Page 42 of Rage's Solace
I watch Rigs carefully unfold the letter. It’s torn around the edges because I used to take it out to remind myself that she left because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t earn enough, wasn’t on a trajectory to go to college or make millions of dollars. She didn’t want the only kind of life a man like me could give her.
“So you think she came back to you for your money. Does she even know anything about your financial situation?”
I look at him. “No, why does that matter?”
“Clearly, she can’t be a gold digger if, in her mind, there is no gold to dig. Also, she didn’t come back into your life. You came into hers.”
I reluctantly have to admit what he is saying makes sense. “She doesn’t know about my little windfall. Well, she didn’t until recently. She tried to pay me back for everything I’ve done for her and Mia since she got out of hospital. I told her she didn’t need to do that, that I was okay for money.”
“Then clearly she’s not after your money.”
My mind is working overtime to figure out why she came back to me if it wasn’t for my money. An ugly little voice in the back of my mind tells me that it’s for safety and security, because she literally has no place else to go.
I don’t want to think bad thoughts about Priscilla. Truth be told, I recognize that dark little voice that’s talking shit about her in the back of my mind. It’s the same little voice of doubt that told me I wasn’t good enough for her all those years ago, that told me I wasn’t smart enough to go to college to become a doctor, so I went into the army and became a medic instead. It’s the same little voice that’s been sabotaging me my whole damn life.
Well, not this time. This time I’m gonna take the high road. I’m going to keep my head screwed on straight and give her the benefit of the doubt until I have proof that she was intentionally trying to manipulate me. I’m not going to lose the best thing in my life over self-doubt and low self-esteem again.
“Alright,” I tell Rigs. You’re right about me jumping the gun. I’m not going to make any snap judgments until I know for sure what’s going on.”
“Thank God for small mercies. I thought we were going to have to hog tie you there for a minute to keep you from imploding your whole relationship over things you don’t even know are true.”
My head lifts and I stare at him for a long hard moment. “Are you saying that you don’t think Mia is mine.”
“I can see the similarity, and from what you’ve told me it sounds like you have good reason to believe she’s yours. What I’m saying is that women don’t necessarily think like men, and there’s probably something going through her mind that explains why she’s reluctant to talk to you about that. I say we cut her some slack until we can verify that Mia is your daughter and talk to her about why she didn’t tell you.”
Rigs is making good sense and although I’m still upset about the way things went down, I’m willing to hold off on judging her on this issue until we unravel this mystery. “Alright, what do you make of the letter?”
“A couple of things jump out at me.” Putting the letter down on the table between us, he smooths it out with one hand. “It’s all written in the first person. It’s ‘I this’ and ‘we that’. Except this sentence here in the middle,” he points to the page. “Whoever wrote the note slipped up and wrote, ‘Going off to college is a rite of passage in our world. She wants to have that experience’.Why would Priscilla refer to herself in the third person instead of ‘I’ like in the rest of the letter?”
Staring down at where he’s pointing, I can clearly see what I’ve missed all the other times I’ve read the letter. My mouth falls open and I berate myself for not picking up on that at the time.
Rigs’ finger drops down to the signature at the end. “She signed her full name. How many people do that when they’re writing to their partner? It seems very strange that she would do that. She could have written just P, and you would have known it was her just by reading the contents of the letter.”
Again, he’s right. I’ve never written a note or letter to a friend and felt the need to sign my full name that way. I’m starting to feel like the world’s biggest fool, and also the world’s biggestasshole the way I stormed out of my house this morning. I’m gonna have to do some making up to Priscilla when I get back. “Yeah, now that you mention it. Those are two big red flags that it was written by someone other than my Prissy.”
Rigs steeples his fingers in front of him and is silent for a moment. When he speaks again, I know why people come to him with their problems. This man is smart. “I remember thinking that day I saw the headstone with your name on it in the back of your truck that these people would stop at nothing to pull the two of you apart. They went to absurd lengths to convince Priscilla you were dead. It stands to reason that a carefully worded letter which was meant to play on all your anxieties wouldn’t have been a bridge too far for them. In fact, it’s the perfect counterbalance to the headstone they had carved to convince her you were forever beyond her reach.”
He’s not wrong about that, at all. I’m reluctantly forced to admit that it’s looking more likely that she was telling the truth about the letter being fabricated by her parents.
Rigs reaches into his drawer and pulls out a file, “While we’ve been waiting for the cops to move forward with the headless rabbits threat, Siege asked me to review the information we know so far about this case. I’ve got a copy of the statement Priscilla made to the cops. Let’s compare the handwriting from the statement with this letter. It could be that there’ll be enough differences to conclude the handwriting is not hers.”
“That’s a fantastic idea. I was thinking along those lines myself earlier today. It’s one reason I took the letter with me this morning.”
We spread the two documents out side-by-side and right away, I notice some significant differences. Priscilla makes theloops on the top of her Ls short and fat. In the letter that shattered all my hopes for the future the tops were tall and almost pointed. Rigs begins pointing out all the more subtle differences. By the time he’s finished I feel like a fucking fool for ever doubting her version of events.
“I can tell you’re feeling guilty for thinking the worst of her.”
“I’m an asshole and a half, for even thinking someone like Priscilla would lie to my face about our breakup.”
“What you need to understand is your doubts had nothing to do with Priscilla, and everything to do with your own insecurities. You, like many of us, carry a lot of trauma from being abandoned and shuffled around during your childhood. In doubting her honesty, you were really doubting that you were worthy of love and loyalty from the woman you love. Being abused as a child makes us feel unlovable so we look for evidence that we’re not being loved and respected.”
Before I can respond, Venom comes bounding into the room with a piece of paper in his hand. “I went ahead and stopped by the courthouse for you. I got a copy of everything that had Priscilla and Mia’s name on it.”
He slaps the documents down on the desk and drops down into the seat beside me. By this point, I don’t even care that he did it without me. Jumping the gun is kind of his thing.
We look over the documents and discover that Mia had written deceased in the space for father, but someone had marked a line through it and the same doctor who signed the bottom also initialed the correction by putting their initials. Priscilla also initialed the correction. “It feels like she was tryingto acknowledge that I wasn’t available to sign because I was deceased, but they wouldn’t let her.”
Rigs who is also a justice of the peace, responds, “Of course they couldn’t allow her to just write deceased in that space. She would have had to either have a court order or a death certificate with proof that you were the father.”