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Me, too, buddy. Me, too.
FOURTEEN
Eight hours in a car meant you had a lot of time to think. Loads of time to ponder life, regrets, all the things you wished you’d done differently. Tons of time to ruminate over the lie that was my life.
And that was the truth—my whole existence was a lie.
My once beloved mother was alive.
A-fucking-live.
There was so much to that it would take more than a scary drive to Luxor to unpack all I was feeling. Compound that bombshell with my father being a notorious Russian enforcer and I was the poster child for screwed. Since I didn’t have enough time to process what all that truly meant I did what I’d been taught to do and set it aside. No, I shoved it into a mental box, padlocked that cargo container full of messiness, and buried it behind all the other messy emotions I wasn’t ready to deal with.
In exchange I spent the hours fuming. As the minutes ticked by my anger at Charlie grew to an irrational state of wrath with a healthy dose of resentment and bitterness.
He knew.
He knew my mother had faked her death.
He knew why.
He knew she didn’t sell insurance like I thought she did. As the story went that was how they first met; she sold a policy for an art collection he’d helped secure for a wealthy buyer. Then as the years went on, they’d become close. Brother-sister close though I always wondered if at some point during their friendship Charlie had fallen in love with her and that was the real reason he’d taken me in. Love made you do stupid shit—Charlie had pounded that into me. He’d said it so often, I’d lost count.
He knew who my father was.
He knew every-freaking-thing and allowed me to mourn a not-so-dead mother for over a decade.
He also told me stories about Pigeon. About a woman who commanded respect. A woman who could outsmart, outplay, outmaneuver anyone. He’d just failed to tell me those stories were about my mother. He failed to tell me he was molding me into her.
For some reason, that betrayal hurt the worst.
It hurt so bad, it twisted in my belly until it formed a ball of hate. And the more I thought about the life lessons, the birthday cakes he bought me, the times he’d watched movies with me, the hugs goodnight, the sadness I saw when he dropped me off at college, the daily phone calls while I was away to keep us connected, that ball grew and grew and grew some more until it was an ugly knot of loathing.
In all of Charlie’s teachings he forgot to educate me on one thing—emotional maturity. I was not equipped to deal with this kind of betrayal, not from the one person I loved unconditionally. I didn’t have the tools necessary to work through my pain. So I shoved all that was Charlie into a separate box and locked that up as tightly as I could, marking it—never, ever open. I mentally penned that with blood.
But it was too late. I’d spent eight hours contemplating my life so the damage was done. I hadn’t compartmentalized fast enough.
When you learn how to transmute pain and fear into strength you become unstoppable, Nebraska.
Clearly, I had yet to learn how to do that.
But I was going to.
I was going to use my pain and fear and turn it into strength.
I had no choice.
Then I was going to do what I should’ve done when Charlie put me forward as the Mediator—run and disappear.
Fuck this life.
Fuck what Charlie wanted for me.
Fuck Maddon.
Fuck Zane Lewis.
I wasn’t entirely sure why I was angry with Zane, but as I said I was irrationally irate.
