“So…” Cooper said. “In our old town, while my parents were in the middle of getting divorced… there was an incident where my dad came by after school one day before my mom was home from work… and he took me to his apartment for a sleepover—without actually telling her.”
“Wait—what?”
“Yeah. So that was rough. She got home, and I wasn’t there, and she couldn’t find me anywhere… and then she called the police.”
“Why didn’t your dad tell her he’d picked you up?” I asked, hoping maybe he’d just forgotten.
“Apparently,” Cooper said, “he was trying to scare her.”
“Hold on,” I said, sitting up straighter—sunburn forgotten. “Are you saying your dad kidnapped you?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘kidnapped.’ He just… took me. Without asking. And didn’t tell my mom.”
“Cooper,” I said. “That’skidnapping.”
“Not if it’s your dad.”
But I couldn’t let that stand. “Even if it’s your dad.”
Cooper shrugged. “I guess, technically—fine. You could call it kidnapping.”
“Technically?”
“I didn’t feel kidnapped, if that makes it better.”
“Not sure it does.”
“Yeah. So. My dad wasn’t the nicest guy. Or—sometimes he was okay, I guess. But he was very controlling. Like, he never let my mom do anything by herself or make any decisions. She told me not long ago that he wouldn’t let her have a credit card. She had to do everything with cash that he gave her. And he told her what to do all the time—like what to have for dinner, and where she could and couldn’t go, and what to wear. Crazy stuff. Stuff that didn’t matter—like which earrings she could buy. And I guess, after a while, she really didn’t like that. Finally, she decided to leave him… and he didn’t take too kindly to that news.”
“Like—how?”
“She won’t give me specifics. But I know she had to get a restraining order.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’m not like that, by the way,” Cooper said, like I might think less of him now.
“Of course you’re not!” I said.
“I’ve spent my whole life working very hard to not be anything like my dad.”
“Have you?”
“And I’m a great boyfriend, by the way. Ask anyone.”
“Cooper,” I said. “That’s a given.”
“All I have to do is thinkwhat would my dad doin any situation—and then just do the opposite.”
I was still taking it in. “That’s how you wound up moving to our street? You were on the run from your dad?”
“Not ‘on the run,’ exactly. Maybe just more like in hiding. A little bit. My mom worked really hard to make things feel normal after that. But yeah—when we moved, she changed our last name to Watts, after her favorite music teacher in high school. And she started calling me by my middle name.”
“So your dad wouldn’t find you?”
“That was the idea.”
“So the situation was… really bad.”
