Page 103 of Canadian Boyfriend

“Right. You don’t.” I’d told him only that we’d had a falling-out. When he’d pressed for details, I’d told him to trust me. Apparently that had been too big an ask.

“I just think if you made a mistake, or she did, can it really be that bad? Can it be unforgivable?”

“Some things are.”

“Yeah, like… I don’t know, murder.”

I snorted. “Dramatic much?”

“Things people do with bad intentions, I mean. It’s hardfor me to imagine that happening with you two. If somebody fucked up, you gotta leave room for them to unfuck it up.”

“You need to dial it down a notch. It’s not like this is a breakup. She was my nanny.”

The word felt like so much of a lie in my mouth that a muscle in my jaw twitched.

Ivan’s line came back empty, with the bait still on the hook. He cast again. “If you say so.”

Next up in the parade of naysayers was Dr. Mursal. Unlike with Ivan or Olivia, I told Dr. Mursal everything—about the trip, the realization that I’d fallen in love with Aurora, the binder of letters.

Dr. Mursal knew me in ways other people didn’t. So when she said, “Is it possible you overreacted?” it rankled.

“I don’t think I overreacted.”

“OK,” she said evenly.

When she didn’t say anything else, I said, “But clearly you do.”

“Remember when we talked about emotional intelligence?”

“Yes,” I said warily. “So what? I suppose you want me to put myself in Aurora’s shoes.”

“No. I want you to put yourself inteenageAurora’s shoes.”

That gave me pause. “What do you mean?”

I knew what she meant, though. I was jolted back to when I’d been freaking out when I first read the letters. A rogue thought had entered my head, almost like it had come from somewhere outside of me.

It wasn’t even me she was writing to.

I’d had the thought, but then I’d lost it. It had gotten buried in all the confusion and pain that followed it.

“Am I doing it again?” I suddenly said.

“Are you doing what again?”

“Is it possible that even though I’m always insisting I’m this modest hoser dude, that I’m actually making everything about myself, even when it’s not about me?” She raised her eyebrows. “I should read those letters again, shouldn’t I? Now that some time has passed?”

“Probably.”

“I’m afraid to, though. Why am I afraid to?”

“You’re afraid you’ll read them and you’ll have to face that whatever lies Aurora told you are nothing compared to the truth she’s told you. To the truth that’s inside you.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly, “yeah.”

My appointment had been in the morning, and it was a weekday, so when I got home I had the house to myself. I went outside and sat on the deck and reread the letters. When I took myself, and my pain, out of the equation, it was so easy to see that she’d been achildwhen she wrote them. A child with no one. Having seen her mother be such a bitch—I hated to use that word, but it was accurate—to Aurora the adult was different from reading about what Heather Evans had done to Aurora the child. When Aurora started writing these letters, she had been only four years older than Olivia was now.

When I thought about it like that, I started to see the letters differently. I saw them as self-protective. I saw a child struggling, doing what she could to soothe herself in an unkind world. It wasn’t even remotely about me. Or her pretend boyfriend, or whoever.

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