Page 299 of Mad Girl

“My adoptive dad. That birthday I told you about? Where he upset me, and I took the drugs?”

“Yeah…”

“I told him I planned to come here and find my real dad, and he said, ‘Go ahead, Casey. I bet it goes swimmingly.’ So I said, ‘Maybe it will. Maybe he’ll be happy to meet me.’ And with the cruelest smirk on his face, he said, ‘You really think so? He’ll have built a life for himself. He’ll be good and settled by now, and here you’ll come…to wreck everything. But go on. Go wreck his life like you’ve wrecked mine.’”

My temper flared on your behalf. “You wrecked his life? What an awful thing to say. Why would he say that to you?”

“He blames me for my mum’s death.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m responsible for my mum’s death. I’m the reason she died, and he resents me for it. He wishes they’d never adopted me.”

“How are you the reason she died?”

“Because I’d been begging to go to this concert by André Rieu.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s a Dutch violinist and conductor. He’s quite famous in Europe, and he was holding concerts in the UK for the first time ever in his career. I was a massive fan of his and desperate to go. I’d been badgering my parents about it for weeks. One of the concerts was three hours away from where I lived, and it fell on my birthday, but I’d have to miss school to go, so my dad said it was completely out of the question. He didn’t know my mum had secretly purchased tickets and planned to pull me out of school that day. She wanted to make a mother-son road trip out of it—do something special for my birthday. She surprised me with the tickets the night before and told me to act as if everything was normal in the morning. She’d collect me from school after tying up some loose ends, and we’d be on our way. She’d handle my dad and explain herself later. But the day wore on, and when she never came to collect me, I worried my dad had found her out.”

“Did he?” I whispered.

“No,” you said. “On her way to the school, her car had been struck by someone speeding too fast round a corner—killing her instantly. When I got home, the police were there, in our kitchen, informing my dad. He found out about the concert and blamed me for her death. He blamed me for wanting to go so badly that she couldn’t bear to disappoint me.”

“But it wasn’t your fault,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. “You know that, right?”

“She wouldn’t have been there—driving to the school that day—if it hadn’t been for me.”

“Casey, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You didn’t cause that person to drive too fast or hit her car. It had nothing to do with you—and your dad is a shitty human being for making you think it did. How could he do that to you?”

I grabbed your hand and cradled it tightly to my chest.

“He and I never got on,” you said. “He didn’t like that I was more interested in music and books than the things he liked. I played rugby and football to make him happy, and I played well, but nothing I ever did for him was good enough. He said my head wasn’t in it, that I could be better if I tried harder and gave it half as much effort as the violin. He thought I was too sensitive, too close with my mum and sister, too interested in the more ‘feminine’ things they liked. He said I needed to spend more time hanging out with the guys on my rugby team, until he caught me kissing one of them—Jake—and he went completely mental over it. He kicked Jake out of my room, called me sick, and smashed my violin to bits. When my mum bought me a new one, he was angry with her, and they fought over it. She threatened to leave if he didn’t apologize to me, so he finally did apologize, but I could tell he didn’t mean it. He didn’t like the comments people made about me—how they were quick to point out I didn’t look like anyone else in the family. He didn’t like the way it bothered me. Claire often joked that maybe I was adopted, which made him angry, too. Until our mother died, that is, and then he took great pleasure in telling me that why, yes, as a matter of fact, I was adopted. She had adopted me. She had wanted me. She’d longed for a second baby when they couldn’t have one on their own, and he’d tried to talk her out of the adoption—but she just had to have me, so he’d given in.”

My chest burned as I listened to your story. This was the saddest, most fucked-up revelation I’d ever heard.

You stared past me, the Christmas tree reflected in your eyes, shiny with tears. “So there I was,” you rasped, “on my thirteenth birthday, being told by the man who raised me I wasn’t his, and he’d never wanted me, and the one person who did was now dead and to be buried in the ground—all thanks to me.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks. Because they were rolling down yours, too.

Voice catching, you said, “It breaks something inside you when you’re told that. Not just what he said, but the way he said it. Like he hated me. Like I disgusted him. Like he didn’t care what it did to me to hear those things as a child—on my birthday—right after losing my mum. I didn’t know who I was anymore, because he’d stripped away my entire identity. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. Claire tried telling me I belonged with her—that she needed me—but I was too devastated to hear it.”

I abandoned your hand to sweep the tears from your face.

“So for years after that,” you said, “I completely self-destructed. Drinking. Drugs. Sex. Did whatever I could to feel numb—to feel something other than pain. On my birthday, I can’t help being reminded of it. Of sitting on my bed—with half-deflated balloons everywhere—crying over the horrible news my mum’s just died, and here comes my dad, not to comfort me or anything. To blame me for it. To tell me he’d never even wanted me.

“Then I came here, and Nic was so quick to take me in—even before Claire told him the truth about my dad—and I didn’t realize how much I needed to belong somewhere again until Nic gave me that. Your dad has treated me with more respect and kindness than my adoptive father ever has. Every time I go back to England, Nic calls to tell me it’s going to be okay, it doesn’t matter what he says, the important thing is I’m loved and appreciated here. While I was over there this past summer, Nic called to say, ‘The greatest day of my life was the day Elliot was born, the second greatest was the day you told me you might’ve been my son, and the third greatest was finding out you’re John’s. Getting to know you over these last couple of years? Having you live with us? I’ll never be able to adequately express what a privilege that is.’ But I feel the privilege is all mine, because getting to live here—getting to know him—has been so massively healing for me.”

Tears sprinted down my face.

You tried brushing them away with the pads of your fingers.

“And I’ve been awful,” I whispered. “All along I’ve been awful. Especially when you first moved in.”

“You didn’t know,” you said softly, chasing a tear down my throat.

So many emotions churned through me as I clasped your wrist. These were the horrible circumstances Eleanor couldn’t bring herself to name. No wonder you spiraled every year on your birthday. No wonder you couldn’t talk about your mom without crying. No wonder.