“It matters a lot,” I say, disentangling myself from her.
I’m not kind, not gentle—I don’t have it in me now.
Right now, I don’t know what to be.
All I know is I need to get away, to think this shit through before I get blackout drunk.
My entire existence is a lie.
That’s not something you just shrug at and go on your merry way.
Out of my parents, Dad was always more invested. The one who occasionally asks me to have a drink with him as I update him about my life.
Mom checked out a long time ago. Hell, I wonder if she completely dissociated the day I was born, even if she went through the very basic emotional motions when I was a kid.
Playing the perfect parent is just acting.
Is it all a lie?
She can say she loves me, but I know she regrets ever conceiving me. Dad, he accepted me.
And Gramps—
Where to begin?
He felt like the most grounded, most present, most honest and real family I had. Now, I find out that was a lie.
He wanted to be a part of my life.
And that should be a good thing, but now it’s tinged with the accusations Mom threw at him. Dad said they were unfair, but were they?
Gramps always had a special connection with me.
The girls were perfectly welcome, my sister and Cleo, but they’d rather have story time or go to the beach than fish or hike through the woods.
Margot never cared to learn how to prep fish and raw lobster on the beach, and Cleo was too little. They were more interested in sunbathing on the yacht than swimming. And my sister had Hattie by her side for company.
At the time, I thought it was only logical Gramps would default to keeping me company, seeing as I had no one else.
But now, looking back, everything feels like a house of mirrors.
Distorted and ugly.
Margot, she was left to her own devices, hanging out with Hattie so often because Gramps was more interested in hanging out with me.
But that wasn’t just because I was his grandson.
I was his own personal apology.
His penance.
His personal crusade.
If I kept going like the moody, rudderless fucking punk I was, the disaster Gramps created would be total, and he couldn’t have that.
Christ.
And even when I was a teenage asshole—getting into trouble, smoking, screwing off when I could with girls even when Gramps warned me not to and put Holden on my ass, Gramps never punished me.
