The Stories I Don’t Tell — Part 2
A year out of college, at age twenty-three, I met the man who would become my husband. Ryan, the antithesis of a nice guy. Ryan, whose darkness matched my own. Whereas my darkness stemmed mostly from life experiences, Ryan was born dark-minded.
Nature versus nurture.
Our days were spent mascarding as corporate ladder climbers, our nights a maelstrom of partying to the point of blacking out — again and again and again. He reached for me and I reached for him and together we tumbled, head-first, into a relationship neither of us wanted, his jealousy fueled by insecurity and whiskey, my manipulation of his emotions honed by five years of dedicated experimentation on guys I believed just like him.
Many times, I tried to end things with Ryan by starting fights to escape the vulnerability I felt in his presence. It always worked with past boyfriends, but Ryan and I stayed together despite my attempts at sabotage for one simple reason —
He wouldn’t let me leave him.
Forever stoic, Ryan would track me to the hotel rooms I’d disappear to, grab my bag, and silently tip his head toward the door — Let’s go.
Once, after we bought our first home, weeks before our wedding, we got into a heated argument. And I did what I always did — I tried to run. I bolted to the master closet and started packing my stuff, moving quickly and silently so he wouldn’t figure out what I was doing. I glanced up once and spotted him standing in the closet doorway.
He shook his head once. “You’re not leaving.”
I gritted my teeth and crammed things into my bag faster. Ryan came over to me then, tried to hug me, but I shoved him off. He grabbed me again, tighter this time, and took me to the floor as I screamed for him to let me go. I writhed against him, but he only held me in place until I started crying. Until the storm of emotion had passed. Until I kissed him and he kissed me back.
And on we went.
Until, one day, our cat-and-mouse dynamic changed.
When I woke up, extraordinarily hungover, to a voicemail from my mom.
“Call me back, Tori,” she said. And I caught the wobble in her voice.
I called Ryan sobbing as if I were dying. He couldn’t understand what I was saying. I couldn’t understand what I was saying. When he deciphered that all I had was a voicemail, void of specifics, he calmly instructed me to call my mom back. That I shouldn’t be hysterical because I didn’t know anything yet.
But I did.
I knew.
My grandfather had been out boating with my uncle and hit his head — an unexpected, brutal blow — on a metal sign mounted in the lake. Later that day, I lay on my mom’s bed while she called her own mother from her bathroom. She didn’t know I was in her room, so she described in remarkably graphic detail exactly how he died, his blood coating my uncle.
I closed my eyes, letting her words — and the scene she painted — wash over me.
Letting it dance with what little light remained inside me.
It would take working with my psychologist before I figured out why his death hit me so hard. Before I recalled, with fondness on my face, how he seemed to prefer and prioritize me over his other grandchildren. I wondered aloud to her whether he didn’t see how my father rejected me and stepped in accordingly.
“I think my father died out on that lake,” I said to her.
I waited for the tears to come.
But they never did.
Months after my grandfather’s death, I gathered enough courage to ask my mom about her father — the grandfather I never met. The one no one ever talked about. My mom admitted to knowing very little about him, and when I brought him up to my grandmother as we drove to her house, a shadow passed over her face.
“Do you want to talk about this?” I asked her.
“No,” she replied, resolute. She pressed her lips together, tightened her hands on the steering wheel. “He wasn’t a nice man.”
I looked at her, understanding washing over me. I hesitated for a long moment and then asked one final question. “Did he ever hurt my mom?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Never her.”
I faced forward and nodded. It was the last time I ever talked about him with her. But in the days that followed, I requested my mom’s permission to research the grandfather I never knew. To find out what happened to him. She agreed and gave me his name — Dean.
It took two months before I found a news report with his full name that matched hospital records. And when I did, my heart flew into my throat. My grandfather was murdered in the parking lot of a bar. Shot and killed during an argument over twenty dollars. He hemorrhaged to death at the hospital, and that was that.
After absorbing the information, I softly closed my laptop and then called my mom to let her know what happened to her father. She sounded as numb as I felt as I recounted what I’d learned, still shocked that she never knew until this very moment. I wondered, as we spoke in quiet, broken fragments, if my mom and I had more in common than I realized.
But all we said at the end of the conversation was:
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
And then we hung up. I am nearly certain that my mom poured herself a bottle of wine afterward. It took me a few years to catch up with that mentality.
But I got there in the end.
Ryan and I are married, living in a rental home in Lakewood — a coveted, beautifully-treed area in Dallas — when my family comes to visit shortly after my thirtieth birthday. My mom and dad bring along my brother — age twenty-four — who’s been struggling with addiction.
“He’s better now,” my dad says.
He always says.
My husband and I store our unopened bottle of Jack Daniels in our coat closet, deciding to hide temptations from eyesight. But two hours after my family arrives, I glance onto the side porch to see what my brother, dad, and husband are up to, and catch sight of the case of beer my dad bought.
I turn to my mom. “They’re drinking,” I announce, appalled.
My mom shrugs, sagging under the weight of living with a child with addiction.
From there, the night unravels like a hurricane — a soft whistle of ominous wind on the horizon, followed by window-rattling violence and chaos.
My memories, when I recall them during therapy — unfold like this:
Drugs–police–pain–terror–hospital
The first thing I can remember from that evening is nightfall. Then, my dad dragging my brother back into my house.
“I hit him,” he announces. “I found him in the neighbor’s backyard.”
My eyes open in surprise. “What?” I ask. “What?!”
I charge down the hallway, looking for my little brother. My little brother, who hasn’t been little for several years now, ever since he developed an affinity for weightlifting and steroids. I locate him fully clothed in my bathtub. “I hurt my back,” he states, blanching, and then laughing.
I go find my dad on the side porch. He’s pacing in the darkness.
“You hit him?” I repeat.
“He wouldn’t come with me,” he says, his voice thick with guilt. Guilt he rarely shows. “Sometimes I just get so mad at him.” He punches the last word, then grows quiet, desperation rolling off this man I hardly know. “He’s always saying he’s going to kill himself,” he continues. “And you know, one time I just said…do it then. Do us all a favor and just do it.”
The air grows thick with my father’s confession.
“Dad,” I begin, softly, hearing his cry for help amidst my brother’s. “I can’t imagine how hard it is. But you can’t say that to him.”
“I know,” he admits.
I go back inside to check on my brother.
He is gone.
He’s back at the neighbor’s house. But this time, my neighbor is standing outside, yelling at him. My brother had approached his car, asking where he could score drugs, while the man’s two young daughters sat in the backseat.
The police arrive.
We commit to keeping my brother inside, but also agree to them taking him in if they think it’s best. The police decide to leave him be, sympathizing with the fact that he’s an addict, that my mom and dad are there. And they’re trying.
The police leave.
White privilege at its finest.
I go back inside, exhausted, ready for the night to end. But it’s only getting started.
My brother passes out for a few minutes, and my husband checks our closet to ensure the Jack Daniels is still in its hiding spot. It is open and half empty. My husband holds it up to me without a word. I clench my teeth and rush to my brother’s bag. Dig through it until I find the pills I knew I’d find. I shake the bottle. Empty.
“Get rid of it,” I instruct my husband, and he heads toward the kitchen with the whiskey. The moment he leaves, my brother appears like a phantom, rising from the dead. He stands in the doorway, staring at me.
“You know you’re my sister, right? And I love you,” he slurs. “Are you okay, Tori? Because I worry about you.” His brow furrows and he cocks his head, growing serious. “If someone hurt you, I’d kill them.”
I nod and stand up from his bag. “I know, Taylor.”
My brother has always been my protector, despite our six-year age difference. The protective gene I always wanted to see in my father, I found in my baby brother.
My brother steps toward me and suddenly a shadow crosses his face. I see it, and my heart flies into my throat.
“Jessica?” he says, confused, uttering his ex-girlfriend’s name. He steps toward me quickly, tilts his head sensually, the two of us inches from the guest bed.
The realization of what he’s about to do hits me square between the eyes and I push his chest, hard. “Taylor!”
He stumbles backward and then his face opens in surprise, disgust twisting his features, a mirror of my own. “Oh, my god,” he says. “Tori.”
“Yes,” I breathe in relief. I move to walk past him, my heart still pounding in my chest, and that’s when he lurches. In a heartbeat, his arms snap around me and he jumps onto the bed, taking me with him. He releases a crazed laugh and squeezes me to him — my back to his chest. He jerks his arms toward his body, hard, and the air is ripped from my lungs. I try to scream but realize I can’t. It happens so quickly — one minute I am upright, the next I am frozen in his steroid-strengthened, drug-fueled hold, pain rocketing through my body, my bones feeling as if they are on the verge of breaking.
My dad and husband rush into the doorway at once, and I flex one stiff wrist so that my hand makes a stop sign.
My dad and husband freeze, and I watch the horror on their faces as they stare at him, as they see the fear on my own face. I start laughing, struggling to get enough air to do so. “Taylor,” I say, in the most disarming voice I can —
Look how I’m laughing!
Can you hear it?!
It’s bright and shiny and disarming!
No one is killed with a laugh on their lips, am I right?!
“Taylor, let me go.” His grip tightens and I almost start crying. Almost, but not quite. “I’ve got to show you something, dork,” I say, in true sibling rhetoric. “Let me go so I can get it.”
He jerks me tighter, and I whimper. I have the most horrific thought just then — He’s going to snap my neck. With his arms around me squeezing, squeezing, I can feel how easy it would be for him.
My husband starts to move forward.
And my brother releases me.
I clamber off the mattress and run for the master bedroom. Slam the door behind me and lock it. I turn to my mom, who’s in there. Who has disengaged from the entire night. “Get your stuff, Mom,” I yell-whisper.
“Okay,” she responds calmly.
I start throwing things into an overnight bag, my eyes flicking back and forth between the side door that leads to my car, and the one that keeps my brother out.
“Tori?” my brother calls out.
I hear his knock on the bedroom door.
“Hurry up!” I hiss at my mom.
I grab our bags as my brother starts beating on the door. Hollering my name. “Tori!”
I open the side door and shove my mom through it, my eyes glued to the other door — the one that is now rattling in its frame, my brother pounding his fist against it. My mom and I rush to my car and we leave, staying at my in-laws’ house, who are away for the night.
I call my husband as soon as we get there. He doesn’t pick up the phone. For two hours, I can’t reach him. When I finally do, he tells me what happened after my mom and I fled.
My father and husband beat the shit out of my brother.
Then they called the police to restrain him.
And brought him to the hospital.
The next day, after my family leaves, I examine the bruises scattered across my body, and then go around my house, slowly and methodically washing away my brother’s blood.
In my late twenties, I began writing novels. I didn’t tiptoe into the career, I drowned myself in it, writing eleven novels in eight years — nine of which were published. I was signed by a literary agent and assigned a publicist. I toured, I autographed, I gave speeches and interviews, and I met fans. But my favorite part was the moment I slipped back into a world of my own making, a world far away from the one I knew.
In my mid-thirties, I was in the middle of writing one such book at a coffee shop. I went outside for a break, needing to hyper-focus on a scene, when I met him.
He sat down next to me on the small porch. “Is that any good?” he asked, his eyes locked on the novel resting between us.
It was my own book. I was currently writing the sequel, and using the first as a reference. I hesitated, then smiled. “I think so.”
At some point, he picked up my book and flipped through it. He spoke with me, touched my things, with familiarity, as if he’d known me for years instead of minutes, and somehow it put me at ease. I found myself opening up, admitting it was my book, and that I was working on another.
He made a face that showed he was impressed, and my smile widened, a warm sense of pride blooming inside of me.
“Can I keep this?” he asked. “I could pay you for it.”
His request surprised me, and I found myself fumbling for a response. Finally, I agreed, insisting he didn’t need to pay.
“Will you sign it?” He handed it back to me, and I produced a black Sharpie from my bag, something all writers carry at the height of their careers. I took my book from him, autographed it, and handed it back.
I said goodbye and went inside, figuring I’d never see him again.
I was wrong.
From that moment on, anytime I went to my favorite coffee shop, he was there. He’d find a strategic table across from mine…and stare. I’d fidget, grow frustrated and unnerved, and finally glance up. He’d meet my gaze and hold it. Smile.
The first couple of times, I’d return his smile with the smallest flicker of my own, and then return to my work. Soon, I didn’t even do that. Instead, I’d clench my teeth under his gaze, silently seething. I needed to focus. I owed my agent, my publisher, and my readers this book, and I had a deadline to hit. And this man was throwing me out of my zone, day after day. I considered moving to a different coffee shop, but I’d written the first book at this location, and I had it in my head that I needed to be here, at my table, to successfully complete the duology.
So I stayed.
From then on, if I arrived at the coffee shop, he’d appear within minutes. If I went outside to take a break, he was at my heel. The door chime alone started making my stomach clench in anxiety. It felt as if he somehow knew when I would show up, even though I tried varying the times I would write.
Finally, one day, after he followed me out onto the porch, I snapped. “I’ve got to work today. I can’t talk to you.” My tone — and the hand I held up — was cold, dismissive, just as my husband said it needed to be.
The man studied me for a long moment, and then sat down next to me and stared forward. “That’s okay. We don’t have to talk.”
My blood ran cold. It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. I figured he’d fumble an apology, and then I would too, and he’d scurry back inside, breaking the cycle of him staring at me while I wrote. Of him following me outside.
I froze for a moment, my body igniting with adrenaline, feeling the desire to run. Finally, as he watched, I stood up, walked inside, got my things, and left. For two weeks, I avoided the coffee shop, and my work suffered. I couldn’t get back in the rhythm I’d found. So, one day, desperate to regain the magic I assigned to my table, my spot, I returned to the coffee shop.
I’ll get my pages done quickly, and I’ll go, I thought to myself.
Before going inside, I looked through the window. Ensured he wasn’t there. Then I settled in and started working, relief rushing through my veins as I rediscovered my flow. At some point, I got up to visit the bathroom. When I came out, I was preoccupied, my brain locked firmly on a scene I was crafting.
An arm reached out and grabbed my elbow.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” a voice asked.
I looked down, and when I saw it was him, my breath caught. I frantically glanced around the coffee shop, reminding myself we weren’t alone.
“What?” I asked, laughing nervously. I tried to pull my arm away, but he held on.
“On that dating site.” He grinned, his eyes running over my face. “I got a message from someone. It was you, wasn’t it?”
This time, I pulled back harder, breaking his grasp, and stepped back. “No,” I said. “I’m married. I’m not on dating sites.”
He narrowed his eyes and me and smiled like he knew the truth. “Okay,” he said, in a way that made it seem like he was privy to me lying.
“I really wasn’t.”
He held up his hands wordlessly, as if accepting defeat, and then dropped them.
I rushed back to my table, gathered my things, and left. When I pulled into my driveway, a sense of relief washed over me. I walked inside, dropped my bag on the counter, and called my mom. I strode into my home office and leaned against my writing desk, telling my mom about the man.
“Well, don’t go back there,” she advised.
“I’m not,” I agreed, and realized it was the truth. I would relinquish my favorite writing spot, the one that had served me so well, because of him.
My mom and I moved on to other topics, I turned to look out the window —
And I saw him.
He was parked in front of my house, across the street. He stood outside his vehicle, staring at my house. His eyes flicked to the house on the left, and then to the one on the right. Then back to my house. I screamed and dropped down to my knees.
“He’s outside!” I whispered into the phone.
“Who?” my mom asked.
“Him!” Panic exploded in my chest. I wanted to check the locks. I wanted to grab a knife from the kitchen. But I was frozen with fear on the floor, huddled down into the smallest ball I could manage, my phone pressed to my ear.
“I have to go!” I hissed, and hung up to call my husband who, unlike my mom, wasn’t five hours away.
My husband picked up, and I burst into tears. Told him the man was outside our house.
“Okay, I’m leaving now,” he said. “What’s he doing right now?”
I peeked my head up and saw him holding a plastic bag, picking up pecans from the neighbor’s yard. He’d look down as he grabbed a pecan, then directly at my house. Eyes down, and then up. Down, and then up.
“He’s picking up pecans,” I said. “But he’s staring right at our house.”
This news seemed to disarm my husband. “It’s probably just a coincidence.”
I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. A coincidence? From the coffee shop, you’d have to pass dozens of houses to get to ours. Pecan trees were everywhere along the route. What were the chances?
The man continued watching from a stooped position for several more minutes, very clearly trying to look through our windows from his place across the street.
Then he stood, stared directly at our house for another moment, got in his car, and left.
I never returned to the coffee shop.
And I’m not sure I ever forgave my husband or my mother, neither of which had the reaction I would’ve had if my own daughter told me a man who’d made her uncomfortable was suddenly outside her home.
“What was the correct reaction?” my psychologist asks, years later.
“To call the fucking police!” I all but yell.
“And why didn’t you?” Her question takes me off guard, puts the control back in my hands. “I…I felt like I was overreacting because they weren’t reacting.”
“Were you?” She tips her head to the side.
I think for a long moment, wondering if this is a trick question. “No?”
She smiles and shakes her head. “No.”
I published eight novels for my readers, and then one for me. The last one, We Told Six Lies, is the first time I include pieces of myself in the book. Once that was written, edited, and into the hands of readers, I closed my laptop and sighed with relief. Focused instead on building my first company.
It was during this time, as my start-up began to flourish, that I became pregnant with my second child. The first time I got pregnant, the news filled me with equal parts celebration and trepidation. I still wasn’t sure I even wanted children. As a teenager, and all through my twenties, I lived fast and wild, reckless to the point of seeking out trouble. I’d never envisioned myself as a mother. Now, everything would change. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
But the moment my daughter was born, a new sensation rattled my existence — fear. Fear that I’d almost missed out on this experience. I was surrounded by friends who glamorized having children but, once they had them, sank into depression, overwhelmed by the workload they hadn’t anticipated.
Me, on the other hand — I’d focused only on the fear while pregnant. The loss of freedom. The responsibility and the money and the labor that would somehow, I fantasized morbidly, put me in an early grave.
But then, she came. After twenty hours of labor, an emergency c-section, and a two-week stay in the NICU — she came.
I took to motherhood like I did anything — with my whole self. I enjoyed it. I loved it, in fact. And I was good at it. My daughter and I quickly became thick as thieves. Modern-day Gilmore Girls. Co-fashionistas with an insatiable appetite for bookstores, blowouts, and high heels.
You’d imagine — with such a successful first go-round — that when I got pregnant the second time, I’d be desperately happy.
But I wasn’t.
I was devastated.
I was thirty-seven, my daughter was already five years old, and I had a company, a posh office overlooking downtown, and a small team of employees. What’s more, I’d been pitching investors to finance my company’s growth and had finally landed a whale. An investor who committed to my entire $500,000 seed round. But that pending influx of cash would come with strict growth deadlines. And if I didn’t hit them, I’d risk losing my company.
My husband’s career was also ballooning. He couldn’t be counted on for heavy lifting with a newborn. So I walked away from the financing with resentment in my heart. Resentment for this thing growing inside me that dared rob me of a life I cherished, exactly as it was.
Everywhere I went, I spotted pregnant women. It’s as if they were following me, and I found myself revolted by their swollen bellies, knowing mine would soon look the same. Again. I stayed awake at night, gripped with anxiety. I didn’t want an interruption to my company’s growth. I didn’t want interference between me and my daughter’s close relationship, and quite frankly, I didn’t want the pain, suffering, and wrecked body that came from having another baby.
At my eight-week-appointment, I saw the heartbeat, and my carefully crafted mask of resentment cracked. The flicker of a smile crossed my face, and I went home, contemplating baby names. I stood staring out our sliding glass doors, watching my daughter swim. Knowing that soon, there’d be two little ones in the pool instead of one. My smile widened a touch.
That night, I talked to my husband about the ultrasound. “They said I wasn’t even six weeks along, but I should be eight.”
He shrugged. “The doctor said conception dates are hard to pin down.”
I frowned, because they’re really not.
A month later, I found myself in our pool alone, my husband and daughter off running errands. I swam laps and then stopped to rest. Slid my hand down to cover my stomach, already rounding at the twelve-week mark.
“Hi,” I said cautiously, feeling like an idiot. “I wasn’t sure I wanted you at first. I’m sorry. I know that’s shitty.” I bit my lip, glanced up at the trees rustling in a rare summer breeze. I looked back down at my hand. My stomach. “I want you now though, okay?” I leaned my head down and added. “You better be alright in there.”
Two days later, I lay down on the sonogram table. My husband and I stared at the black and white screen before us. My eyes flicked to the sonographer and I saw her frown. She released a sound that made me think she was sympathetic to something.
I narrowed my eyes at her.
The doctor started speaking.
He said something about the pregnancy not being viable.
“Are you sure?” I said. “Are you sure? You’re sure? How can you be sure? Maybe you should check — ” I spoke too fast, my voice growing hysterical. And then I broke down. The doctor left the room. The sonographer left the room. And I cried as if I had been set on fire.
We went home.
I explained to my daughter that she wouldn’t be getting a sibling after all. She cried. I didn’t. I was numb. Something had been ripped out of me. Why would I get unexpectedly pregnant with a baby I didn’t want, then have it taken away the moment I did? What was the fucking point?
As my daughter cried in my arms, and my husband touched me — Was he touching me? Where was I? — I realized with sudden clarity why I’d miscarried.
It’s because I hadn’t wanted it at first.
It’s because I wasn’t grateful.
I’d killed my baby.
That same week, I had surgery under anesthesia to remove the fetus that refused to leave my body.
The surgery failed.
I was given Mifepristone, the “abortion pill.”
It failed.
I developed an infection. Was hospitalized, twice. During all of it, I spiraled from the crippling pain from surgery, cramping, and infections, and the fact that this — all of this — was my fault.
I’d never experienced true depression.
But I did then.
The fetus finally slid out of my body one day, and I stood staring at it, entirely detached from what I was looking at. I took a photo of it the same way I would a strange insect I’d discovered on the side of the house. One I might want to show my husband later.
The next part is hard for me to remember clearly. But I know I told Ryan, as if I were mentioning the weather, that I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. Then I left the house. He texted me. He was frantic, which was interesting, because I was numb.
I remember driving around East Dallas.
I remember, suddenly, knowing that I needed to drive my car into the lake.
It was a thought I’d never had before, but the moment I had it, I couldn’t unthink it. Couldn’t not execute. A tiny part of me, so small I don’t know how I heard it amidst the abyss inside my head, stopped to look curiously at my phone that hadn’t stopped chiming. I was parked on a street I didn’t recognize. I saw the missed calls from my husband. The missed texts.
Why was he texting me?
I looked up and saw a tree. It was right next to the street. Big and strong.
That’ll do, I decided.
I texted my husband, my mind blurring into sweet nothingness–
I think I’m going to drive my car into a tree.
His response was immediate. Pick up your phone or I’m calling the police!
I put the phone down and stared at the tree. There was no rational part of this spontaneous plan. Crashing my car would hardly have killed me. But maybe that’s how these things work when they whisper to you with cruel, seductive lips. I think, deep down, I just imagined that I needed to be punished for what I’d done.
I’d killed it.
It was my turn to suffer.
I’d like to say I had a sudden change of heart — a flash of my daughter’s face in my mind. But instead, it was my husband’s text. He had my exact location. If he called the police, I might be taken to a hospital. And then I wouldn’t be able to hurt myself.
I put the car into drive, and drove home.
My husband rushed out to hug me when I got there. Hugged me while my arms hung limply by my sides.
When I was in high school, a guy on my cheerleading squad jumped off a bridge to his death. I could never comprehend why he’d done it, especially in the manner he did. But now I think I understand.
When I finally started therapy, years later, my psychologist leaned forward and asked me, “Tori, do you really think you willed your baby away?”
I shook my head.
“Right, she said. “Because if that were possible, teenagers wouldn’t become parents.”
