begin with, yes, but only because I didn’t understand what was going on. I was young, so it wasn’t like I knew the full story. As I got a little older and had to deal with the rumors and whispers, no, I didn’t want anything to do with them. Jessa and I were both out of the house by the time they were released from prison, so even if they did try to talk to us then, they wouldn’t have known where to find us—our grandmother certainly wasn’t going to tell them where we were.”
“So you haven’t spoken to them at all?”
“Nope, and I realized that part of my fear was that they’d try to talk to us or try to come see us. If our names are back in the media, especially in the context that it was this time, where anyone reading the articles would know where we lived, then they could’ve easily shown up on Jessa’s front doorstep.”
Understanding darkened her eyes as she nodded, taking it all in. “Did they?”
“We were prepared for it, but no…they never showed up. They were never on the other end of a phone call, either. Every day I would wake up thinking, today’s the day I’ll see them again, and I’d go to sleep that night wondering why it bothered me that they didn’t come around. Finally, after a couple of weeks of waiting for nothing, I finally understood what had affected me all these years—guilt. Yeah, I also dealt with suffocating humiliation, but I didn’t feel nearly as embarrassed as I did guilty.”
“Why did you feel like that? What did you do?”
“They had their faults, clearly, but I guess deep down, I felt like I had abandoned them. Now I know that’s simply not the case. They didn’t make any attempt to contact us over the years. I just assumed that our Nan and Pop had kept us from them, but apparently, they didn’t have to do that because our parents weren’t interested in seeing us.”
Her brow furrowed as she narrowed her eyes on me. “Are they still alive?”
“Who, my parents? Yes. Our grandparents died years ago, but yeah, Jim and Lillian Abbott are alive and well. Divorced, obviously, though that should probably be assumed since my dad’s interests in young men became public.”
“Are you okay?” she timidly asked.
For the first time in twenty years, I felt confident in my answer when I said, “Yes. As crummy as all this was, and as embarrassing as it is for people to know what my parents did, there’s no way I would’ve been able to recognize my true feelings about everything if it hadn’t happened. I feel better than okay with it—I feel free.”
“That makes me really happy to hear.”
“Too bad I didn’t have all this sorted before you left, though. That’s what I feel the worst about. I didn’t know you were going to leave, Tasha, I swear. I thought we had more time to figure it all out.”
She pulled her lips to one side and hesitated for a moment. “You said that it all factored around whether or not they exposed your past. Once that was out there, I didn’t think I stood a chance with you. In my mind, there was no point in contacting you to let you know that I was leaving. You had made it quite clear where the lines in the sand were drawn.”
“You’re absolutely right, and I can’t apologize enough for that. I was mentally in a very dark place, but I wasn’t there long. Once I started to unravel the emotions that I’d kept buried for the last twenty years, it all just kind of fell into place. It was a rather quick revelation.”
She shrugged, not appearing to be as affected by my sordid past. “Well, it’s all over now, and like they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Had you known ahead of time that all you had to do was sort through emotions that had been locked away for years—and that it would be a rather fast process—you might not have pushed me away that day. And had I known that you weren’t steadfast in your claim to end things for good if your past came to light, then I might’ve stayed and waited it out. But we can’t go back in time, and thankfully, it seems as though everything has worked out for both of us. So I guess right now, all we have to figure out is where to go from