For fifteen years, as if mandated by law, Ollie could only write two emails a month. The first on the 20th, a thought provoking paragraph. The second, one bland sentence, no matter what Tricia wrote.
Sometimes she would respond in a bland sentence, sometimes she’d open an intellectual debate. It didn’t matter.
Ollie was trapped in a prison of his own rules.
Tricia wondered if he had the sense to appreciate she got the pattern, saw through the guise, but assumed he probably didn’t.
That was Ollie’s major flaw; he didn’t ‘see himself’ as ‘others saw him’.
He was the ‘text book abuser’, the example she had used during the years she gave public talks on domestic violence.
The man who lived in a fantasy world in which reality did not intrude.