Prologue: Return Address
Full disclosure, since nobody else in my family believes in it: I’m not the good guy.
I’m the guy who finished college at nineteen and still found time to wreck a startup two signatures away from a two-million-dollar funding round by sleeping with the wrong man’s fiancée. I’m the guy who calls his dick Long John with a straight face. My best friend Theo says I read consequences the way other people read terms and conditions. Scroll to the bottom, click accept, find out later what you agreed to.
But you should know where I come from before you judge where I’m going.
My father, Ray Mercer, is a good man. Everybody says so, usually right before they mention his attendance record. He never missed the slice of tuition my scholarship didn’t cover, a car insurance bill, or a birthday check. Twenty-dollar bill in the card, “Proud of you, Dad,” same blocky capitals for twelve years straight. If I needed something with a price tag, my father was there before I finished asking.
If I needed something without one, he was at work.
Noon to midnight. That was the rhythm of our house. He left as I was finishing lunch and came home after I’d pretended to be asleep. Some nights I’d hear the garage door, then his boots, then the fridge, then nothing. I used to lie there and count the seconds between the fridge and his bedroom door, as if it might add up to something. It never did.
My mother was the one who stayed up with me.
Dana. She wore sunglasses indoors when she had a headache and sang Fleetwood Mac badly on purpose because it made me laugh. She let me eat cereal for dinner and called it “breakfast for champions.” She was the only person in that house who asked how my day went and then actually stayed for the answer.
When I was nine, she put me in the back seat after one glass of wine too many. Turned out it was four. What I remember is the windshield wipers. The car was nose-down in a ditch, the engine had quit, and the wipers kept going, squeaking across dry glass, like nobody had told them. I walked away with a cut through my left eyebrow that never grew back right. She walked away with a DUI, a court date, and my father’s face doing something in the ER hallway that I have never seen it do again.
Three weeks later she was gone.
No goodbye that I can remember. One Tuesday her closet was empty and my father was making grilled cheese, badly, saying “Your mom needs some time.” Time turned into a year. A year turned into me realizing nobody was ever going to say her name in that house again.
No calls, no letters, nothing. She just stopped. That was the lesson I took from fourth grade, and I aced it: the person who loves you most can empty a closet in one afternoon. So you empty yours first.
So I did. I tested out of everything they’d let me test out of. I applied to Northwestern at fifteen, got in at sixteen, and left with one duffel bag and a speech from my father about “opportunity” that he’d clearly practiced in the truck. Evanston, and then Chicago, was the first place that felt like mine. I was the youngest guy in every room and the loudest. I learned that if you’re funny enough, people forgive you before you’ve even finished doing something wrong.
Mostly.
The startup is a long story. The short version is that Kestrel was going to be the thing I pointed at whenever anybody asked what I’d done with all that potential. Her name was Sloane. She was engaged to Graham, one of our co-founders, and she laughed at my jokes half a second before everyone else, like she’d read ahead. I’m not proud of it. Okay, I’m a little proud of it. Long John has never been accused of lacking ambition. But when it blew up, it took the company, my equity, my apartment, and every reference I had with it. I’m twenty-one, I have a degree with honors, and I owe thirty-eight thousand dollars to people who don’t send birthday cards.
So now I’m going home.
Somewhere between Chicago and Columbus, my father texted me two sentences: “Room’s ready. Nadia’s excited to meet you.”
Nadia.
I found out about her on Facebook, wedged between a Crock-Pot recipe and a prayer request. Six months ago: my dad in a suit I didn’t know he owned, a courthouse, a woman in white whose face was cropped half out of the frame. Married. He didn’t call. He didn’t ask. Apparently he’d moved on from my mother so completely that he’d replaced her, and he never mentioned it to the son she left behind.
I’ve built a picture of her in my head. Gold digger, Instagram wife, probably thinks a book is something you do with a hotel. My father works twelve hours a day, so somebody has to spend his money.
I’m going to hate her. I’ve decided that already. It’s the one plan I have that isn’t falling apart.
The sign for Harlow Heights comes up on the right. I take the exit too fast. Ask anyone I’ve ever dated. The house is exactly where I left it: same blue shutters, same crooked mailbox my father keeps promising to fix. His truck is still in the driveway. It’s 11:56. He leaves at noon.
Four minutes. That’s how much of my father I get today.
I kill the engine and sit there. I tell myself I’m only here for a few months, just long enough to find a job, pay off the debt, and get out again. I’ll be polite to the new wife, stay out of the way, and keep my hands to myself.
I’ve never been very good at keeping my hands to myself.
The front door opens before I can knock.
