Letter to Laurie

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

You might as well take a look at the bottom of this letter and decide
right now whether you want to throw it away or not.

If you're still reading this, then I suppose you're either giving me the
benefit of the doubt or you inherited more than pheromones from me, you
got that burning curiosity about people as well. I'd like to think that
you might be open to thinking more of me than your mother's told you,
but if I'm being honest with myself, I don't really expect much more,
and I can see where from what you've been told, it could seem like I
deserve that.

But there's two sides to every story, Laurie. You know what your
mother's is, and I think it's only fair to give you mine and let you
decide where to go from there. You know that I have an ability like
yours, that much is true. Maybe the Professor or Jean told you more
about it, but here goes - I can touch people and make them either love
me or hate me. It sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? And yes, I was a
student of the Professor's, just like you are, almost twenty years ago
before I'd even met your mother.

I wasn't a very good student, and I didn't want to listen to anyone
trying to tell me how I should or shouldn't use what I could do, so I
left. And that's when I met your mother. I won't lie and say that my
powers had nothing to do with us getting together. I was nineteen years
old, and she was a model in New York. I don't know if she talks much
about that, but it was a pretty wild time for both of us. And if you're
anything like a normal teenager, you probably just made a horrible face
at that thought.

We got married young, and then your mother told me she was pregnant.
We were having problems at that point, problems my powers couldn't just
make go away. So I went away.

That's the honest truth of it. I wasn't ready to be a father or a
husband, but that sounds like I'm making an excuse. The truth was that I
didn't want to be either. I didn't know anything about raising a family,
since I'd never had a good one of my own. So I hit the road and your
mother moved back to Salem Center to raise you.

So that's the truth of it, or at least my version. I don't know if
you're interested in hearing any more, or if you want to know more about
this guy who might happen to be your father, but hasn't ever had the
chance to be a dad.

The business card has my phone number and address. I'm working in New
York now, so if you want to talk, then we can talk.

I'm really hoping you got this far and this isn't torn up in a trash can
somewhere. I think after all the work you did to find me, that my
daughter's not the kind to just leave things there.


Your father,

Zach Garrison