Part 2You Deserve To Lose Me

I lay there, perfectly still, just looking at him.

Unbidden, a memory surfaced. Eighth-grade field trip to the state park. I had wandered off the trail and gotten hopelessly lost. It was Connor who spent three hours searching for me in the dying light. His shins were sliced up by thorny brambles, but he still insisted on carrying me on his back the whole way down the mountain because I was too paralyzed by fear to walk.

I thought of my fourteenth birthday. My father had thrown a massive, catered backyard gala for Melody—who happened to share my exact birthdate—and completely forgot about me.

I had hidden in the darkness of my closet, clutching a framed photograph of my mother to my chest, crying until I couldn't breathe.

It was Connor who opened the closet door. He was holding a lopsided, home-baked cupcake with a single lit candle, looking at me like a knight who had finally found his charge.

"Happy birthday, Caro."

"Don't be scared. You're not alone. I'll be here for every birthday, for the rest of your life."

I thought of all the times Melody had tried to insert herself into his orbit.

In the dead of winter, she had spent weeks knitting him a gray scarf. Connor hadn't even given it a second glance before tossing it into the cafeteria trash can.

Melody’s eyes had welled up with those trademark tears, but Connor’s voice was like ice:

"Don't waste your time. I will always stand with Caroline."

"You and your mother destroyed her family. That makes you my enemy, too."

Then, another memory. Melody’s mother, Valerie, ‘accidentally’ knocking my mother’s vintage Cartier watch off my dresser, shattering the delicate glass face.

Blinded by grief and rage, I had thrown a glass of ice water right in Valerie’s face.

Valerie was a master of the victim act. She instantly collapsed into my father’s arms, weeping.

"I was just trying to help Caroline tidy her room. I didn't mean to bump the dresser. She misunderstood... she thinks I did it on purpose."

"Richard, please, don't be mad at her."

Her calculated retreat only made my father more protective of her. He turned to me, his eyes devoid of any paternal warmth.

"Caroline Ellis, who taught you to act like such a savage? Apologize to your mother, right now!"

I tipped my chin up, my throat tight.

"I only have one mother. Valerie is just a cheap homewrecker."

The slap echoed through the hallway. My father struck me so hard my ears rang.

"I have spoiled you for too long. You have zero respect!"

As punishment, he forced me to stand in the freezing mudroom for twelve hours. No dinner. No water. No sitting down.

My legs shook. I was lightheaded from hunger.

It was Connor who shimmied up the trellis and crawled through the mudroom window, pulling a bag of warm, sugar-dusted apple cider donuts from his jacket.

I ate them through my tears, and he wiped my cheeks with his thumbs, his own face twisted in sympathetic agony.

"Don't cry. Once we graduate, we’re going to college in Boston. We’ll get as far away from them as possible."

"I’ll be your family from now on. I’ll take care of you. I’ll protect you."

It never surprised me that my father chose Melody over me.

But Connor? Connor, who looked at me like I hung the moon? How could he ever betray me for her?

I didn't want to believe it.

Maybe the vision of my twenty-eight-year-old self was just a stress-induced nightmare.

I tried to self-soothe.

But reality was waiting to deliver its own slap to the face.