“They’re gorgeous,” I told her.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling humbly. “So, what did you need to know about Mark?” She crossed her hands in front of her on the desk, getting down to business.
“You went to college with him, right?”
“I did.” She blinked, her face showing no emotion.
“So, you probably know a little about his struggles with alcohol?”
I watched her shoulders tense a bit, and she glanced down. “Mark hadn’t mentioned it, no, but I suspected.”
“Suspected?”
She glanced down at her fingers, twisting one around the other as she explained. “He didn’t drink when we were at the bar together. Only sodas. That…wasn’t like Mark.”
“I’m…worried about him, Arizona. He told me recently that alcohol has made him do some very bad things. Do you have any idea what that could mean?”
She shook her head, twisting her lips. “I don’t really know. You didn’t ask him?”
“I did, but he got very closed off. He thinks I won’t look at him the same if I know what he was like before, but I need to know. He’s drinking again, and it’s starting to get bad. I don’t want it to get any worse, and if me knowing how bad he’s been can prevent that somehow, I need to know.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, wringing her fingers together in front of her. “I don’t think I’ll be much help. The Mark that I knew in college was fun. He was a partier, sure, but his drinking only made him more social. Was it a buffer or a way of distracting himself from something? Probably, but we were kids. We didn’t ask any questions like we should have. Last I talked to Mark, he was sober and doing well for himself. I thought he’d worked through all of his issues.”
“So did I,” I said. “It’s just been recently that he’s back to drinking, and I want to help him so badly, but I don’t know how.” I paused. “Well, okay. Thank you for your time.” I started to stand, but her hand jerked out to stop me.
“Mark would kill me if I told you this,” she said, not meeting my eyes.
“What is it?” I sank back down, leaning forward on her desk.
“I don’t know if it’s true, but if you’re digging, well, back when we were in school, there were these…rumors.”
“What sort of rumors?”
“Morgan Smith, have you heard her name?”
I shook my head. “Not that I can recall.”
“She went to school with us, was friends with our group for a while. But one day, she just didn’t come to class. And the next day, we heard she’d dropped out.” She chewed on her fingernail nervously, thinking. “Rumor had it that Mark had something to do with it. He denied it, of course, and even after we reconnected years later, I couldn’t get the truth out of either of them. But Morgan won’t have anything to do with Mark even to this day. We used to all be inseparable.”
I stared at her, letting what she was telling me sink in. “Okay,” I said. “So, do you know how to contact her?”
“She lives in Senoia. It’s a half hours’ drive. I can give you her cell, but if Mark finds out about this, you didn’t hear it from me.”
“Of course.” She grabbed a sticky note and her phone, copying down a number onto the pink paper and handing it over.
“Hannah,” she said, gripping the paper firmly between her fingers before letting it slide into mine. “If any of it’s true, would you please be careful, with whatever you find out about him? He had a rough beginning, I think. Shit dad, absent mother, pretty awkward kid.” She offered a sad smile out of the side of her mouth. “But he’s not a bad guy, I don’t think. He just doesn’t know how healthy humans are supposed to be. He’s helped me through a lot. Just…I guess what I’m saying is, take care of him, will you?”
I nodded. “Of course I will.” I looked down at the note, feeling one step closer to everything I’d need to do just that. “Thank you, Arizona. For everything.”
“I hope you find what you’re looking for. I hope you can help him.” She stood as I made my way out the door.
“Me, too,” I whispered, already dialing the number in my hand.
An hour later, I was meeting Morgan at a local coffee shop in downtown Senoia. The small town was buzzing with people, and I’d heard they were filming a television show just down the road, which accounted for even heavier traffic. I’d had trouble finding a spot to park, in fact.
Morgan worked at the coffee shop, and she’d asked that I meet her there during her break. I had no idea what to expect. There were dozens of Morgan Smiths on Facebook, so though I’d tried to look her up, I had no idea what she looked like and couldn’t truly keep an eye out for her.
When a woman with long, curly brown hair approached my table, I took in the sight of her blue eyes and small, puckered lips. “Morgan?” I stood. She nodded and took my hand as I reached out. “I’m Hannah.”
“I know,” she said.
“You do?”
“I looked you up when I found out he’d gotten married. You look the same as in your pictures.”
It seemed like an odd thing to say. Why was she keeping tabs on Mark? How did she know we’d gotten married? “Oh,” I said finally, because something needed to fill the silence.
“So, what can I do for you?” She sat down across from me.
“I was hoping you could tell me more about who Mark was before I met him. He seems to be hiding something from his past from me and, well, I spoke to someone who went to school with you all, and she said maybe I could talk to you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair with a tight jaw. “Arizona needs to learn to keep her nose out of it.”
“I didn’t—”
“I know it was Arizona,” she said. “She texted to tell me to talk to you.”
“Oh, okay. Yeah. So, will you? Talk to me, I mean.”
“What is it you want to know?”
“Well, Mark’s drinking can get out of control. He was sober for a while, when we met, but he’s drinking again, and I can’t figure out how to help him. When we talk about it, he just shuts down, but I get the feeling something in his past really haunts him. I’m not sure what you know about it or if you know anything—”
“Oh, I know plenty,” she said with a dry laugh. “I know all about how poor, tortured Mark Oliver had such a bad childhood that he gets to grow up and make life miserable for the rest of us. Listen, if I were you, I’d get as far away from him as possible and never look back. Disappear altogether if that’s what it takes to be free of him. Don’t let him hurt you, Hannah. He’s ruined enough lives.”
I swallowed. “You mean yours?”
“Mine,” she said with a nod, “but plenty of others, too.”
“What did he do?”
“Are you going to leave him if I tell you?”
“I-I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I want to get him help. I don’t want to give up on him when he’s so obviously sick.”
“He’s beyond help, Hannah. If you think you can help him, what I’m going to tell you will only make your job harder. You came to the wrong place if you want to be told there’s hope for your husband.”
“He must’ve really hurt you,” I said, my head tilted to the side. “Arizona said you dropped out of school, and she thought it might have something to do with him.”
“It had everything to do with him,” she said in a huff.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“The last time I told someone, it hurt that person. Someone else I cared about very much. I can’t keep letting Mark hurt people.”
“Don’t you think I deserve to know?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes into a scowl at me. “You’re just like him, aren’t you? Always thinking about what you deserve and what the world owes you? Well, I don’t owe you the truth, Hannah, I don’t. If you want to know what happened between us, you need to ask Mark.”
“He won’t tell me!” I said, gripping the edge of the table.
“And nothing gets solved if I don’t know.”
“Nothing gets solved if you do know, either. You just feel worse.”
“I have money,” I said, gesturing toward my purse. “Is that what you want? If I pay you, will you tell me?”
Her expression turned icy in an instant, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. “You really are just like him. I don’t need your money. Either of yours. I told Mark that months ago. I may not live in a townhouse in Atlanta, but I can take care of myself.”
“Mark offered you money?” I asked, glaring at her. “What are you talking about? How do you know where we live?”
“Forget it,” she said. “I’m sorry you wasted your trip. I can’t help you.”
She moved to stand, and I reached for her hand out of instinct. “Please,” I begged. “Please tell me what’s going on. If I’m in danger, if my husband is in danger…I want to know. Woman to woman, I’m asking you.”
She shook her head. “What good will it do? You’ve already made up your mind about him. You think he’s fixable, but I know he’s not.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I asked. “I want to know the truth, and obviously I can’t trust him to give it to me. I haven’t made up my mind about him because I apparently don’t know the man I married very well at all.”
“You don’t,” she agreed. “The man you married is one version of Mark Oliver. When he’s good he’s…very, very good. But when Mark’s bad, he’s pure evil.” The way her eyes went blank as she spoke of him sent chills down my spine.
“What did he do to you, Morgan?”
Her pale hands shook as she picked at the skin around her nails. “We were just kids, you know? I trusted him. He was my friend. I never in a million years thought he could—” She stifled a sob, her hands clutching her stomach. I waited patiently for her to go on, though I had a feeling I already knew where it was going. “We were at a party together, all of us. I’ll never know why it was me he chose, instead of Arizona or Clarissa or Jeanie. Was I just the weakest one? He knew I couldn’t fight back, I guess. Arizona’s parents were powerful and Clarissa was well liked. I was quiet. Shy. He saw that, you know? He picked me from the very beginning. I would’ve never been friends with that group if Mark hadn’t initiated it. But he did, and he waited months before he…” She stopped, pressing her hands into her stomach as she took deliberate breaths. “I was weak then, but I’m not now. I let him hurt me because I didn’t know how to fight back. I dropped out of school, never told a soul what happened. They wouldn’t believe me anyway, he said. We were friends, we’d flirted. I even had a crush on him at one point, and everyone knew it. He’d tell them that I asked for it. Things weren’t like they are now, you know? It wasn’t even that long ago, but I was a nobody and he was popular and handsome. He could have had anyone he wanted, so why would he have to f-f-force m-m—” She was shaking with sobs, and I stood, moving to the chair next to her so I could hold her through her tears. She shoved me back, wiping her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said quickly.
“You don’t have to be fine. I’m so sorry, Morgan. I’m so sorry.”
“You believe me?” she asked.
I nodded and watched more tears well in her eyes. “I believe you.”
“Then you need to leave him, or it’ll be you next. He’s smart, Hannah. He finds your weaknesses and exposes them.” I’d already experienced that with the way he manipulated my need for a family. Like a toy he dangled above my head when he needed something.
“But why did he offer you money? Were you threatening to come forward with your story?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I’ve moved on from what happened.” She sniffled, grabbing a tissue from the middle of our table and dabbing her eyes. “No, I contacted Mark because—” She paused, her eyes dancing around the busy street before they landed back on me. “After I left school, I found out I was pregnant. I have a son.”
I gasped, the weight of what she was saying slamming into my chest and stealing my breath. “He’s Mark’s?”
“He’s mine,” she said. “He never belonged to Mark. He was…is a good boy. Troubled, but good. Boys without their fathers, they, well, they get into trouble now and again. The school counselors always told me it was normal. He’d grow out of it. But he got to an age where he started having questions about his father, and I made up a story about a boy I loved in college who’d died. I made up a father who loved him. Who loved me. I made a fairytale out of my nightmare. When Damon turned eighteen, he did some kind of ancestry kit and it connected him to Mark. I tried to tell him there’d been a mistake, but he tracked him down. It wasn’t hard to find him on the internet, and without telling me, he traveled to his work and found him.” She paused. “Did you know?”
I shook my head, unable to form words. How was any of this possible? How had I not known?
“Figures he wouldn’t tell you. Mark always cared about his perfect image much more than the truth. Which is exactly why, when Damon found Mark, Mark told him he’d never known about him. He didn’t want to look like the monster that he was. That’s when he sent me some email about sending me money if I promised not to contact him again. But we didn’t want his money. I wanted nothing to do with him, but I couldn’t enforce that on Damon, as much as I tried.”
My mind flashed back to the email I’d found on his computer, the one I couldn’t stop thinking about. Another lie. Another secret. More of his past coming back to haunt us. The cloud of darkness that seemed to follow my husband kept growing.
“I never wanted his money, but I owed my son the truth. When I told him, when I told him how he’d come to be, Damon was distraught. He claimed I was lying. Said that I just didn’t want him to know his father. Said that I was the reason Mark wasn’t in his life. That was…over a year ago, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my son since.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got lost,” she said simply. “In every sense of the word. He’s an addict, like his father, but it goes much deeper than alcohol. He’s delusional and addicted to the idea of what could’ve been. Addicted to a fantasy life I can’t give him. He changed his name, calls himself ‘Mark’ now. He lives on the streets most days. I’ve had him committed. I’ve tried to get him help, but he doesn’t want it. Mark ruined my life, and then I let him ruin my son’s, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
“What about rehab? Surely there’s something the doctors can do,” I said. “I can help pay for it. With my money, not Mark’s. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with him. He doesn’t have to know.”
She smiled at me, the first genuine smile I’d seen. “That’s kind of you, but even if I could find Damon, he wouldn’t stay in psychiatric care for long. I took out a second mortgage on my house to pay for it before, and he checked himself out within a week. His doctors say until he wants to get better, he won’t, and I’ve just got to accept that.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, reaching for her hand. To my surprise, she let me hold it, just for a second, before pulling it away. She grabbed her phone from her pocket and spun it around to me so I could see the screen. A teenage boy with dark hair and bright blue eyes smiled up at me, one wiry arm wrapped around a happy Morgan. I lifted the phone so I could get a better look. If I’d wanted to deny her story before, there was no way I could’ve then.
“That’s my boy, my Damon.” She cleared her throat. “Before.”
As I stared at the photo, it was as if a younger Mark was staring back at me, everything from the same dimple in his left cheek to the way he held his head, always to one side.
“He’s beautiful,” I told her.
“He’s a good boy. He’s just…hurt, right now.”
“We’re going to make this okay, Morgan. I’m going to get your son the help he needs. I promise you that.” And as I stared into her eyes, so full of pain and heartache, I meant it more than I’d ever meant anything in my life.
Chapter Thirty-One
Him
THEN
When I met my dad for the first time, he had no idea who I was, or that I even existed. I didn’t understand it at first, but I do now. I know that it was my mom’s fault. I know that she was selfish and chose to keep me to herself. I understand that women are selfish manipulators and we can’t trust them.
She named me Damon, but I’ve always hated it. Hated the way she called me ‘Dame’ for short. Like a girl.
When I met my dad, I saw power. I saw the way he wore a suit that Mom could’ve never afforded. I saw the way the people in his office looked up to him. Respected him. I’ve never had that before.
But when I was with him, when I was Mark, I did. People treated me differently. No longer was I the son of a waitress. Now, now I am the son of a lawyer.
See that? Your ears perked up when you heard it, didn’t they? Because they’re two different people. Who I was and who I am. Damon and Mark. My dad said he’d always hoped to have a son who could be his namesake, like he was his grandfather’s. He said it was the ultimate honor.
So, when I told him I’d like to take his name, I was giving him a gift. A gift like the one he gave me when he told me the truth about how I came into the world. About how much he loved my mom and how she disappeared and took me away from him without telling him she was pregnant. My dad gave me the truth, and that’s a gift that’s incredibly rare.
For months now, I’ve been visiting with my dad during the week. We meet at his office, and he takes me to lunch. Pays for it and everything. A few times, he’s even taken me to a bar across town. The drinks there are like twenty dollars, but he can afford it. It’s crazy the way he lives. Oh, and his car? It’s worth more than our entire house.
He wanted to bring me home to live with him, to give me a life of luxury like the one he lived, but there was one problem.
Hannah.
I crack my knuckles just thinking of her. I hate her. How could a smart guy like my dad have chosen someone so horrible?
I Said Yes Page 14
