Rachel, I Was Wrong

Rachel: I know how much you hate “reading shit,” so I’ll be uncharacteristically concise in chronicling my emotions: I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I want you back.

It’s been two days since several Broward County Sheriffs carted you off in handcuffs. The way you clawed at me as they did, with such raw and unbridled passion, could easily have been (and, in fact, was) misconstrued as an attempt to cause grievous bodily harm. My broken heart hasn’t healed, and neither have my defensive wounds. “A man who’s never been beaten has never been loved,” indeed.

Can you ever forgive me for the conclusions I jumped to when I found the condoms you carry just in case you’re victimized by a masher who’s forgotten his? Can you ever forgive me for calling the COPS simply because the girl in the surveillance video, who cleaned out my account by cashing several thousand dollars’ worth of stolen and forged checks, looked exactly like you, right down to the gold incisor and dominant left hand? You never mentioned having an evil twin sister bent on your destruction, so I took it on faith that you didn’t. However, upon seeing how uncannily she forged your handwriting, the lengths she’d gone to frame you became clear to me (if not to the police, DA, judge or jury). Frankly, I’m beginning to believe that they’ll never find the real culprit. Feckless bureaucrats that they are, they have yet to confirm her existence!

Again, I apologize for the objections I raised when you moved your brother in with us. I know now that “one week” means different things to different people. Had I been a more hospitable host, I would not have had to pay four-figure medical bills for having broken his knuckles with my mandible. And, though I’ve said it before, it bears reiteration: I’ll forever live with the shame of having made snap judgments about Tyrell based solely on his skin color, including deeming his teardrop tattoos "gangland honor badges," and for insisting that he could not possibly be your sibling. For all my formal education, I somehow remained ignorant of the reverse albinism gene, never mind that its causal gene only runs in your family.

Lastly, all the words in the world cannot express how sorry I am for accusing you of infanticide when I found Baby Nathan’s corpse clogging our pipes. Myopic narcissist that I am, the notion that postpartum depression by proxy might drive an infant to suicide never crossed my mind. No woman should have to live through such a nightmare, much less three times in the last 10 years!

That I’ve made more mistakes than any woman can forgive is axiomatic. That said, wasn’t it you who convinced me that the past is the past, and that our choices, no matter how many or how poor, do not define our future selves? Time can only be “on our side” with our permission. Rest assured that, no matter your choice, I’ll continue presenting myself every visiting day for the next two years with as many teenths and burner phones as I can keester.

Yours Truly, Always and Forever,

Francis Albert Nay

PS: Next time you speak to Tyrell, let him know that he forgot to leave me a key after changing the locks while I was in Butte for my father’s funeral.