have been destroyed. Maybe we’d have met sooner, been together.”
You sound petulant and young, a child to whom someone has broken a promise they were never able to keep in the first place. You are living in a fantasy of what might have been had we all remained in that place.
“We don’t get to go back,” I say. “We can’t change the past.”
Your frown deepens, but you stay silent.
“How did you choose them?” I ask.
You raise your eyebrows in surprise at my question. “Dear Birdie, of course. I was just out of school when I stumbled across your blog. I was one of your earliest fans.”
You shift forward just slightly. I close my hand more tightly around the gun.
“With my skill set, it didn’t take long for me to put the pieces together, to figure out that Dear Birdie was Wren Greenwood. And once I found you online, I knew you right away. Your father didn’t tell me you were still alive. He protected you. You should know that. But I figured it out.”
“Unforgiven.”
“That was my first letter to you. After all those years of reading.”
Your eyebrows do the dance of sadness; your eyes fill, jaw tensing. Do you think I’ll find compassion for you? I’m only not dead by your hand out of sheer luck. I was inches from my own grave. Three other women just like me were not so lucky. Still, I try to stay neutral. There’s so much I need to understand before this comes to what can only be an ugly end.