Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [68]
In essence, Milo was a fraud to all who knew him, an actor playing a role for his audience, yet he was the only one who knew there was a performance going on.
He had been thrilled to discover that Christine was in love with him and eager to spend the rest of her life with him, but in looking back on those days now, he realized that perhaps he should have instead been thrilled with his ability to deceive a woman so effectively, beginning with that first night in Arugula and continuing through his marriage and separation. Though he was reticent to admit it, even to himself, Milo had come to the realization that he had tricked Christine into loving him by playing a role, when in truth he was someone whom she barely knew.
Until Milo was willing to share his secrets with someone, he would remain a stranger to all, and as a result, he would always be alone to some degree. He knew this with certainty now, but also knew that there was nothing he could do to change it.
Milo thought that Freckles was probably suffering with the same kind of burden, the same inability to open up to another human being, and while he understood why she felt this way, he also thought that Freckles’s circumstances were far different than his own. The secret part of Freckles, the part that had kept Tess Bryson’s disappearance hidden for twenty years, could be exorcised. Milo suspected that Freckles’s burden, unlike his own secrets, could be easily lifted from her shoulders. Even if Tess Bryson was dead (and he suspected she probably was), no reasonable person would ever blame a thirteen-year-old for the role that she played in the tragedy, save the woman who the thirteen-year-old had become. By being forced into immediate secrecy, the teenage version of Freckles had locked away an ample supply of shame and guilt that had continued to plague her well beyond her teenage years. Had she simply been able to share her secret with someone, as a child or even as an adult, she might have been convinced that she deserved no blame and should therefore feel no guilt about the disappearance of her friend. Tess was running away with or without Freckles’s help. As an adult, Freckles might have realized this immediately, but as a kid, facing interrogation by police officers, she automatically had placed all the blame on herself, and there it had remained.
For Milo, the revealing of his demands would do nothing to erase them from his being. They were a part of him now, an inextricable component to the man he had become. Sharing his secrets would only serve to push others away and heighten his degree of strangeness, but he was now convinced that if someone could persuade Freckles to share her secret, she might come to the realization that, while tragic, the disappearance of Tess Bryson was not a burden that she was required to carry, and that her life could be exponentially better.
Milo sat in his car, lit by the glow of the video display, and watched Freckles cry. And he cried too, for all the years that he and Freckles had lost to their secrets, for all the friendship and love that they had sacrificed for subterfuge, but through his tears, he also felt hope, not for himself, but for Freckles. He felt a new and even deeper connection to this woman, Cassidy Glenn, whose secret life was in many ways like his own. He may never be able to save himself, but he thought that he might surely be able to save her.
The sobs hadn’t quite subsided when the police officer tapped his flashlight on Milo’s passenger window, motioning for him to roll it down.
chapter 17
Milo opted for honesty. Still in the throes of Freckles’s overwhelming outburst of candor, it seemed like the right decision.