Page 56 of Sacred

…It’s been over eighteen years since I last saw you, and I shouldn’t have Googled you, but I did.

Is that grief in your eyes in every picture I’ve ever found of you?

You don’t look happy in any of them. Not like you did in the pictures I still have of you from back then.

I know your real smile, Ward. The one of the guy who promised to always be mine.

Your wife’s on Facebook, but you aren’t. Not with a personal profile.

Yeah, I’ll admit I cruised your page for the law firm.

Every picture Olivia posts of you, I can see the boy who cried in my arms.

No pictures of kids, and no mention of them anywhere. Not sure what’s up with that, since her sisters are popping them out like they haven’t figured out what causes it yet.

Are you happy?

Really?

I just won re-election. I’m a two-term senator now. Daniel’s chief of staff for a congressman. Been doing that for a couple of years now, and he’s amazing.

Even in my happiest moments, I still find myself thinking about you and wondering how I failed you. I don’t want to think that I spent seven years with a liar, but you did warn me your dad’s a narcissist, so maybe you were, too, and I fell for it.

If so, bravo.

I don’t want to believe that, though.

I want to tell myself that your father pulled some last-minute bullshit and you felt you had to leave with him.

I want to believe you didn’t mean to hurt me. That it hurt you to leave me.

Did it hurt you to leave me the way you did?

I want to believe it did, but I’d be an idiot to, right?

Because that’s not what the evidence shows, is it?

I guess some questions will never be answered.

I need to stop Googling you, and writing these damned e-mails…