For the first time, I felt as if I truly understood Connie, then, in those final moments. Stubborn, right to her core. In some distant past existence, she might well have gone to the grave a martyr rather than compromise on what she firmly believed was the right thing to do. I envied her and I hated her for it. If she wanted me now, I surmised, she would have me. If she wanted the future I wanted—really wanted it—she would not be deterred, now, by all of the excuses she presented.

In the end, I left of my own volition, Connie’s solemn form bidding me a final, muted farewell at the door. Connie, my best friend. Connie, my first and only love. Connie, whose traits and likes and dislikes and morals and routines I knew better than my own. Connie, the girl who defined my life so far—there was no one else before, there could be no one else after. Connie, whose shadow chased mine in every memory that mattered. I walked away from her, still standing in stifled silence on her porch, shoulders hanging low, with the scornful and unreserved misery of a person unwilling to admit they might just be making a terrible mistake, and unsure of how they might fix it.

Epilogue

Connie closes her eyes tightly and reminds herself that she needs to breathe, every inhale and exhale shaky and exhausted. And the chaos of the city that surrounds her—businessmen bustling past her and car horns and indecipherable voices—all of it melts away for just the shortest moment, leaving Connie with simply the echoes of the past two days swirling around in her head.

Echoes of raised voices and slamming doors and stinging words, followed by the cold silence that accompanies the telling of the truth.

“I don’t know who you are,” her father says, so much softer than she would have expected. She doesn’t tell him that she’s sorry though she knows he expects it—sorry that she lied for so long, or sorry that she’s leaving. Sorry wouldn’t amount to much right now when her family’s whole world has spun off its axis. But then, of course—he doesn’t know who she is. He hasn’t known her in so very long. Not since he stopped trying, stopped listening, stopped noticing. How is the blame solely hers when the signs have always been there, glaring them in the face?

Echoes of her father telling her she has one day to pack her things and go, the sound of his heavy footsteps leaving the room before he gives in to the anger that he does well to suppress. He still loves her—of that she is certain—no less than he always has. No more, either. But that love simply isn’t enough. It never was. He tells her as much, that he still loves her. He is her father, after all. But that doesn’t stop him from saying that she’s no longer welcome in their home. Not so long as she continues on the path she’s following; not so long as she makes these choices that undermine everything he ever wanted for her. He doesn’t try to stop her, though. Not really. She supposes she ought to be grateful for that. She came to expect that he would beg her to stay and to go to Trinity and to date some lawyer’s son, but he doesn’t.