“When Harriet got a little older, she stayed with you for half the school holidays. You’d take her to Newcastle. She had the whole ‘Grandparent Experience,’ as your dad used to call it. It was far more love than she ever saw from the other side.”
Evie nods. “That makes a lot of sense. But I don’t understand how this went wrong.”
I sigh. She has to hear it. “Oliver became progressively jealous. He didn’t want to share Harriet with other people. He never got over the fact that I’d been able to help his daughter in a way that he couldn’t. He was already jealous enough before that, of you and me.”
“You and me?”
Always.
“We were never together, you and I. We had that one kiss after you’d broken up …”One kiss, before that kiss for the ages on the deck.“But he was jealous of everything. And everyone. Even Harriet, in the end, and the love everyone lavished on her, particularly when she was having treatment.”
And that was exactly the problem. The further Harriet wormed her way into all our lives, the more envious Oliver became. With a much older sister who was living overseas, he’d effectively grown up as an only child. And then along came someone who absorbed all the attention. It didn’t matter that she was his own child, and deathly ill. He was that narcissistic.
“The focus on Harriet ate him up,” I say.
“But she was his daughter! What kind of a person was Imarriedto?” Evie asks. It’s such an innocent question, and I’m stuck for a response.
“It reached a point where he closed you both off from everyone. By that stage, I think you’d lost the will to fight for us. You all but said so in the last email you sent to your parents.”
77
Evie
Hours later, I’m still pondering Drew’s words. He can’t be right. I would never have stopped fighting for them. How could I let my parents fall in love with a surrogate granddaughter and then steal her away? No wonder they didn’t want to see me. I must have completely worn them out—worn Drew out too. And driven Bree away after our argument at the wedding.
“Dad, I would never have done this,” I tell him, after Chloe and Harriet and Bree have left, Mum has gone to bed, and it’s just him, Drew, and I having a nightcap on the deck.
But I did. I did do it. The fact that I can’t remember doing it isn’t an excuse.
I pick up Dad’s iPad again and reread the email I’d asked to see, clearly sent from my account.
Mum and Dad,
Things can’t go on like this. We are constantly under attack. You’ve never tried to love Oliver. He’s on edge when we’re with you. He never felt good enough. And now Harriet asked why you don’t like Daddy. I have to choose my family.
Evie.
“The important thing is you’re here now,” Dad says softly.
“I didn’t write this,” I argue.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“No, Dad. These are not my words. I don’t write like this. It’s the clipped tone, can’t you hear it? And the sentences are all the same length. I don’t speak that way or write that way—without any poetry to it …”
Who wrote this?
“Sweetheart, I hardly think you were considering the poetry of the message. You were furious with us!”
“I also never put a full stop after my name,” I tell them. “In forensic linguistics, that kind of thing is relevant. You can hang a criminal case on punctuation! I’m telling you, I didn’t write this.”
DidOliver?
Dad doesn’t seem to believe me. I try to imagine my parents receiving the message, heartbroken, and me completely unaware it had been sent.
“But this is no different from the way you’d been messaging us for years, Evie. Every time you canceled a visit or didn’t like the way we’d said something. Or when you’d write to tell us we were wrong about Oliver and laboriously explain his perspective on things. You blew hot and cold with us the entire marriage. And when it wore your mother down, yes, she’d step back. Just to catch her breath before you’d criticize her again, but you know, Evie, your mother is a person too. It was destroying her life.”
“And were there full stops after my name in all those emails too?”
