We Were Three - Ep. 2
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These first two episodes of we were three are free, but to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the new york times where you'll get access to all the serial productions and your time shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done.

When I went to Rachel s. House to interview her for the first time, I had my notes in questions, a whole game plan like I do. Within half an hour, I gave up on all that we were sitting in our living room facing a big Christmas tree covered in beautiful, strange ornaments of insects, sent her by friends and strangers.

Her brother Peter had raised butterflies in. Rachel talked for six hours. Peter been dead less than two months.

IT was her first Christmas without him being alive. Her first birthday is the sole remaining family member. Her birthday is Christmas eve. SHE just talked about her family, especially her brother.

People want so much to vilify is an action when myself included in that, you know, and my brother was considered a woman, they were like, oh my god, should be busted for manslaughter. Like back when he was still alive.

She's talking about some other responses. SHE got on twitter. SHE wrote about how her brother hadn't got in their father to the hospital when he was dying of code.

And you know, that's just how IT is. Everywhere I get at the internet is what IT is, but I just, he has been reduced to like this bumbling, conspiracy theory riddled anti vx, or who just sp, I and watched his dad die and then himself died. And there are so many contributing factors to that.

The disinformation and misinformation, the whole squirrel of rage, politics and social media, is part of what happened in Rachel family. This world matters that did real damage. But for Rachel, IT was nowhere near enough to come to a real understanding of her brother's death.

The brother he knew was a survivor, like he is very accustom to scrapping, avoiding making do. There had always been one hardship after another to find some way to live through how was covered the threat he and their father missed. How could this be? What did the men this and not everything else from cereal and the new york times, this is we were three. I'm anzy update.

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com part two, a sasson .

with covered. One thing that got .

hammer into us was the danger of various underlying conditions, vulnerabilities a person may be born with or may develop over time or both, but it's not just people who have underlying conditions, its families and countries. And in Rachel family, there was a whole history of events in circumstances that accumulated long before a covered.

The comatose were pete senior, the father, Rachel the older child, and Peter, a year and half Younger than Rachel. This small family pulled the part and came back together. Over the years, there are different configurations, competing alliances. But the core version of the family built in the beginning was everything. The three of them together.

the three of us were known for just being the squad.

and you.

your dad and your brother. And what's interesting as the same dynamic is phone into this householder have five kids, and like there was a time where I go up for butter and I have my five kids, like we would just always be together. And that was how I was with me and my dad and my brother, like he didn't just go for milk. We would all just go like we just were so bound.

This was southern california in one thousand nine hundred and eighty santanna. Ana hai disneyland is right nearby. Their dad was a civil engineer.

He worked in the oil business, designing oil refineries. He worked in orange county and los Angeles, travelled a lot to work sites, even with minimal traffic. He usually at home after seven, he wear White shirts with pocket protect tors. He was one of five brothers.

I hesitate to call him White collar because we were on welfare several times. We were always strapped. We never like we had never had a new cour lives, always some sort of rusty. You know, I just, we IT didn't ever feel like we were successful.

But I understood that of all of her sons, my grand, and to go to my dad when he was about to lose the house, and he was, I mean, for the most part was he was a successful person in, I think, really in my family. That just meant he never went to prison. But he his whole upbringing was very different.

He skate boarded, he surfed and he played baseball, and he will get jumped by his brother's friends for not being mexican enough. And they thought that he was doing all that White ship. And in a way, I think that he kind of was trying very hard to assist late because he had had he his heritage was used against him often, whether in court against my mom, please your mom using .

IT against him and in custody battles for .

you guys exactly and saying IT to us, like, you know, you're mexico, should never have had a baby with a mexican man like you would just say all this ridiculous crap.

Richard's mother in a text denied saying that a deliberate, outrageous lie. SHE denied using peace, heritage or against him in custody battles at all. SHE is sent other texts saying, among other things, I love all my children and tried hard to save them.

That is just another very sad story of injustice and how the race card was well played, SHE said. Rachel quote has been so very successful, drawing the ignorant and feeble minded into shelling out money to her for her fantastic part of hate. And acting abilities.

Acting abilities is in quotes. Rachel s. Dad was twenty years old when they got married.

Her mom was nineteen. Her mom filed for divorce less than three months after they got married. Rachel was born during the nearly three years of divorce proceedings. Peter was born after the divorce was finalized. Their mom put Rachel, then Peter, into Foster care.

They were separated in an affidavit at the time their mother wrote quote, because of my fear for the well being of the children, in my concern that they might be beaten by my husband, the children were placed in Foster homes and quote, IT took their dad about a year to get first rattle and then Peter out of Foster care, and they stayed with him from them on their mother. In court documents claim their father beat her, he beats the kids, committed burglaries, did drugs, store gasoline, had a gun in his car, if any of that ever happened. Rachel never saw IT, never heard about IT outside of these contentious court filings, except the beatings. That part was true.

We lied to immediately in the child psychologists and the judges. We lied because we wanted to stay with our dad. We didn't want to be in Foster homes. We were in separate Foster homes, you know, when my mom first put us in.

And so like our attachment, like we really just needed to be together, like i'd rather buckle myself in and let this turbulent life be IT, then possibly get on separate planes and they all my crash and won't never know. Like IT was just we needed to have each other. They chose .

their father. They were more frightened of their mother's unpredictably, which never stopped affecting the family. Rachel says he took her first husband's s surname, mckidd, partly to hide from her mother as a kid. Rachel found her dad to be the more reliable parent .

because my dad, he would beat the shit out of us, but he would still tuck us in every night, and we pray together every night. Like there was always some sort of like coming back around at the tail end of violence, and sort of not an an unspoken apology was happening with a kiss on the forehead, attacking in the bed, and are nightly prayers.

Some parts of this story are in the world of childhood memories that only one or two other people now dead might have witnessed. But i've spent the last several months talking to people who knew Rachel and Peter as children and adults and who knew their father. I've looked through emails, texts, computer files, documents from courts and government agencies, family photos, paper s letters.

So this is a chronical told mostly through one person's memories in perspective, but also based as much as possible and documented facts. There was no sexual abuse at home. Rachel says he's written and talked for years about her father's physical abuse, which was worse when he was drinking, but didn't stop during the time he was trying to stay sober. When we held her the term dry drunk as an adult, a whole mystery from her childhood result .

in her head.

There are stretches of her growing up. Rachel says he doesn't remember at all entire ages. For instance, eight just gone, but some memories stayed. There's an incident she's written about in more than one poem. When he told me about IT, I got a sense of rythm SHE lived with as a child how abruptly a moment could turn dangerous and keep turning.

I was on a church playground, and the in order to get to IT, you had to climb the stucco wall that scratched the shit at you. And I had a dress on, and I didn't. I I was too small, and all of the other kids had already hoped over.

And this man helped me up when he lifted me over and he put his hand, or I knew I didn't belong any rick dst finger. And I, and afterwards, then he just stayed in the playground and washes play. And IT was time to climb back over the wall.

He always said me up and do the same thing to me again. And I told my dad this. When he picked me up, I said that man over there, near the bushes, he goosby me because that was the word I had been given.

Like, when we'd poke each other, I have stop goosing each other, like, just like, you know, poke and mess around the back seat and a, he said, what? And I said, I he was over there there there there was a man over there um the the man he had like sweat pants, like a jogging suit. He he goosed me.

Rachel was in the front seat next to her father as he was saying this, Peter was in back. Their father turned off the ignition.

I turned around are, he came around over the door, and he yanked me out by my brains and just started smacking me and my .

body and how .

old I was. I was in kindergarten, and I just. That is IT. I just get beat up and then put back in the car, but you seep out on and then drive home. But he didn't drive home.

He drove to my grandmother's and he just drank like half a bottle of jack. And told the whole household had happened to me, which I was modified by. And then I got my hair chopped off, dropped off my grades to make me less .

of a girl. Girl was not a good thing to be, was one lesson he took from that. Another lesson SHE understood how alone he was.

The one parent SHE had left who was supposed to be taken care of her could decide on a dime to hurt her instead and blame her for pain. SHE didn't even understand family included those truths as a baseline for Rachel. And then there was the rest of IT because family never means just one thing.

Rachel told me I am who I am because of my father. He meant a lot of things by that. She's funny, like her father, smart.

I can determined a good, argue a show boat. Their father was irresistible when he wanted to be charm itself the way many alcoholics are. He could fix things, build things. He loved to throw money around to be generous. Their father was when the mood was right, a giddy coin spirit, or with his children.

like my dad, go dang dang dish with me and my brother. And like, this is, this is an older dude, and he had a retired cop car that had been spray painted beige, and that was what we drove. And we had this wild old lake dragnet spotlight that you could shine on people. IT was just really just a card, like a character written by tennessee Williams and west Anderson.

Movies were a huge part of their life as a family. Almost every sunday, Rachel Peter and their father would go to Edward cinemas in anheimer for a matta who is cheaper and see probably in action movie. Peter is a big van dam fan favorites they would rewrite at home until the'd memorize lines, trading places, loma planes, trains and automobile iles, the lines that cracked up retail.

And Peter became like a glass softened and beautified by being returned to again and again. Rachel l. Says her father would never let outsiders criticize his kids even when SHE or Peter hurt another child and a parent showed up at their house and complained. Her dad might say, for instance.

while maybe your kids a little .

fucked face and let's face IT, some kids are Rachel remembers being a kid. Other kids were scared of her brother too.

If you're not playing with other kids or if when you do, you're the one who throws a rock at someone's face or you're the one who take something, you take tag and IT just gets violent or there's ducked dg goose and you just can't .

help .

but harm the person instead of just tapping them on their head.

These are all things that your .

brother did yeah I mean, both of us, when I came to play time, we both were the kids who would take IT too fuck and far .

home had to be a hidden world full of secrets. Rachel and Peter knew, without being told how important IT was to lie, especially to anyone in authority. But Rachel says sometimes their father would remind them, anyway, be careful what you say, or you'll end up in Foster care as Rachel and Peter got older and learn the american cast system as IT plays out in school, they found even more reasons to hide.

Rachel remembers shoplifting, tied because Peter told her someone at school had said he smelled poor. SHE says SHE was more adept than Peter at blending in the disguise worked while he was at school. But home was always a wild card.

We always had shame about having friends over, because I know we didn't have all furniture one time. We had long furniture as our furniture, like he once had a Kitty pool in his room full of crowd's. And like that, an aquarium, but like a three dollar toys are us Kitty poll you could get in that summer. And we just lived. We lived in a way where we understood IT wasn't Normal, and the kids would make fun of us for IT.

Most of their father's violence happened inside their home, but the times Rachel remembers her father hitting her or Peter in public and no one around them interviewing made clear to her Peter eye on her own. That realization created an enduring and subtle connection between them. They could laugh at things no one else would find funny.

You'd speak in code like dad's bottom teeth are showing, meant he's drunk. Rachel remembers the feeling of being in bed at night and hearing her father's door open down the hall, in her, in Peter, each in their separate rooms, reaching out to one another. Anyway, they could.

there were coffers we would do sometimes to notify. We would do certain knocks. I remember what they met, but I just, we would check on each other.

There was one time where my brother watch a training lar block of wood block, so my dad, you could hear him trying to open the door real hard. And he banged into IT. And like IT was worth IT.

Like sometimes we do that for each other, like I put a roller skate, I at my one at least, weird old metal roller skate that I had. Nara not like these are useless. These are not cool.

And like we would sort of create like toy, but we traps um are just things to just make the moment that we knew was inevitable, a little like ridiculous and comic. I think about my IT wasn't really to stop our dad. We knew that couldn't happen, but IT was just to entertain .

the listener. They were each other other's listener that are witness. But the bond Rachel computer shared of both being victims of this man they loved and were tied to, was constantly forced into competition with their own separate instincts to be spared.

They think about in move, you see like the two kids climbing to bed together and high and of the covers and everything, and but instead what we did was like, I would be frozen in my bed, and he would be across the horn, his, and you hear the bell, and you think, which one is he just coming into?

Just to random, lee drunkenly beat one of us up and so just to have that constant like your shoulder are up to your ears at all times in your backyards from IT over time, you know, it's just became, you know, IT went from like with hash whispers across the house like just the the soundtrack of a of a beating about to happen and the quiet of IT and we don't scream and we don't make sound because we don't anna disrupt the neighbors night and IT beat up in silence is such a weird is a weird galaxy um to not make a sound when you hurt really bad to have yourself picked up by your hair lifted off the ground like three feet and like all of the yelp that your natural body wants to do gets push down yeah I became a lot of mouth. I was older, right? Was done. And I think that that didn't ever happen for my brother, was never granted an outlet to just make a proper sad noise.

being a loud milk or sustained silent. These roles, these choices to speak or not, came to define them and eventually to separate them.

Rachel and her brother got school photos every year, and her father seems to have kept almost all of them. I looked to the photos after I had been talking to Rachel for months, and my expectations were covered by what he and others had told me. I'd heard Peter felt uncomfortable having photos taken of him.

He didn't like smiling, but he did fine in these, a kid with a round face and thick Brown hair who looked like he could have been cutting up with friends right before or right after the photos were taken. Rachel, though, had a relationship with the camera the way some people just do in the photos. SHE looks like she's enjoying the attention rather than simply accepting IT SHE pays attention back.

She's got a giant dipped smile, big eyelashes. She's beautiful. I talked to people who knew Rachel and Peter in high school, and two of them went to the same school.

Rachel always ahead as an older sister. SHE cast a big shadow. SHE had friends, a boyfriend.

SHE was a joke at the other kid, a good student, a writer. By the end of her junior year, he was also a mother. Sh'd kept her pregNancy secret from almost everyone, including her father, for a while.

Rachel says the baby stayed with her at night and with members of her family or her boyfriend's family during the day. And Rachel managed to stay in school and keep doing well. And on top of everything else, he was a fighter, so other students didn't mess with her. Peter was a quiet kid, kept mostly to himself, which of course, isn't allowed in high school. So people did mess with him if they thought they could get away with IT without .

Rachel finding .

out Peter struggled in his classes. He wasn't a joke. He didn't do team sports like dodgeball and handball. Rachel gotten help when he was Young with speech difficulties in dis lexie SHE never saw Peter get help, for instance, with his list and his reading problems.

SHE doesn't know why school just never became a place where Peter managed to shine or find close friends at home. Their father insisted on being scrupulous ly equal with them to the point where Rachel remembers he would measure each one's glassy of milk so they were the same amount. But the more Rachel succeeded, the more her father encouraged her and focused on her.

When he was a gym monist, he bought her a baLance beam. When SHE was in dracula, he built the coffin for the set. He went to her games, her meets, her awards ceremonies.

He took her to acting lessons in beverly hills in high school. The alliance between Rachel and Peter fraid, he resented her. Rachel doesn't member her father. Saying anything explicit like my money e's on Rachel or rata, is a smart one that kids perceive all sorts of truth their parents never say out loud. And this one was .

obvious well enough to wear. My brother could say, well, dad favors you. He's always favoured you. Like when he fight, like when those words trying to came out of his mouth, like when I was like within the last two or three years that happened. I think he was actually like four years ago because I just remember feeling so guilty because the truth was named and we all kind of knew IT I hoed IT was IT wasn't true.

Along with resenting Rachel, Peter, as he got older, would often shut Rachel down when he tried to call her father out. Sometimes he go so far as to take their father's side against her. Rachel remembers a moment, of course, have happened while they were watching a movie.

When I was pretty shocked, they watched together. It's A T V movie called the burning bed starting fara offset. It's about domestic violence. Rachel was sitting there with her father and brother watching this movie, having seen her father hit his lone time girlfriend as well as her and Peter.

he turns to me and says, don't you ever let a man had you like that? If he does, you tell me your father said that you, can you imagine, yes, hearing that, how? The hallowed out. You saying that to me, you're a buck and .

wife Peter Peter turned to Rachel.

Never is a shut up.

shut up.

yeah. Like IT just had that weird shed up like just honeymooners .

kind .

of show up back and IT even made me and I was levitating. I like five inches from the ceiling at that point. Like you fuck .

like I .

didn't say about us. Like both of you, your liars.

This was how the big shift started happening. In Rachel head, her family secrets stopped feeling like secrets. They just felt like lies, lies that protected other people, not her. Like there .

was a huge liberating turn when I found I was like, i'm not protecting people by lying anymore. I'm over that. In fact, I probably gone to tell the truth too often. I mean, to be uncomfortable very often. And it's true like i've been called a bully even for IT like i've been all kinds of terrible names because .

of IT but I just that's me off mike, asking of a certain spectacular blowout SHE told me about had been the turning point .

the wine and roses of fair I I don't even think about that yeah yeah shit fact .

yeah a stranger comes to town with wine that's after the break.

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Wine and roses, okay, that is short hand for an valentia events that happened in the spring of Rachel senior of high school. This is where Rachel and Peters path fully diverged. Rachel, a play right, as well as a poet.

So SHE lays the story out like a play, just one mad scene after another. I've heard from other people who were there for the moments that unfolded in public or semi public, that they do remember these scenes. And please note that this upcoming small back and forth between Rachel me is one of the dozens of moments in our conversation where I can barely follow what he is saying because it's yet another bomb shell. SHE starts off talking about Peter moving out. He actually .

moved in his senior year back into my grandmother's house and moved out from .

the house that he was living in with you and your dad into your grandmother's house with your grandmother.

My dad left us fera co worker and moved out in the middle of my senior year. He moved out and didn't tell us oh.

so you got you youtube living on your .

own ah yeah he was wild. We didn't know this woman and then one day he showed up packing our dad staff and yelling at us, we're bad kids and we're like, woman, who the hell are you? what? And IT was a coworker and they were married. And like, bitch, get out of my house. Like, who is this crazy wife and I don't know this is IT was just wild and .

tell you no what was going on that even .

after .

he moved out, you and call and they, look, I moved out .

anything. He sent us an envelope every month, sixty dollars. That was lunch money .

for no note.

just cash. Nothing, nothing.

no preamble. You had no idea this was coming. Now, no, dummy. Are you listening? They never saw coming. Let's just all accept, as Rachel and Peter had to, the new reality that they're father, the parent who had fought to get them out of Foster care, fought for custody and had had been their only stable home ever since that person had suddenly up in left, gotten married and moved in with the new wife, alex and let's start at the introductions y dinner Rachel, her brother, had with their father and his new wife.

There was an olive branch moment where he came, and they took us out to claim jumper. And we had this dinner together, the four of us, and we were sort of meeting our new mom that we had never IT just was so awkward. And what I understood during that dinner was that they both were alcohol lix who were absolutely leaning on each other. Turns out they met in A A IT seemed .

cleared to Rachel. They were not sober at this dinner like they're .

acting a little hyper and gooey and which isn't always necessarily out of character with my dad. But IT just kept ramping and away and then getting goofy. And then he grabs her bob in front of us.

And we were just like, alright, you know what? This is what the hell. And so kind of as a dig I brought up well interesting um because I i've been cast as the lead um in days of wine and roses.

This is a high and dig the days of wine and roses is a fascinating bit of pop culture from the late fifty early sixties. It's a love story about two alcoholic and early portrait of A A. There was a movie version with jack women and lyrae c, and the original teleplay with piper, Lori and Cliff person. And in both there were some pointed performances of true love and true drinkin', both the giddy floating mister, this kind, and the dead end destroying your life kind. Her dad and alex, for some reason, love this idea.

They got really excited about IT. So he was, he was really enthusiastic and said, I would like to help you where I can. And then he just put five hundred dollars on the table and we were like this for background.

Like, what is this? I was not just just put the storms, put this towards you're play and I was like looking at Peter, who was just like, what do I get like? And he goes, you don't do anything and Peter just SAT there.

And I was like, sea, and now I gotta go, my brother, and it's just hard to there gonna be that shit tension that happens. And we went home and I rather walk up to his room and didn't talk to me probably for a week. I was just the usual type of thing that would happen with us.

Rehearsals for the play moved ahead. Rachel's dad was on called the help like he always was with her theater projects.

One week I had called him at work and said, we need props. Do you have any empty like whisky bottles? And when I say that, he came and in front of all of my peers, open of his trunk.

And they were, at least, I think IT was sixty. IT was IT was between sixty and seventy bottles. And they are like all my crew, but punk kids just laughing.

Like what? Like IT just IT was incredible. And I was so embarrassed. And I, you know, I just felt like my entire life had been dissected first sence class in front of everybody, but like, without my consent.

And what was interesting about our theatrical productions at the end of year is that there would be judges who would come in, and we did three different plays, and they would nominate people for, like the had me award of test in high school. And I of the high school, he was just so goop because I wasn't even a sport IT wasn't a an arts school. But our teacher just really wanted us to like, ride the momentum like this is, this is exciting. You could actually propel yourself to like, starting, who knows, he was great. And so there I was, nominated for her best actress for my wrong days of wine roses.

Of course he was. And soon IT was tustin high schools academy awards night.

But that same night was an eagles concert. And my dad chose to go to IT instead. And I was like, really like.

you know, i'm going to go listen to peaceful, easy feeling for a thousand times instead .

of seeing you. And when I, like, went through his stuff, I found the eagles concert ticket going to the photo albums tty all like sweet and astoria. And I like ninety four equals cert. So I go and his wife comes as his proxy and SHE was slushed and I was like.

argue so was sorry, good.

Well, I mean, I just was i've here to take pictures for your dad was like, oh lord, and I win and my dada's not there and I said, you know, I don't think it's really fair for me to be given this award because we are only given three months to prepare for our roles in. And my peers, you know, they had like ninety days, but I had seventeen years to prepare for this role. And when I just was your acceptance speech and that said and I walked off, I was done if you're not going to even be here for us to like help assist the lie into existence and I just i'm done, i'm done.

Rachel remembers getting off the stage, sitting down at a table, and alex, her father's wife, sitting next to her, and pulling out a bottle of wine from her bag and proceeding to poor wine for herself into one of the glasses the school had provided for the non alcohol beverages that the children and other adults were drinking at this high school event concerning a play about alcoholism.

And understand to some of the actors like, or freshman like IT was he could be fourteen or eighteen seventy, and SHE, you know, and SHE just would not look at me. And then at the end of the night, SHE grabbed the back of my ARM and he goes, why did you do that? Trigger innocent dad.

And I just started. I was like, innocent IT was just a wird that he chose that word. And then so I thought more than us of what like, what are we like if you want like, and how we can get ugly if you want to get ugly.

But i'm i'm going to go get pizza, take you around. I don't need to ride from you because, you know, he was onna, drive me home like, I am good. I'm good lady.

I don't know you. I don't know you. Like, get away from me.

Don't talk to me about oc gas. H SHE goes, karma, karma carma. And I was like, I don't .

in a california .

ll shit. Take that ship back of Venus beach and kick some sand over like some dog shit, because get out of my face. With that.

Rachel remembers the awards tonight is the first time SHE ever called out her father in public and even though he enjoyed being the cheeky dad who showed up at his daughters rehearsal with once of empty booze bottles, Rachel telling a room full of adults, especially a room full of White people, that she's spent her whole life with an alcoholic that was not the same at all. The final of all this, an ensemble number, took place the following saturday. Rachel says their father showed up at their apartment with alex, the wife, and they started to go full crunch on the place.

They take the T, V. They take the new A C, D player um that he had bought for my birthday. They started taking the knife block like just empty out and my dad comes to me and he just goes, you are in the session, you are in that session and I said, why? Because I told the fucking truth. Why make me tell the truth in front your new fuck and wife like you're in a thousand, you're a liar and my brother was just sitting in the background like all god Rachel, don't don't do anything like we're all going to get beat up like everyone here we get beat up and I just remember her saying, how could you ever be this way to your dad?

Look at how you don't appreciate anything he's done for you and i'm like, bitch, do you know he has a girlfriend and my dad look stance because my dad had a long time girlfriend and I go, i'm telling Sandy and I get on the phone and I call her and I go, did you know my dad got married and i'm just sitting here like, yeah, they're here right now. They're packing everything up. They just took my they took my C.

D. Player and she's like, is SHE pretty when you look like and I like, what is this because blush, Sandy but like, he was asking all of the fuck quested I the phone and he was just like he couldn't believe I did that. I'm thinking how me you just you left us, you've given us a world of pain numerous times.

You you got married, you try to introduce us to our new mom, just not our mom. Like what is this? Like another thing, you're fucking bottles. You fucked in drunk hope cycles.

Like what the fuck? Why would you do that? Like what was wrong with you and I just just was screaming whatever I could at them just to hurt my dad and also to embarrassed her with, like you don't to embarrass her with the truth.

Like bit you don't know and while you understand, he is a shit out of us all our fucking lives, do you understand that he throwing me through this glass fuck and dining table and that's why it's just aboard? Like, like, let's get into IT. And he just he he was just gamming assessing.

Then they left with all the stuff. Rachel and Peter were alone again. He turned to Rachel assessing the damage.

Like you kill us and as like you kill us and I didn't kill us like. Let me a lot like what .

the fuck is is he .

was blaming you yeah yeah the the whole thing that like I I don't i'm sorry, i'm sorry like we're not going to lunch money anymore and my brother was just like, I got I got get out here.

Rachel hood felt like he didn't have much to lose by telling their secrets in front of alex and the audience at school. SHE felt like bucked my dad what's he's gonna do leave. He's already gone.

But Peter, who was seventeen and had another year left of high school, concluded that he did have things to lose the subsistence levels stability he'd managed with up to now, for example, like regular lunch money that might go away entirely. He was facing a new level of chaos, everybody for themselves. Peter moved out.

He couldn't move in with his father and alex. They lived too far away for him to get to school every day. The house he moved into with his grandparents house, which is where he lived for the rest of his life.

Rachel left southern california, but he took a while to do IT. SHE spent a year after high school living wherever friend's houses, x boyfriend's house, the park, sometimes SHE lived at her father's girlfriend Sandy's house at one point. Then he moved in with her boyfriend's family.

Rachel was barely in touch with Peter or her father that year. In the following few years, he says, one time he got a call out of the blue from alex, her father's ex wife. At that point, alex had gotten cancer, gotten sober, divorce rico's dad, who'd been drinking heavily.

He gotten a couple of D. U. eyes. Rachel says alex is the first adult. SHE remembers apologizing to her, saying, basically, I got IT wrong before.

When I believe you're dad over you rache landed a job, got her own place, lost the job. He had three kids. The kids helped to reconnect with Peter as adults.

SHE in Peter found comfort in the fact of each other, veterans of the same obscure war. But Peter was hankering, and Rachel was headed outward. SHE get married at twenty seven years old, moved across the country and started publishing her poetry, often about her family in childhood. SHE knows her father read her books. She's not sure Peter did, or how he felt about the fact of writing about their life.

He would attend poetry readings with me. And here we describe events. The heat is survived, endured, suffered, whatever the world. But I got the appliance.

Did you guys to talk after read about what you had said in the ponds?

Never, never.

you never talked about the abuse as adults.

Well, he IT was Normal ized like, you know, you a dad kicked asses. I'm like, kicked her asses just is too passive in my opinion.

They stuck mostly to safer ground movies and TV her kids jokes, some memories, the lakers, every once a while, a brief illusion to stresses and fears known only to the two of them. Peter became, as other relatives died off the propriety of his grandparents house. He had a few girlfriends over the years.

None of the relationships lasted. Peter was tall and nice looking, and he could be warm and chat in brief encounters with, say, a cashier, the grocery store or a receptionist. But he still struggled to make friends.

He fixed up the house, made a garden and back and raise butterflies, took care of stray cats and actors that wandered into the yard. His father worked out a state a lot, but he'd stayed the house with Peter when he wasn't working far away. Peter and his dad eventually settled into a syn biotic relationship.

His father had the one bank account they were used. His father took care of the mortgage and the bills. Peter took care of him.

He had this kind of air of authority over my dad. That was interesting to me because he um as a as a non drinker, as a non smoker, he really believed that like my dad was poisoning himself so is trying to save my dad from that and when my dad finally settle down and lived back in the house, which just maybe i'd say ten fifteen years ago, my brother became really sort of like this parent.

Their father would give up drinking and go back to IT. Sometimes in excess, sometimes you just have a beer. Peter would get upset at any drinking.

They got a juicer and resolved to get healthy. They worked out together. They were best friends, as Peter said in a text, after his father died.

He in Rachel, had each built their own stronghold, Rachel in her writing, in her own family, Peter at his fathers side, and the old squad, the three of them, as a three, also still existed, somehow damaged and imperfect, but recognizable every summer for five years in a row, retail and her family drove across the country. Instead, ed, for weeks with her father and brother in the house in san anna. Then the family couldn't drive out to california for a few summer in a row because of work. I'm .

and covered.

Part of me wishes I never moved in new york. Part of me wishes I had just, but I was just like going to be in alive. So I just needed to, I needed to go. But.

but i'd been my .

present in my brother's life. Who knows who knows? I'm in constant debate with myself and I think all people in morning do this. I know that they do um all of what if and all that.

I asked Rachel if she's writing about any of us yet, he said no, SHE said when SHE rates a poem, SHE settled some place with wherever she's writing about. SHE was still roaming ing when we talked SHE still wasn't sure what happened during the month. He was barely talking with her father and Peter.

What came before the texts? SHE was letting me wrong with her. But a girl can reach her limit with all the questions .

like it's very unnatural to be interviewed during all of us. It's not a Normal. I now think it's weird to speak of things you haven't even processed yet. But like this is also sort of giving me permission to go about my life knowing that like i've uncovered things and i'm going to a put those pieces together and figure IT out but they can also wait and or you know, some sweet gin jury White lady can just put IT all together for me. Help, help me figure this one out.

Hello, I am the jinjer y White lady courtesy of wella. And I did figure some things out. That's next time on the last part of we were three.