“Getting better is going to take some work, Haley. Are you willing to work at it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to need for you to open up to me. Trust me.”
Trust. That five-letter word again.
“I’ll try.”
“Okay. Can you tell me what you are thinking when you write your letters, Haley?”
“I’m not really thinking anything. I don’t even remember writing the letters most of the time.”
“So you black out during those moments?”
Haley nodded.
“Do you remember anything before or after you write the letters?”
“Sometimes, I guess. I’ll remember being at my desk, then everything goes black—like I’m doing things in the dark, but I don’t really see what I’m doing. It’s like I become a different person when I’m writing, and my mind just tells me what to write and I write it. My heart just tells me what to feel and I feel it. My brain just tells me what to believe and I believe it. So when I’m writing, the words take on their own life and I follow.”
Dr. Rosin nodded then wrote something down. Haley wondered what he wrote. She suspected it was bad.
“Your mother shared with me that this started a long time ago. Is that true?”
Correction: Her mother shared with the court that it started a long time ago. It was one of the more tragic moments in Haley’s life—hearing her own mother tell the judge about what happened after Jake’s suicide. How young, innocent Haley found Jake’s body and hadn’t taken it so well and started writing herself letters from Jake as if he’d been alive. Her mother let it go, assuming it was a coping mechanism to deal with what Haley saw. No child should witness death like that, especially one so young. Jake’s lifeless form dangling from an attic beam, his dad’s bungee cord wrapped around his thin neck, his eyes vacantly staring into space. Bruises where the rope squeezed the life from him. It must have taken a long time for him to die that way.
Haley shouldn’t have been there. In the attic. She didn’t know Jake had been depressed, but when he went missing, she had a feeling where to find him. Their secret place. And sure enough, he was there. Dead.
No matter how many times she tried to rid the memory, it kept sticking. It wouldn’t leave. And that’s when all this started.
That’s when she pretended Jake was alive.
Simple as that.
That’s when she started writing herself letters—after Jake’s death, and right before her father’s. It wasn’t difficult to write in a new valediction as it suited her—Love Jake, Love Daddy, and now Love Marc.
But then her mom found one.
Gabrielle never told anyone about Haley’s letters, including Frank. It was Gabrielle’s darkest secret—keeping her daughter’s mental demise from her own husband—a secret that had been chasing Haley down since then. A secret that imprisoned Gabrielle, for with Frank’s passing went any chance to open the floodgates of truth. Guilt lingered since. And that secret finally caught up with both Gabrielle and Haley now.
“Yes, I was eleven years old. It was my way of self-therapy, I guess.”
“But it didn’t fix the problem, did it?”
“No. But it offered temporary relief. For those moments as I read the letters I felt like Jake was back in my life and everything was alright again.”
“So why Marc? You had no previous history with him. Why did you decide to target Marc?”
Target. That meant Marc was a victim, and she was a… she shivered at the conclusion of that sentence.
It was a question even Haley didn’t know the answer to. Then she remembered his warm touch, his soul-searching eyes. Familiar. He felt familiar. He felt… safe.
“I suppose it was because he reminded me of my dad,” she said as she thought it out. His hands, his genuine kindness. Yes, he was a lot like her dad. “And I just really wanted to love someone. Be in love. Be loved back. I don’t know why him, except that something about him intrigued me from the first time I met him. He was so sweet to me, and flirted with me. It could have been a glance or the way he said something. I wish I could psychoanalyze and cure myself, but I don’t always understand what I’m doing. And it terrifies me.” Haley paused. It was the truth. She scared herself. And yet she was stuck with herself always.
“Why’s that scare you?” the doctor prodded.
“Because I don’t even know what’s real and what’s not. If you woke up and found out that everything you thought to be true wasn’t, how would you feel? Could you ever trust yourself again? I can’t even trust myself, so how can I ever trust another? That inevitably leads to a very lonely life, Dr. Rosin.”
The doctor looked thoughtful a moment, though he said nothing.
“Doctor, I want Marc and Julie to have their happily ever after. But let me ask you this: When will I ever get mine? Especially with a mental illness like this?”
And just as Haley expected, the doctor had no answer.
While Haley was delusional about the substance of her reality, she knew full well the implications of her mental illness. Her insanity was her sanity. Her obsession with love gave her false hope. She was in love with love. But if that hope was taken from her, she’d have nothing to fall back on when facing the harsh reality of loss, death, and pain. In the world of mental illness, the voices offer comfort, silencing pain’s screams. Would waking from that world she had created lead to a culture shock far worse than false hope?
After a long pause, the doctor finally spoke what they both had been thinking: “It boils down to this. Life is a series of ups and downs. You can’t have the ups without the downs. So first you have to accept that, Haley.”
It sounded so elementary, but it was true. Yet why did it seem to her that she had plenty of the downs but no ups? Where were her ups? She had to create them, for heaven’s sake!
Haley chewed on her lower lip as the doctor continued, keeping her debate to herself.
“Secondly, Haley, you can choose not to act on your impulses, making a conscious effort to live within reality—both enduring the pains we all must suffer and embracing the joys of happily ever after. Or you can cling to a delusion of only the joys, but still never actually obtain love, never live out the real experience. Ultimately, Haley, you are your own worst enemy. You have the power to choose happiness in whatever circumstance you’re in, or you can choose to be miserable. You can either build yourself up or tear yourself down. Each one of us has the choice to be a villain against our own flesh, doing things that eventually hurt ourselves. Your fantasy is your prison, Haley. Reality is your freedom. Which is it that you want?”
The matrix of life. Reality or fantasy? Which was better?
Was it really so bad to live in denial? Everyone did it in some form or another; hers was just a little more blatant. As long as she was chained to her imagination, reality would cease to exist.
There were only two choices. And she had to pick one. Why did it seem like there was always a choice to make?
Chapter 45
After Julie had stormed out of the house, Marc was left with nothing but a bottle of Jack Daniels and the television remote. While mindlessly flipping through channel after channel of garbage, something gave him pause. It was an interview with a teenaged girl named Amber, and she was crying. Marc could totally sympathize with those tears.
Taking a swig of good ol’ Jack, Marc watched as the story unfolded before him. The girl had been sitting at a lunch table with several friends at school in some never-to-be-forgotten city, gabbing over half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bags of BBQ chips when a classmate approached them from behind, with his hands shoved in his Marilyn Manson pullover sweatshirt. A moment later a gunshot went off, and a girl seated next to Amber fell over. Dead. Amber screamed and turned around, finding the barrel of a revolver pressed against her head. The boy holding the gun trembled, eyes avoiding hers as he watched the cafeteria erupt with panicked high schoolers. He pulled back the hammer, aimed, then… nothing. Some
thing must have changed his mind or scared him, for the kid took off running, slipping into the flow of fleeing kids.
At least that’s how Amber remembered it. Some details were a little hazy, she admitted to the camera, but that was the gist of what happened. Then the interview continued:
“So what ended up happening to your friend who was shot?”
Amber’s cheek flushed, a sign of more impending tears. “She died on the spot. Bullet wound to the head.”
The interviewer grew quiet, then softly soothed, “Did they end up catching the boy who did it?”
Amber nodded.
“Do you know why he did it?”
This was where the story got interesting. As Amber recounted the details that followed the day of the shooting, Marc found himself absorbed in the story, compelled by the sheer courage this teenaged girl had that he, in his thirty-plus years of life, still lacked. For the girl who got shot was Amber’s best friend—friends since kindergarten. And there was no rhyme or reason to why the boy chose to shoot her. Simply because she was there, she was accessible. But Amber, even amidst her mourning, sought out her best friend’s killer to give him a piece of her mind. Rather, a peace of her mind.
After the murder, the boy had been sent to prison, looking at a life sentence. But despite the iron bars that kept them apart, Amber wrote a letter. She wrote a letter to honor the blood spilled by her best friend. And that letter offered forgiveness.
“So you wrote him to tell him that you forgave him for what he did?” the interviewer asked in apparent shock.
“Yes, I had to let him know that despite what he did, I forgave him for taking my best friend.”
“How could you forgive him after that?” the interviewer probed.
“You see, I look at it this way. I could hold a grudge, but it won’t bring Becca back. All it will do is make me bitter and angry—a person I don’t want to be. And it will hold that kid back from ever finding release from whatever it was that tormented him enough to take another person’s life. The kid obviously needs love, not judgment. I’m not saying he shouldn’t do jail time, for we all have to suffer the consequences of our actions, but the jail time won’t fix what’s broken inside. Why do people hurt others, take innocent lives, do cruel things? Why do people steal and gossip? Because somewhere deep down they aren’t fulfilled. And a lack of fulfillment ultimately points to a lack of love. Love in a bigger sense. It’s being loved for who you really are, not for who everyone wants you to be or for what you have.”
Amber’s voice grew soft as she continued, “What’s the ultimate way of loving someone? When they do something horrible like murdering your best friend and yet you still forgive them. That’s called unconditional love. And that’s what everyone wants and few find. So that’s what I gave him. Unconditional love in the form of forgiveness.”
Marc was glad that the interviewer chose this moment to say nothing, for he needed a minute to let the words sink in. Forgiveness. The definition was life-changing. Amber’s story and words were life-changing.
Then the interviewer spoke again. “What ended up happening with that boy?”
“He’s doing okay, and we’re actually friends now. Pen pals. Of course he’ll still face his sentence, but he has a hope that no matter what happens in this life, his conscious is clear now. And mine is too. The burden of grief has been removed with that one simple act of forgiveness, of love. And we both can live whatever time we have left under that freedom.”
Swiping at an errant tear, there was no disputing it anymore. As Marc clicked off the television and sat the half-empty bottle of liquor down, he knew that he couldn’t compete with Amber’s story… or her logic. Brood over what Haley had done to him and lose everything in the vicious cycle of bitterness, or forgive and live under that freedom.
The choice was simple. And the decision was a lot easier than he thought.
Chapter 46
It had been more than a decade ago since Marc had last been here with Julie. He had left her a message to meet him here at seven o’clock sharp. He left no other clues as to why the sudden dinner plans, but he wondered if she had any idea what he had up his sleeve.
Sitting in his truck, he checked the dashboard clock. It was game time. His clammy hands clutched the steering wheel. He hadn’t expected to be this nervous.
After one last rehearsal of what he hoped to remember to say, he stepped out of the vehicle into the cool April air and crossed the parking lot.
Marc stepped foot through the fancy arched entryway that led into the dimly lit lobby. A mild breeze followed him into the waiting area. An ornate ceramic clock hung on a beige stucco wall with the small hand on the seven and the big hand on the three. Julie was already fifteen minutes late. Typical woman, he chuckled to himself.
Marc absorbed the ambiance of the family-owned Italian restaurant. Hidden on the outskirts of Erie, Pennsylvania, about forty-five minutes over the New York/Pennsylvania border, Marc had once considered the restaurant his and Julie’s little secret. Since their last date here, new surrounding home sites had developed and the city of Erie stretched its borders, sending more business to the place.
The orchestral opera playing from the overhead speakers would have set an enchanting mood had he been seated with Julie at a candlelit table. Instead, he stood watching the clock, wondering when she’d arrive.
A penguin-suited hostess confirmed their reservation while he waited what felt like an eternity.
The décor hadn’t changed in ten years—warm neutral colors and vivid countryside murals depicted the owner’s Sicilian origins. He saw the same cracks that had crept along the ceiling when the structure settled and shifted years ago. Like the atmosphere, the food hadn’t strayed either as Marc stole a peek at a nearby menu. It featured the same authentic Italian cuisine as before.
This particular restaurant held a special significance for the young couple, as it represented their first official date as teenagers. Of course, twenty dollars a plate had been well above Marc’s normal spending limit when he worked as a gas station attendant after school to pay for his car insurance. But he had insisted on bringing Julie here to impress her—a plan that had worked. She had agreed, then ordered the cheapest entrée on the menu to make up for it.
As Marc’s memory ventured back to that era where big bows and puffy sleeves were the rage, he had no difficulty remembering what she wore on that date. A lipstick red dress—always her best color, especially being a blonde with a rosy complexion.
“Your table is ready,” the hostess finally called to him. Marc followed the tiny girl to their waiting table. Unlike the surrounding tables adorned with the simplicity of a single votive candle, the table was decorated with the bouquet of white calla lilies he had requested—Julie’s favorite.
“Your waitress will be with you shortly,” the hostess said with a friendly grin as she handed Marc a menu and placed the other at Julie’s empty seat.
“Thank you,” Marc responded.
Looking past the beautiful centerpiece, Marc’s eyes questioned the vacant spot opposite him. Julie wasn’t usually this late. He wondered what the hold-up was and flipped through the menu to distract himself from worry.
The waitress took Marc’s champagne order and returned again to check up on him. He checked his watch, and decided he’d give her ten more minutes before he’d consider himself stood up… and the plans ruined.
Eight minutes. Nine minutes. When the watch face hit 7:35, Marc waved to get the waitress’s attention. Each of the staff—all female, with the exception of the busboys—resembled the next, with matching black and white outfits, tight dark brown ponytails secured at the nape of their necks, and olive-complected skin… probably all related, he figured.
“I’m so sorry, but I don’t think my date is showing up, so I’m going to head home,” Marc offered apologetically.
“Before you go, I’ve been instructed to give this to you, sir.” The girl’s outstretched hand held an appetizer that
Marc recognized—stuffed mushrooms. They were no ordinary stuffed mushrooms, either. They were monstrous in size, filled with crabmeat, cheese, and herbs that delivered a sweet kick to the taste buds. Upon seeing them he had a flashback to their first date.
Julie must have remembered Marc ordering this exact appetizer because he had filled up on the things.
This meant she was here. And she was infiltrating his plans!
She was playing games with him. She knows.
As his teeth sank into the buttery vegetable’s flesh, he caught a movement in the corner of his eye. Then he saw Julie approaching and turned to her, mouth full and smiling.
She was breathtaking. Dressed in a deep red, spaghetti strapped dress with the bottom hem of the dress reaching mid-calf.
She always looked amazing, but tonight she had outdone herself. Even wearing a gray blazer overtop of a buttoned-down black silk shirt, he still felt underdressed compared to her ravishing beauty.
“Looks like you started without me,” Julie teased as she pecked his puffed out cheek where the remainders of his bite protruded. The slippery mushroom slid down his throat as he swallowed guiltily.
“Sorry, but you were looking like a no-show. A minute or so more and I would have left! Lucky for you, you know how to keep me waiting.” He held up what was left of the appetizer. Julie took her seat across from him, holding his intense stare.
“You look beautiful tonight, Julie. Red—it’s always been your color,” Marc complimented her.
“Oh, look who’s talking, GQ. Marc, I’m definitely not the best looking one at this table. I mean, I had no idea you had those clothes in your closet or I would have made you wear them more often! You look… great. Really.”
“Eh, this old thing?” Marc shrugged off the comment as he playfully pinched the collar of his blazer.
“Oh, whatever!” Julie scoffed. “You know you look good. So what’s the occasion tonight, huh?”
Marc offered a sly grin and evaded the question. “Can’t a guy take his girl out for a nice dinner without an interrogation? Anyways, you better have some while they last.” He pointed to the half-gone plate of mushrooms.
The Admirer's Secret Page 22