Page 172 of Face Off

“She earned all of it.”

“I know that now.”

I looked away toward the gardens.

“She told me you noticed something was wrong before anyone else did,” Crystal says.

“I knew she was conditioned to perform for scraps. Be perfect, look perfect, act perfect. I knew anxiety controlled too much of her life, and I knew she didn’t eat enough, but I thought it was vanity. I thought staying thin was another part of her desperate need to look perfect for you and Lance. She obsessed over her clothes, her body, every fucking angle a mirror gave her, and I assumed all of it came from believing beauty was another requirement she had to meet before either of you would be proud of her. I had no clue I was looking at anorexia.”

“You were trying to help her.”

“I told her to eat. I brought her tacos one night and watched her move them around without taking a bite, but I thought I was fighting the same perfection bullshit I fought everywhere else. My focus was getting her out from under Lance’s control. I saw his fingerprints on everything she believed about herself, so every warning sign looked like another piece of his conditioning instead of an illness growing beneath it.”

“You saw more than I did.”

“I slept beside her.”

The answer comes harder than I intend.

“I had access to her body. I saw what mirrors did to her and heard every fucked-up thing she believed about herself. Looking back, it feels so fucking obvious that I don’t understand how I missed it. I feel like a fool, but I didn’t know she was sick. I thought she was terrified of disappointing you, obsessed with maintaining the image Lance demanded, and too stubborn to admit how badly it controlled her. I understood the damage. I missed the illness underneath it.”

Crystal’s tears return.

I don’t enjoy them.

“When she finally told me everything,” Crystal said, “I kept thinking about Thanksgiving. You stood inside our home and told Lance what his control was doing to her. I defended him.”

“You were afraid of him too.”

“That doesn’t excuse it.”

“No.”

“I chose his comfort over my daughter. I chose it over you too.”

“You didn’t know me.”

“I didn’t try.”

That shut me up.

Crystal moved one step closer but left enough room between us to make the choice mine.

“I am sorry for that, Ryan. I am sorry that I looked at a young man who loved my daughter and decided his background told me more about him than his actions. I am sorry I made you prove your worth inside a room where Lance never had to prove his. I am sorry I stood beside the man diminishing you while my daughter learned from me how to do the same.”

The pressure beneath my ribs sharpened.

Crystal’s voice broke. “And I am sorry that when Charm finally failed you in the exact way you feared most, I helped create the fear that made it possible.”

I stared at her. She didn’t try to take responsibility for Charm’s choice and that mattered to me.

“She made her own decision in that study,” Crystal continued. “I know that. I am not asking you to excuse it because she was sick or because we raised her badly. She understands that now too.”

“Understanding it now doesn’t give me back what surviving it took.”

“No.”

“You know what Charm told you. You know what Lance did afterward. You still don’t know what any of it cost me.”