Chapter 19 - Ryan Finally Says What He Wanted
Dr. Wells asked Ryan:
“What did you want when you picked up the brick?”
Ryan initially said:
“I don’t know.”
Weeks later:
“I wanted Lily to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Being there.”
Hard.
“Did you want her dead?”
“No.”
“Did you think the brick could hurt her?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Ryan cried.
“I didn’t think.”
Not complete enough.
Dr. Wells waited.
Eventually:
“I wanted Dad to look at me.”
There.
He had looked.
Too late.
Ryan described the seconds after Lily fell.
He remembered my face.
Not Claire screaming.
Not blood first.
My face.
“I thought Dad hated me.”
Then I slapped him.
That confirmed it in his mind.
Dr. Wells later told me:
“Your apology cannot ask him to reinterpret the slap as love.”
I did not.
During one session Ryan said:
“You picked her.”
“No.”
“You hit me.”
“Yes.”
“Because her.”
“I hit you because I was enraged by what you did.”
“That’s picking.”
I said:
“I protected Lily because she was hurt. I should have separated you without hitting you.”
He stared.
“Would you hit Lily if she hit me?”
A trap.
Also fair.
“I would stop her. I would not choose to hit either of you.”
“Now.”
“Yes. I learned after failing.”
Children are sensitive to revised morality.
“Convenient.”
“Yes.”
He almost smiled.
Then he whispered:
“I hate her sometimes.”
Dr. Wells asked:
“Lily?”
“Yes.”
“Because?”
“She has Dad.”
I answered carefully.
“She has me differently.”
Ryan shouted:
“That’s same!”
“No.”
He stood.
Dr. Wells let him.
I continued:
“You had parts of me. That was unfair to you. But Lily did not take the other parts.”
Ryan cried.
“She was born and you still didn’t tell.”
That was his deepest evidence.
Before Lily, I could have pretended secrecy was complicated.
After Lily’s birth, every year I kept Ryan hidden made him feel the new child mattered more.
I had never said that.
May you like
My choices said enough.
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