“It was how I wanted it at the time,” I argue.
“You only thought that, I think,” she says thoughtfully, chewing at her lip. “You couldn’t bear rejection of someone real. Like you felt your father had rejected you.”
I’m stunned by that.
All along, I felt that my issues were caused by my mother dying, which didn’t make a lot of sense because she couldn’t help that. She didn’t choose death.
But my father… he chose to draw away from me. He paid for my school, he paid for everything I needed, he bailed me out of trouble time and again. But he was never able to give me what I needed the most.
He was never able to be vulnerable and show that he loved me.
“He does now,” I tell her, almost defensively. “He’s a good father.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “I can tell. But when he was younger, and he was in mourning, he couldn’t manage himself, let alone his relationship with you. And you were so small. It was a formative time for you. And now you have a deep-seeded fear of rejection.”
That’s why I always chose bar whores for years. They wouldn’t reject me.
The revelation is huge.
“That’s enough for today,” she decides, standing up and stretching. “We’ll meet again in the morning.”
I nod. “Okay. Thank you.”
When she’s gone, I curl up in my bed, and I stare at the wall.
I miss my wife. I miss my daughter.
I reach for the phone in a moment of weakness. The receiver is in my hand before I gain control of myself and put it back down.
No.
I’m strong enough to do this alone.
I won’t drag them into my shit.
I fall sleep, and the oblivion of sleep swirls around me like a drug.
33
Chapter Thirty-Two
When I wake, a stamped letter is sitting on my nightstand.
The mail cart must’ve gone by.
I recognize Mila’s handwriting on the envelope, feminine and swirly.
I swallow hard, and open it.
There is no note. Only a ring drops out. Her mother’s ring.
LOVE NEVER FAILS. Those words are inscribed on the inside, and my heart pounds. God, I miss my wife.
“What’s that?” the therapist breezes through the door, her eye on my hand. I hold up the ring.
“Mila’s parents had a rough marriage, tumultuous. But her mother believed that Love never fails, and had her ring inscribed. Mila wears it. She sent it to me. As a message.”
“That her love for you hasn’t failed,” the therapist says slowly.