Dear Three,
Hi, I'm Deuce. We haven't met yet, but we will.
I've known about you long before auditions began.
And I've always told him I aim to be your friend.
There are children involved, after all.
You are no doubt lovely, and gentle and kind.
He has top-shelf taste though his budget is sometimes inflated.
He says he is going to wife you soon; very, very soon he tells me.
Perhaps sometime in early October,
when my birthday rolls around.
I think he intends that to stun and sting.
But I am already quite numb from the earlier blows.
Though we are not exactly divorced yet, I tried that whole kinstugi thing.
The gold we found in Rome's mountains could not heal or seal us, and all the King's horses and Prince Simon's men, couldn't put us back together again.
It takes both sides holding their broken parts, together.
While I must note the ease with which two decades have been discarded, it is only a reminder for myself.
You must not read into my tone a longing or desire to change this tide.
To call him back to my side.
We don't crash onto such shores without first losing a battle with the raging sea.
This letter is simply a note of welcome, a word of warning, if needed.
Have you met Ace, yet ?
I would call her One, but he often said "I've got to look out for number One" when referring to himself and his life's affairs. I believe you will find this to be one of the most accurate statements of all .
There was a time we were not permitted to speak of Ace, nor the son she bore him in their youth.
You'll find she is nice, and lovely and gentle and kind...
More in common than you'll realize at first.
There will be differences, but more-so, similarities.
In the beginning, she offered a similar courtesy to me, though she was more brief and to the point:
"He's a liar and I don't care who he dates" she said.
She was finished then as I am now.
He leaves you no choice but to be.
You'll see, eventually.
I know stories will differ, mileage will vary.
Even now, he would have me believe his own fanciful versions of the story we were both there for, assigning himself roles of both victim and hero, while I am cast as villain.
Some days, he is nearly successful at convincing even me.
If I hadn't seen his fingerprints wrapped around young throats for myself, or if I could forget that night in Kentucky, my own breath obstructed as he carried me down our hall by my head, almost he'd persuade even me.
He recently shared with our youngest daughter during visitation, a version where I set out in search of some love, new.
"I didn't do this," he told her "it was your mom who left me."
She is young, but not too young to remember the yelling and the fear he doused our home in, the struck match of grabbed throats and the hold-your-breath encounters when he wasn't very kind.
She remembers the Christmas tree, sailing down the stairs and the splinters of wood when he killed that dining room chair.
After all, it wasn't even that long ago.
She remembers him telling us all to go... and stay the heck gone, too.
He likes to say he hopes I find what I was looking for.
I was looking for safety and an end to the anger, to the constant battling our home had become.
I didn't find it and I don't walk away feeling his best was done by me.
Still, I wish you both the best and all the happiness that may be had under such circumstances.
May this third time be his charm.
