all these nasty things people were saying. The police confirmed what happened. There was no foul play. Lisa wasn’t well. She had problems, but it hurt her family to have these problems printed and published for the world to read. I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, but a lot of interest in her was because she was my girlfriend. For an up and coming horror writer, which was what I was then, to have a girlfriend who killed herself, well, news like that was ripe for the picking.”
I let this sink in. My fear of Ward was amplified because of what Jamie had told me. He gives me an are-you-satisfied-stare, which makes me look away, at the wall, feeling foolish.
“There’s one more thing. One more explanation.”
My heart sinks. The sadness that lingers around me—for my mom, and for everything I couldn’t fix and make better—deepens with every word Ward says. He is ripping my emotions to shreds in order to clear his name. He deserves to, because I have made and assumed way too much. He’s not a calculating man, like I feared at first. He’s brusque and upfront, and reveals who he is. That’s why he scared me at first, from the moment I met him, because his roughness was in plain sight.
I feel sad because we could have had a lifetime of talking. Now he’s giving me piecemeal bits about all the things I wanted to know about him back when we were together. It’s too late.
“What other thing?” I ask, my voice shaky.
“I got mad that day, real mad, I caught you reading my manuscript. My reaction was out of proportion to the thing you had done.”
“I’m sorry about that.” I really am. I’ve never had a chance to tell him, but now that I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and I’ve had the distance to view my actions through the filter of time and space, I can see that I wasn’t entirely blameless.
He looks away, out of the window, at a point in the distance. “What you did, it took me back to the house, to my step dad, to that time.”
I want to rush to him, but I’m scared I might end up wanting to touch him, and I’m also scared that he will push me away, so I fold my arms. “I betrayed you,” I say. “I did the very thing you asked me not to. No matter how good your writing was, I shouldn’t have read those pages. I’m so sorry.”
He narrows his eyes at me, as if he’s not sure of my sincerity.
And then I remember, something he said the last time he was here and which I forgot to point out. “About the photos, I didn’t take any. It crossed my mind, for a few reckless seconds I considered taking them but I knew I couldn’t. I knew it was going too far. The reason I even thought of it was that I’m a people pleaser. A pushover, like that. Jamie has often said that I always try to please.”
“You wanted to please him?”
“I … I wanted us not to fall out. We’d fallen out, and believed I could appease him if I gave him a sneak of your pages.”
“And betraying me even more?”
I feel the throb of my shaky heartbeat. “I don’t think, sometimes, with my head, and this was one of those times.”
“So you didn’t take any photos?”
“None. I swear.”
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that. Hurling your phone and breaking it. I scared you and that’s another thing I’ll regret forever.”
We’re moving towards an understanding, taking tiny steps towards forgiveness. “You’re particular about your writing. You want things a certain way. You have rules and I should have respected that. I’m sorry.”
“The reason I reacted the way I did,” he says, taking a huge breath and scratching his neck. “Is because you reminded me of a time, a very painful time, with my step father.”
I wince, feeling uncomfortable already. I am aware of how much suffering that man inflicted on Ward. Reminding him of his step dad is something I would never willingly do.
“I started writing when I was thirteen,” he continues.” When a teacher at school encouraged me. I applied myself and did well. I was good at something. She later encouraged me to enter a writing competition. She loved the piece I wrote and thought it had a good chance. But my step father read it, and he laughed and