I pause, then shake my head. “She rarely did. Aunt Mia had a bad hip, so she didn’t come much either.”
“And did you get angry when no one showed up?”
I shake my head again. “She was working.”
Dr. Bart leans forward just slightly, his voice soft but pointed. “Matthew, do you hear yourself? You learned to explain away her absence before you ever allowed yourself to feel it. And that-” he taps his pen against his notebook lightly, “-is what’s bleeding into your marriage.”
My stomach knots. “What do you mean?”
“I think,” he says carefully, “you’re not just dealing with resentment towards your wife. You’re dealing with the insecurity underneath it. You don’t just resent her, Matthew. You resent that you don’t feel loved the way youwantto. And worse, you resent yourself for feeling insecure at all.”
I stare at him, my throat dry. “I guess I don’t want Penny to have the childhood I had,” I manage to say.
Dr. Bart tilts his head. “But your daughter has you. She’s not going to have a fatherless childhood.”
I suck in a sharp breath.Fatherless.
I look away, blinking hard. “I tell everyone I never missed my dad growing up. That Ma was there. But…” My voice trails off, and it feels like trying to dig through concrete to keep going.
I clear my throat. “When she told me about my dad, the story about him leaving, she made it sound like she would’ve been there more, beenpresent, if I’d had a father. Like it was this great tragedy that she had to do it alone. And I just… I wanted to be that for my family. The one who stays. The one who’s there.”
There’s a quiet beat. I don’t look at him, but I can feel his gaze settle on me.
“Your mother,” Dr. Bart says finally, his voice low but firm, “ultimately blamed you for not having her.”
I blink, trying to process it.Blamed me.
“She didn’t say it in those words,” he continues. “But the message was clear.‘I can’t be there for you because of you.’And that kind of message gets into your bones when you’re young. You built your entire sense of being a father around making sure Penny doesn’t feel what you felt. But you can’t protect her from something Brooke isn’t doing. She’s not your mother. She’s your wife.”
My hands curl into fists in my lap, my knuckles going white.
Dr. Bart leans back slightly, his voice steady but gentle. “But you know her better than I do, Matthew. So, tell me honestly, would she ever do that? Would she ever make Penny feel what your mother made you feel?”
I don’t answer right away.
Not because I don’t know, because Ido.
I take a moment, letting the question settle, stripping away all the noise in my head. Brooke isnotmy mom. She doesn’t smother. She doesn’t pile on. She gives me space even when she’s angry. She faces things head-on, even the ugly parts.
She had debt, yeah. A messy past, sure. But shefaced it. She isolated the weak spots and fixed them. She learned how to be everything she needed to be, because no one did it for her.
I exhale slowly. “She would never,” I say finally, my voice firm.
Dr. Bart nods, the corner of his mouth tipping up slightly. “That’s good. Because sometimes, in order to stop repeating the past, we have to remind ourselves we’re not still living in it.”
I shift in my chair, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with how serious this got. “This is all good and all,” I say, leaning back, “but how does that actually help me in my relationship when I don’t even know what the problemis?”
He doesn’t flinch. “That’s fair,” he says evenly. “Let’s talk about that. When did things start to go wrong between you and Brooke?”
I answer without hesitation. “When Zeke, Brooke’s ex-brother-in-law, stole my credit card and racked up almost thirty grand in debt. I had no choice but to tell Brooke, and she thought I was keeping money a secret.”
His brow furrows slightly.
So, I add, “Zeke’s an addict. Brooke didn’t want him near Stella and the kids, but I felt bad for the guy, so… I kind of became his friend. Behind her back.”
Dr. Bart’s pen moves across the page. “Why didn’t you tell her about the friendship?”
I shrug. “Because Brooke was projecting her father onto Zeke. I thought that was unfair.”
