Chapter XI: The Unmailed Letter
The letter sat on the kitchen table, a white flag of surrender I couldn’t bring myself to wave. November 10, 1991. Six years since I’d fled Princeton, and the words still felt like a betrayal. S. I couldn’t even write his name. It was a trigger, a summoning spell.
I pushed the paper away, the cheap wood of the table cool against my palms. The kitchen was small, but it was mine. The window looked out on a California street, not the gloomy, gothic architecture of the COBU house. Still, the walls felt paper-thin, as if he could hear my thoughts from three thousand miles away.
I was so close to Stewart and have lived in fear of coming near him again.
The words I’d written stared back at me, stark and black. They were true, but they were also a list. A set of accusations. And I knew, with a certainty that was a bone-deep chill, how he would respond. He would explain it away. He would smile that patient, all-knowing smile and tell me I was sensationalizing, that I’d missed the point. He’d say the end justified the means.
But the point wasn’t what he said it was. The point was the bikini.
The memory surfaced, unbidden, as it always did. Not in the darkroom this time, but in the hallway of the Princeton house, the air thick with the smell of boiled cabbage and damp wool. He’d stopped me, his hand on my arm, his gaze dropping.
“What are you wearing under there?” he asked, his voice casual, as if he were inquiring about the weather.
My blood went cold. “Briefs,” I whispered, the word a confession.
He nodded, a slow, thoughtful movement. “You should wear bikini underwear. It’s more… feminine.” He smiled. “I’m just looking out for you.”
It wasn’t a command. It was a suggestion, a piece of fatherly advice from the Man of God. And that was the poison of it. It was never a direct order. It was a gentle reshaping, a constant, quiet erosion of my own judgment until his will became my own. He wanted me in a bikini bathing suit, getting a tan. He never encouraged me to read the Bible, not really. But my tan? That was important.
The rage that I’d kept caged for six years began to rattle its bars. I picked up the pen and stabbed at the paper, scratching out a line I’d written.
He talked to me about the vows I should make to him in place of marriage vows. That was scary.
I blacked it out until the word scary was a blot of ink. I was ashamed to admit how much it had thrilled me, too. The secret. The specialness. Our relationship is unusual. Outsiders would not understand. I was chosen. I was special. I was his project.
Donna said he did it for power and control.
Stewart said he did it for a hobby.
I say he stepped way over his boundaries.
The scribbled notes from my own hand swam before my eyes. Which one was it? Power? A hobby? A boundary crossed? It was all of them, and it was none of them. The labels were too small. They were clinical, sterile. They didn’t capture the feeling of his hand on my back in the darkroom, a dead weight that promised safety if I just stopped fighting. They didn’t capture the 5 a.m. marathon sessions where he’d “work on me,” breaking my will until I agreed to come back, the taste of surrender like ash in my mouth.
I was thoroughly convinced that I had no hope for any happiness as a single Christian woman apart from him.
That was the core of it. The lie he’d built so carefully inside me. He hadn’t just taken my time or my obedience; he had taken my future. He had convinced me that without him, I was nothing. He had said it to my face: You would be nothing without me.
And I had believed him.
I looked at the letter again, at the crossed-out words, the desperate plea to a woman named Sara who was still trapped inside. I wanted to save her. But I also wanted to erase the whole thing. Concentrate on the good, my own notes pleaded. My work with my young friends in Kensington. I loved that work. I was happiest when he was gone on one of his trips. I could breathe. I could be faithful to God, not to Stewart. But even then, he owned it. He made me what I was, he’d say. And I had let him.
With a sudden, sharp motion, I folded the letter. I didn’t seal it. I didn’t put it in an envelope. I just folded it into a tight, small square, the words pressed against each other, and slid it into the back of a kitchen drawer. Under the takeout menus and the stray batteries.
It was too upsetting to dredge up. It would ruin my weekend. And what was the point? He would explain it away. They would all say I missed the point.
I closed the drawer. The letter was invisible now, just like I had been. But it was there. A record. A testimony. And one day, maybe, I wouldn’t be afraid to mail it. One day, I would understand that the point wasn’t his. The point was mine.