“How could I ever forgive myself for causing you that kind of pain? That kind of hurt?”
“But I wasn’t the one who was—”
“But you were! More than anyone, you were the one who came out hurt that night, Finn. Your sister was paralyzed, yes, cruelly so, but you were the one left destroyed. I saw it right away in the hospital. In your eyes.”
“Dad…” He wanted to protest this insanity. His father’s absurd recount of that night was so far removed from his own version that he’d held on to as an ultimate truth for all these years.
“I know you, Finn. I know you, son. If there was any way that you could interpret what happened that night to be your fault,then you would. You were always like that. Ever since you were small. Always feeling like you had to try harder and be better than anyone else. As if we would return you like some defective microwave or rabid pet if you weren’t perfect. When youare. When you’ve always been exactly just that. Perfect, son.”
“But it was my fault!” Finn whisper-yelled, his mind trying to wrap itself around the deeper meaning of his father’s words, but it was like he was speaking in a foreign language.
“It was mine, too,” his father countered softly.
“You weren’t driving, Dad! You weren’t the one who looked away! You weren’t even there!” Finn cried out, his voice tinged with regret.
“Exactly. I wasn’t there.”
“But… you said that… you told Mom that…”
“I know what I said. I hear those goddamn words every day. They’ll haunt me until the day I die. But they were meant for me. They were only ever meant for me. Not for you, Finn.”
“I… I don’t…” Finn blinked a couple of times, unsure if he’d been thrown into some strange dream or if his mind was playing some cruel trick on him. He’d misheard? Could it really be that devastatingly banal?
“I’m so sorry, son. That I was the one to give you that excuse you’ve been looking for your entire life. I’m so sorry, and I’ll blame myself for that for the rest of my life.”
“What excuse?” Finn sobered.
“The excuse to tell yourself that you were right all along. That everybody leaves you in the end and since that has always been a life condition to you, then you beat us to it.”
“That’s not—” A queasiness pooled in his stomach because he’d always thought that he’d kept his primal fear so well hidden from those around him.
“It is. You left before we could turn away from you, didn’t you?”
“That’s not true,” Finn protested, but he didn’t even succeed in convincing himself. “You’re trying to make it sound like I don’t trust you. My own family. That I don’t trust you to love me. Or at least, not as much as you and Mom love Cara… Like… Like your love for me is dependent on something,” he whispered.
“But isn’t that what you think, Finn? Isn’t that your truth? Hasn’t it always been? That you were never as worthy as Cara? That you were never as loved as her? Because you aren’t our biological child.”
How strange it was to have his father put his ultimate fear into words. It somehow made them even truer than if they were only inside his head. And then anger suddenly washed over him because he’d fought so hard—so fucking hard—all his life to conceal that awful truth from himself and from others. And now it was out there, floating around, melding with the fuckingOcean Spray, leaving its foul smell everywhere.
“Her name is Cara!” Finn yelled. “It means fucking beloved, Dad!”
“I know it does. But I also know what Finn means.”
“You and Mom didn’t choose that name for me.”
“I know we didn’t. But we choseyou. We were always going to choose you, Finn. Even if we somehow could’ve known what was going to happen, we would’ve still chosen you, son.”
“Dad, don’t say that.” He could no longer master yelling, his voice just flat and pained.
His dad paused as if he seemed to contemplate something. Then he nodded a few times.
“I’ve never told you this. Always promised your mother I wouldn’t. That it had nothing to do with you. And I always insisted it hadn’t, but now I’m not so sure.”
“What?” Finn murmured, exhaustion finally catching up with him.
“In many ways, you saved us, Finn. From ourselves. And I’m not saying this like you were a let’s-try-one-last-time-to-fix-our-marriage project. But the truth is, your mother and I weren’t in a good place back then. We’d tried for so long for a child that we’d ended up drifting apart. It does something to you when you’re denied the one thing you dream of the most. The one thing you want to share with the person you love more than anything. A child. Our relationship was pretty much in shambles.” His father licked his lips, jaw clenching, the next part clearly painful to recollect. “I’d… I’d had an affair, and your mother was staying with your Aunt May in San Francisco when our caseworker called.”
“I never knew,” Finn whispered.
