Page 49

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I toss and turn for much of the night after discovering those messages on Blake’s phone.

When I discovered Jordan was cheating on me, I was still in high school, living with my parents. I can’t say I had the best relationship with my parents—that’s an understatement. They always blamed me for some stupid accident that happened when I was a kid. Who holds a grudge against a child ? My father called me a sociopath, even though I was only seven years old and had no idea what that meant. Anyway, Joey was fine. It was just a broken arm. It’s not like he had brain damage. It didn’t keep their golden boy from getting that fancy schmancy investment banker job.

My relationship with my father was never the same after that incident, but I never cared what he thought. And now he’s dead anyway.

Is it such an awful thing to want retribution against people who have wronged you? When I was in middle school and my best friend Ashley Cerutti decided I was no longer cool enough to hang out in our friend group, should I have just shrugged and said “no problem”? Stood by as she took all my friends away from me? Anyway, if she didn’t want her hair to catch fire, she shouldn’t have worn so much hair spray.

After the whole school found out that Jordan was cheating on me, I ran home to my mother to tell her what had happened. She was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for dinner, when I came into the room sobbing.

Her brow wrinkled. “What’s wrong, Whitney?”

“Jordan cheated on me!” I wailed.

She could have taken me in her arms and held me, which was what I’d been hoping she’d do. I wanted to cry my guts out while she stroked my hair and told me that Jordan was a dirtbag and that I’d find someone a million times better. Then we’d eat cookie dough together—my favorite thing.

But instead, she looked at me and said, “Maybe if you didn’t act so crazy, he wouldn’t have done it.”

And then she went back to peeling potatoes.

I ate cookie dough alone that night in my bedroom while I sobbed into my pillow and plotted a way to make Jordan pay.

So in the end, it was good that my mother blew me off when I told her about Jordan. Because if she hadn’t, he never would have realized the error in his ways. He never would have acknowledged what he did to me, especially while sobbing and begging me to make it right again—as if he could! I’m sure he would have grown up to be a terrible person who would have hurt many other women. I did the world a favor.

When Blake and I were getting serious and he introduced me to his father, I knew I had to reciprocate. Early in our relationship, I’d told him about my father’s heart attack but admitted that my mother was still living. I should have told him they were both dead, because now he expected to meet my alleged mother.

Blake meeting my real mother was out of the question, of course. But I located a performance school in the East Village, and I approached one of the teachers to ask if there were any middle-aged students who might be interested in a little work on the side.

That’s how I met Wanda.

Wanda was fifty-two years old, and she was perfect . My own mother bears more of a resemblance to me, but Wanda was close enough with her dyed blond hair and fair skin. When we got coffee together at a small coffee shop by Washington Square Park with little outdoor tables, we talked about the part I wanted her to play.

“I love to bake,” I explained to Wanda. “So maybe you can tell him how we used to bake cookies all the time when I was little.”

My real mother used to bake cookies a lot, but we rarely did it together after Joey’s accident. She didn’t seem to want to spend much time with me after that.

“I’m not much of a baker,” Wanda admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever baked cookies in my life!”

“It’s easy,” I told her. “The secret is in the butter.”

I then explained to her how I always use high-quality butter that I let sit at room temperature for exactly fifteen minutes—no more, no less. Wanda nodded, taking notes on a scrap of paper.

“He sounds like a good guy, this Blake,” she said after I’d explained in detail how to make the perfect snickerdoodle cookies and how much he likes them. “Sounds like you really like him.”

“Oh, I do.”

She frowned at me over her cappuccino. “Then why don’t you tell him the truth about your mom? I bet he’d understand. I mean, I don’t want to talk myself out of a job, but it seems like the truth is the best policy.”

At that moment, I desperately wished I could introduce Blake to my real mother. I wished I had a normal family where we could drive out to Jersey together, and she’d pepper him with lots of nosy questions, and he’d act annoyed later, but then we’d laugh about it.

But I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him that my mother didn’t like me because she thought I was a sociopath and didn’t even know my name anymore and probably thought I was dead—no, she was hoping I was dead.

“No,” I said. “He wouldn’t understand.”

I ended up hiring Wanda, and she played the part to perfection. She was sweet but not too sweet, and she even gave him a good-natured grilling about his intentions toward me. I loved the way he answered those questions. She joined us for a few pleasant meals before I regretfully told him she was returning to her home in Idaho. I had imagined she’d join us again for the wedding, but it doesn’t look like that will be happening now.

No, Blake and I are done.

I finally give up on sleep at four in the morning. I roll out of bed, creeping across our bedroom to the closet. I pull out a shoebox stuffed all the way in the back, which I bring with me down to the living room.

Blake is utterly uninterested in my shoes, so I have no worries that he will go through my shoeboxes. I sit down on the sofa and take the lid off the box, which is packed with unmailed handwritten letters on white printer paper, folded into thirds. I remove one of the letters—dated one month ago—from the pile and start reading:

Dear Mom,

Blake surprised me today. It wasn’t any special occasion, but there’s a flower shop on his way home from the subway station, and he bought me a single red rose. I wish more than anything that you could be at our wedding, because I want you to see that I’m a good person.

You and Daddy were wrong about me. All I needed was the right man to make me happy.

I fold up the letter, unable to go on. It’s painful to read my words from back when I believed Blake and I would have a happy ending together. It’s all fallen apart now. Maybe I was right—maybe I am a good person, and all I need is the right man to make me happy, but Blake isn’t that man. Maybe he doesn’t exist.

I think back to the role Wanda played as my mother when we all went out to dinner together. Even though it wasn’t real, it was the most affection I’d received from a maternal figure in years. When it was over, I ached for my own mother.

But I can’t see my mother. I can’t see her because I can’t return to Telmont, and she probably thinks I’m dead anyway. And even if I could see her, she wouldn’t give me the comfort I need. She wouldn’t stroke my hair and eat cookie dough with me. She would tell me to buck up and that if Blake cheated on me, it’s all my fault.

No wonder Blake doesn’t love me. Even my own mother couldn’t love me.

Even so, writing to her has become a habit over the last fifteen years. So I get out a piece of paper and compose yet another letter I will never send.

Dear Mom,

Well, it happened again. The man I love has betrayed me in the most horrible way.

I know you don’t think I am capable of being loved, and maybe you’re right. You don’t think I deserve a happy life with a decent man. I thought Blake was the one who would prove you wrong, but instead, he made a fool out of me.

How could he do that, Mom? How could he tell me he loves me and that he wants to marry me, then treat me this way?

You always said to let it go. What you really meant is that I should let him get away with it.

But I’m not going to let that happen. I won’t let Blake get away with what he’s done to me.

I’m going to make him pay. Just like Jordan. Just like the rest of them.

Love,

Whitney