“I know what it’s like,” Elliot said softly. He was sitting on the end of the bed, one leg tucked up under him, the other hanging off the end. He had a sandwich that looked like it was made of roast beef, and I could smell sauerkraut. “Not—not specifically, of course,” he continued, color staining the copper skin of his cheeks. “But grief. I get it. It’s… weird and irrational. It does the most fucked up shit to you. One minute you feel like screaming, the next you’re so angry you want to strangle literally everyone within arm’s reach, and then you find yourself sobbing uncontrollably.”
I stared down at the sandwich in front of me. He wasn’t wrong—I had felt those things. Anger, frustration, helplessness, sorrow. They were part of grieving. But they were things I didn’t have a right to. Elliot did—his father had been a good man. A loving man. Someone he’d loved who had been taken away from him.
I didn’t.
My mother had kept Noah and me alive until the age of fifteen, but that was about the extent of what I was grateful for. And my father was apparently a murderer.
“I—I didn’tloveher,” I said, finally.
Elliot paused mid-chew, then finished quickly, swallowing the bite. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He clearly didn’t know what to say to that.
I’d thought more than once about the fact that it was because I’d never really loved either of my parents that I’d made so many bad relationship decisions. I’dthoughtI loved the men I’d dated, the men I’d lived with. But I hadn’t, not really. I’d compromised and changed my behavior and did things to bring them pleasure, and I’d liked it when they’d praised me, bought me gifts, did things for and to me that showed they were pleased with me.
But I hadn’t known—couldn’t have known—what it was like to actually love and be loved.
That wasn’t entirely true.
I loved Noah. And Noah loved me. But that was almost an obligation. Part of our genetics in a way that we couldn’t deny, even if we’d wanted to. We’d sharedeverything. You can’t help but love your twin.
People said that about parents and children, too, of course. But in my family that clearly hadn’t been the case. Maybe Momma had thought she loved us. But she’d clearly loved whatshewanted us to be more than who we really were.
But Elliot…
Elliot lovedme.
Whether he still would in another week or two, I didn’t know.
“She was yourmother,” Elliot said, studying me.
I nodded. “She was,” I agreed.
“And you didn’t love her,” he said, as though the idea were confusing.
I picked a cherry tomato out of the salad and ate it so that I didn’t have to look up and see his face—see the judgment on his features. “She didn’t love me—or Noah—either,” I mumbled. “Not really.”
“Was she…” He didn’t finish the question.
“No,” I replied. “Not directly. But she didn’t stop my father, either. Or the other Community Elders. She loved the children she wanted us to be, but not the children she actually had. Notus.”
Elliot was silent, and I didn’t know what he was thinking. I couldn’t make myself look up, in case it was what I feared.
“Did you ever?” he asked, then, and the question was soft and almost pained.
“I think so,” I replied softly. I had memories of proudly showing things to my mother when I was very young—drawings or crafts or copied prayers or something. Wanting her to be proud of me. Memories of hiding behind her skirts when myfather was particularly angry or when some of the Community Elders would come, their voices loud and harsh, their hands rough and unkind. But it was blurred by time and the fleeting nature of childhood memories.
Because I also remembered bitterness and the horrified realization that Momma wasn’t going to save us. Wasn’t going to stop my father from dragging me into the basement cellar. Wasn’t going to keep the Elders my father had brought into the house for this very purpose from using pain and humiliation to convince me to choose a path that I had no ability to choose.
I remembered the cold and dark of the basement, the gnawing hunger in my belly from days with nothing but water, the ache in my body from kneeling on the floor, the sting left by a belt on my skin.
The sharp, deep pain left from when they’d tried to convince me I wasn’t gay. The pain that had been both physical and emotional. Soul-deep.
By the time they’d packed Noah and I off to conversion camp, all I had left was derision and disappointment.
By the time I walked out of the house, headed for the hospital where the ambulance had taken Noah, it had become hatred.
By the time I’d met Elliot, it had simmered to pity and disgust.
Now, it all came back. At once. Putting me through the emotional wringer so that I could barely remember who I was. All I had left was the shattered shell of what they’d wanted me to be—what I hadn’t failed to become, because I hadn’t even really tried.
