Page 111 of Dirty Ink

Tim licked his lips. He drew his fingers through his perfectly gelled hair, messing it up a little. I’d never seen him do that before.

“Rachel,” he said after a moment, “I knew about your past.”

I frowned.

“I knew you’d been a showgirl in Vegas. I knew you’d danced. I knew you had a skeleton or two in the closet,” he explained. “I went to that coffee shop you worked at all the time to try and talk to you. Well, when you weren’t there, I tried to learn more about you. Your co-workers knew things. And then, well, it’s easy enough these days. To dig things up on the internet.”

I couldn’t believe it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked in a whisper.

Tim shrugged. “I was waiting for you to tell me. And when you didn’t, I figured you had your reasons not to want to. I was going to respect that. I loved you, Rachel. Or at least, I loved whoever you’d become for New York. For me. For your heart, to get over him, maybe. I’m not sure. But whoever you were, why ever you were, I loved you.”

In that moment I felt the same draw to Tim as when I first met him, that first tenderness in my heart. Not that I loved him, maybe I never had. Maybe I never could. But I trusted him. Even if he couldn’t send me flying high, he would at least never let me fall.

Tim continued, “I figured the reason you decided not to tell me about your past was that you were ashamed of being that girl. But Rachel, what if the reason you never told me was that you were ashamed at giving that girl up? Of not being that girl any longer. Of changing. Of letting yourself, your true self down. What if the person you need to forgive instead of Mason is…yourself?”

Minutes later, Tim and I were out on the sidewalk. He blocked the late afternoon sun with his hand, shielding his face. I realised that I never really knew him. Never gave him a chance. It was always someone else’s face I saw when I imagined forever.

When I went to return the engagement ring I’d kept hidden in my suitcase for a month in Dublin, Tim closed my fingers back around it.

He kissed my cheek and whispered, “The pawn shop on 60th will give you the best deal.”

“I don’t need the money, Tim,” I tried to tell him.

He pushed my hand toward me and walked away. Looking over his shoulder, he smiled against the sun.

“Flights to Dublin aren’t free.”

Mason

If I’d found the three dozen or so letters from my mother before reading my nan’s letter first, I probably would have burned them without opening them. Coaxed up a hearty flame. Tossed the whole stack in without a second’s hesitation. Enjoyed a stiff glass of whiskey as I watched the edges shrivel, the pages blacken, the ash waft up the chimney to stain the night sky.

If I’d learned that my mother had been trying to contact me for years all the way up until her death before everything went down with Rachel, I would have laughed. I would have revelled in the fact that she’d suffered. I would have praised the universe for the blissful irony of that woman who left me as a child failing to find her way back to me.

If I’d stumbled upon that shoebox any other time in my life than that very moment and opened any other letter first than my nan’s, I would have shoved everything back inside. Closed the closet doors. Locked the bedroom door. Shut down Dublin Ink. Moved to a different city. Run and run and run. And never stopped.

I would never know for sure, of course, could never possibly know for sure, but a part of me believed it was Rachel. It was her chaos like a hurricane. Her anger like a thunderstorm. Her turmoil like a tornado destroying everything in its path, but so beautiful to behold. A part of me believed it was Rachel first knocking over my nan’s shoebox of secrets as she gathered her things in a fury to leave that shifted my nan’s letter to the top. Like a miner shaking his pan to bring the flecks of gold to the surface. A part of me believed if Rachel hadn’t made such a mess, then my nan’s final words to me would have remained hidden, buried beneath my mother’s final words, final words I would have rejected out of hand.

Like I said, I would never know, could never know. But I believed nonetheless. Believed it was Rachel.

Dearest Mason,

Oh, how to start, how to start, I don’t want to start, how to start when it’s the last thing in the world you want to do, start.

I read my nan’s tidy, neat hand. I’d never known her to hesitate. Not once. She took me as her own when my mother left. From that moment on she was my rock. Sure. Certain. Never wavering. I drew my fingers over those first few lines like they were my nan’s hands, hands that I’d never known to tremble because they couldn’t. Because they always had to be strong. For me.

I almost stopped there. I almost stopped reading after those first few lines as I sat there on the edge of my nan’s bed in my nan’s old house. Because I’d failed her. She’d been strong her whole life for me and the one chance I had to be strong for her…it was almost too much. It was her next line that prevented me from stuffing the pieces of paper back into the envelope and shoving it along with the others back into the shoebox, back into the closet, back into the recesses of my mind where I did not dare go.

Well, I love you. I guess that’s the only way to start, now isn’t it? I love you, Mason. I always have and I always will.

These were words I could hold onto. Words that could keep me steady. Words that I could follow in the dark as I plunged into the rest of my nan’s letter.

Please believe that everything I’ve ever done was because of this, because I loved you. Because I wanted to do the right thing for you. Because I never wanted to see you hurt or in pain or suffering, even just a little bit. That’s what I thought I was doing…protecting you because I loved you…

Maybe I should really start now. With the beginning. With your beginning. With mine, too, maybe.

The day your mother walked out on us was one of the most horrible days of my life. You were just a child. Hardly old enough to speak more than a few simple words, though “Momma” was, to my dismay, already one of them. I knew that you were unlikely to have any real conscious memories of that day, which was a blessing. But for me it was like a dagger through the heart.

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