“Say what you want, but I still feel awful about it. The only thing that matters is that your past never would’ve been brought up if it hadn’t been for me. No matter which way you slice it, the only reason any of this has happened to you is because of me.”
While she wasn’t wrong, I didn’t believe a single word of it. And even though I still battled with the shame left behind by my parents’ actions, easing her worries became the higher priority. It helped to block some of the embarrassment that bubbled to the surface at the unspoken acknowledgment that she knew what my parents had done.
“What happened in my past will always be there. With or without you, it was always there. And truth be told, having it brought back up in the media has helped me deal with it in ways I never would’ve been able to without you. It’s released some of the binds that have held me back for so long. If anything, I should be thanking you.”
Confusion and disbelief crossed her face again. “How did that help you?”
Before getting in my car this morning, I’d promised myself that I would give her everything. The entire time we’d spent together, I’d kept so much from her, essentially preventing her from truly knowing parts of me. But I wouldn’t do that anymore.
I’d give her all of me, and she could choose to take me or leave me.
But at least it would be her choice, and she’d have all the facts.
“I don’t know how much of my story that you know, but in a nutshell, my parents were sentenced to fourteen years in prison for a barrage of charges ranging from tax fraud to mail fraud—though they only served eight. At the time, I was twelve and Jessa was fifteen, so we were sent to live with our grandparents. While we were there, we weren’t allowed any contact with either of our parents. They refused to take us to visit them, and any calls from the jail were blocked.”
“Did you want to talk to them?”
This was something I’d asked myself many times. “To begin with, yes, but only because I didn’t understand what was going on. I was young, so it wasn’t like I knew the full story. As I got a little older and had to deal with the rumors and whispers, no, I didn’t want anything to do with them. Jessa and I were both out of the house by the time they were released from prison, so even if they did try to talk to us then, they wouldn’t have known where to find us—our grandmother certainly wasn’t going to tell them where we were.”
“So you haven’t spoken to them at all?”
“Nope, and I realized that part of my fear was that they’d try to talk to us or try to come see us. If our names are back in the media, especially in the context that it was this time, where anyone reading the articles would know where we lived, then they could’ve easily shown up on Jessa’s front doorstep.”
Understanding darkened her eyes as she nodded, taking it all in. “Did they?”
“We were prepared for it, but no…they never showed up. They were never on the other end of a phone call, either. Every day I would wake up thinking, today’s the day I’ll see them again, and I’d go to sleep that night wondering why it bothered me that they didn’t come around. Finally, after a couple of weeks of waiting for nothing, I finally understood what had affected me all these years—guilt. Yeah, I also dealt with suffocating humiliation, but I didn’t feel nearly as embarrassed as I did guilty.”
“Why did you feel like that? What did you do?”
“They had their faults, clearly, but I guess deep down, I felt like I had abandoned them. Now I know that’s simply not the case. They didn’t make any attempt to contact us over the years. I just assumed that our Nan and Pop had kept us from them, but apparently, they didn’t have to do that because our parents weren’t interested in seeing us.”
Her brow furrowed as she narrowed her eyes on me. “Are they still alive?”
“Who, my parents? Yes. Our grandparents died years ago, but yeah, Jim and Lillian Abbott are alive and well. Divorced, obviously, though that should probably be assumed since my dad’s interests in young men became public.”
“Are you okay?” she timidly asked.
For the first time in twenty years, I felt confident in my answer when I said, “Yes. As crummy as all this was, and as embarrassing as it is for people to know what my parents did, there’s no way I would’ve been able to recognize my true feelings about everything if it hadn’t happened. I feel better than okay with it—I feel free.”
“That makes me really happy to hear.”
“Too bad I didn’t have all this sorted before you left, though. That’s what I feel the worst about. I didn’t know you were going to leave, Tasha, I swear. I thought we had more time to figure it all out.”
She pulled her lips to one side and hesitated for a moment. “You said that it all factored around whether or not they exposed your past. Once that was out there, I didn’t think I stood a chance with you. In my mind, there was no point in contacting you to let you know that I was leaving. You had made it quite clear where the lines in the sand were drawn.”
“You’re absolutely right, and I can’t apologize enough for that. I
