Gorgeous Misery (Creeping Beautiful)

And I had to make up for the time we were spending apart.

I had to make up for it or she would lose her way.

So my letters were two things at once. Something to guide her and a memory. A nice memory to soothe her soul.

Dear Wendy,

You are sweet, beautiful, perfect, and whole. You are everlasting, transcendent, exceptional, and extraordinary. You are remarkable, exquisite, priceless, and sublime. You are flawless, marvelous, divine, and sensational. You are heavenly, powerful, glorious, and delightful.

You are lovely.

You are gorgeous.

Do you remember that day at the airfield? Because I do. It was probably one of the worst days of my life, and that’s saying something because I’ve had so many bad days.

But it wasn’t you who made it bad. I need that to be clear.

It wasn’t Lauren, either. Even though she was only four months old and she had been inconsolably crying for nearly six hours that day.

It was me.

I have never been one of those people who thinks about giving up. I would never, ever be my brother in that respect. I would never let anyone put me out of my misery. And I don’t care what anyone thinks—he didn’t make Sasha shoot him in the head to save her. He didn’t even do it because of some misplaced sense of saving himself.

He made Sasha kill him so he could quit.

I’m not a quitter. This is my point.

But that day, out in that airfield, standing in the pouring rain in front of Chek with Lauren screaming in my truck, I wanted to walk out.

No. I wanted to run. Because that’s what I do. I don’t quit, I run. From all of it. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’m no different than Santos then.

But it is different than Santos. Because when I run away, I’m not quitting. I always make myself do something harder. Something more challenging, not less.

I was already thinking about going back to San Pedro Sula so I could hand Lauren over to Santos for training and go back to my life hunting down the wayward Zeroes. And if Lauren was eliminated, so what? Right? So what? If she was eliminated that was the best thing for her. There was no happy ending in this baby’s future. There was no real way to save her.

It was either train her and make her capable, or kill her.

So in my mind, this wasn’t quitting.

I was handing her over to people more qualified than me so I could go back to the challenge of hunting down Zeroes. So I could make this world a safer place.

Yeah. I was pretty fucked up that day. And I was on the verge of this alternative path in life when you came out of the plane slinging a backpack over your shoulder and cussing like a sailor under your breath.

You saved me that day, Wendy.

You saved my fucking soul that day at the airfield.

You were nine years old, you had no clue what to do with a baby, you were unpleasant, and angry, and threatened to kill me three times before we even got to our hotel that night, but the moment you got in the back cab of the truck and looked at Lauren, she stopped crying.

And that’s the moment when I decided to stop running.

Your friend,

Nick

Once Wendy became a part of my life she was just there. As in, I counted on her being there, even when she wasn’t. There were a lot of good times. Maybe we weren’t happy all the time, but happy is a strong word if you think about it. Most days people aren’t happy. This doesn’t mean they’re unhappy, it just means they’re having a regular day where one doesn’t have to consider the question—Am I happy?

It’s more like satisfaction, I guess.

Those early days with Wendy and Lauren were almost all very satisfying. And more than half of them were downright happy.

One day when Lauren was a little over six months old, we were in St. Augustine, Florida. We had been visiting libraries and bookstores for about a month now. Wendy was into it. Like, seriously into it. She had a guidebook app about libraries and we were making plans to go on this stupid library tour across the South.

Even now, this still makes me smile. Libraries and bookstores were a big part of my time being Lauren’s father.

But anyway. There were some unhappy times. Not a whole day. I can’t recall a whole day where Lauren, Wendy, and I were all unhappy together. But there was this one moment. And the weird thing is that I didn’t even know it was an unhappy moment until years later because Wendy isn’t an unhappy girl. She’s not one of those people who needs to be coddled. She doesn’t crave attention. She doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her.