06

Though it should not be, because I got over him, you know. It is for the best, anyway, since Dad would go berserk, so everything is fine.

I am fine.

I have been telling myself that for two years, but it is never felt true. I guess that is because he’s Dan.

The same Dan who taught me to control the emptiness inside me and turn it into a strength.

“That hollowness never goes away. It is part of who you are now, whether you like it or not,” he said on my fifteenth birthday when he found me hiding in Dad’s wine cellar. That is what I do when it gets to be too much and I do not want to upset Dad—I hide.

That day was one of those overwhelming days. I hated it, my birthday, and myself. I felt like that abandoned newborn baby on the side of the road again, even though I remembered none of it. I felt like an unwanted presence and it made me empty. So empty that I couldn’t breathe and had to hold in the tears when Dad sang me Happy Birthday.

It was the day I realized that despite having the bes