Page 236 of Mad Girl

“You don’t know what I did.”

“Well, did you? Did you beg her to stay with us, Dad? Did you beg her to come back?”

“It was complicated.”

“What does that mean? You wanted her gone?”

“Is that what this is about? You think I’m lying about your mom?”

“Answer my question!”

“I didn’t beg her to stay, okay? I wanted her to want to stay. I wanted a lot of things, but she didn’t, and by the time she left, I’d had enough. I was done wanting things she couldn’t give me.”

“Why didn’t she want to stay?” I asked.

“She wasn’t happy.”

“Why not?”

Nic sighed. “She just wasn’t, Elliot.”

“Why? Did you ask her to do things she didn’t want to do?”

Nic looked away. “I did. I asked for things she didn’t want. I asked her to be someone she wasn’t. I asked for too much.”

“If you made her so unhappy, why was it selfish of her to leave? Why was she bad for wanting to be free?”

“Because she abandoned you.”

“Did she abandon me? Or did you force her to leave me?”

Nic leaned back, appalled by this question. “What?”

“You said you would never have let her take me away from you. Maybe she wanted to take me, and you said no. Maybe you wielded all that money and power you have to keep me here. Maybe I’m not allowed to have pictures of her—to see videos of her, to meet her—because I would see her being a normal person and that doesn’t fit your narrative. Maybe you don’t want me to know her full name because I’ll look her up, and she’ll tell me a story much different than the one you’ve told me my whole life.”

“Are you serious?” he asked, gaze flashing. “Are you fucking serious right now?”

“If you’re telling the truth about her, then why all the secrecy, Dad?”

“Elliot, we’ve been through this. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“But I’m already hurt!”

How could he not see? Why didn’t he understand? How screwed up my life was? Because of him?

“Growing up without a mom? Hurts! Being denied normal life experiences? Hurts! Having a phobia of being left alone because I’ve never been left alone? Hurts! Not being able to trust my father to be honest with me about anything? Fucking hurts!”

Nic watched me as I tried to regain my composure, his eyes huge—and sad, too.

“But do you want to know the number-one thing that hurt me the most?” I asked, my voice low and ominous. “Being abandoned by you. That one time.”

Surely you saw it, too: the cautious lean back, the fear in his eyes, the regret clouding his face. He didn’t even have to ask what I meant, Casey. He knew this was about the time he’d locked me in his office.

“But we don’t talk about that, do we? Hours of therapy. Hours of talking—you and me, sitting at the dining table, pouring over the horrible things I’ve done—but we don’t ever talk about the horrible thing you did. It’s easier to pretend that really horrible thing never happened.”

“You needed me,” Nic said quietly, “and I shut down. Believe me, if I could go back, I would. It’s one of my greatest failings as a parent.”

“One of? Meaning you have many? Is one of them making me hate my life?”