She is willful and short with me … she is her daddy’s daughter and Eric spoils her without care or mercy … they whisper to each other and do things together that make me feel alone … the one gift that I wished to give him in this life has turned on me like a thistle in a garden … and there is nothing I can do. Now or ever. To say anything would be to say everything. She is the very picture of her father—not Eric, her father—and so it goes. This is what I’ve done … this is the cost of my lust and my treachery and my duplicity. (Beat.) And what of Tommy? You might well ask … as I mentioned, he has a good job just outside Chicago in IT. For a large supermarket chain of some sort … Wal-Mart, or am I completely wrong about that …? (Shrugs.) Lately, my daughter has been … in contact with someone. (Beat.) Some person who emails her and texts her and whom I can hear her talking to and giggling with through her bedroom walls … if I ask who it is, I’m shouted at or laughed at or belittled in such a way that I can get no information out of her … and if I talk to Eric on the subject, then he sides with her and just brushes my fears away. (Beat.) Because they can only be the fears of a mother and nothing more, is what he believes. For what else could it be that frightens me and keeps me up all night? What other possibility can exist? Why would I ever imagine it to be some part of my past coming back to haunt me now rather than just some boy … a boy who simply wants to talk to our girl? A boy that my daughter has met at school or the mall or somewhere else and he just wants to speak with her? This must be the case. It must be. Who else could it be? (Beat.) Who else indeed. (Beat.) And so now I wait … and wait … and sit and wait … listening in fear for the ring of the phone or for some email that will finally unravel this giant web of deceit that I have created. I wait while life exacts its sweet revenge … one tick … tock … tick … of the clock … at a time.

She is worked up now, near tears but trying to hold it all together.

I was—not long ago I ran into the girl whom I mentioned before. The one from earlier … who asked that question. Back in school. (Beat.) We’re in line somewhere and as we shuffle along with the group … waiting our turns—just before I leave her side—I lean over to her and I whisper, “6 pounds, 3 ounces … that was the weight of mine” and she looks at me … this girl—now a woman, trying to place me, wondering who the hell this is, this person—she stares at me as if I am insane, and I probably am! I probably am. I mean … God knows what she’s thinking, what she understands this to mean … and after all that’s happened … yes … I may well be a crazy person, I very well may be … but this much I do know … this much I now know for sure: the weight of a lie is never the same for any of us … not ever. No, each one is unique … each one is special … each one is and always will be its very own particular burden. (Beat.) And for me the weight of that lie is: 6 pounds, 3 ounces. 6 pounds and 3 ounces … 6 pounds, 3 ounces … 6 pounds and 3 ounces … 6 pounds … 3 ounces …