The Nothing Man

by Catherine Ryan Howard

There are three sides to every story, they say: yours, mine, and the truth.

It was only then, when I was under the covers, alone in my room in the dark, that I could finally give in. Let it in. The sadness, the grief, the confusion.

The Nothing Man was a threat, yes, but the idea of reading it, of reliving his glory days . . . It also brought the giddy promise of a treat.

I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man. Now I am the woman who is going to catch him.

No one dared come out and say it, but it was there in the subtext: everyone has to suffer something. Christine had never suffered, so it made a kind of sense that her first serving came in such a devastating portion. And hey, it wasn’t like she’d died.

She found Christine unconscious on her bed. She had ingested a lethal dose of painkillers and would pass away in the hospital two days later.

Omg she took her life! It’s devastating and extremely sad. She was alone and had nobody to help her cope with her trauma.

They could make fun of him all they wanted, but who would have the last laugh here: the intelligent man who’d already had an illustrious career as a member of An Garda Síochána or the idiots stuck working in this dump for minimum wage for the rest of their lives?

So fucking arrogant!

These men, they’re not over-achievers or particularly successful in any other area of their lives. They’re boring, unremarkable failures. And that’s what I want to prove: that the Nothing Man is too.

I call him that because that’s what he is: nothing. A non-entity. A loser. And I want to prove that by identifying him.”

Katie was reading Eve Black’s book. His own daughter. Reading about the other him.

He was about to walk up to the woman who’d made it her mission to find him and failed at it. Instead, he was coming to her.

He was—is—ultimately a coward.

They’re not out of control. They don’t have to do it, they want to. There’s a big difference between drive and compulsion.

You bought me a ticket to a planet where I lived by myself.

And weirdly, inadvertently, it led me to the wonderful man who earlier this year became my husband. In a few weeks’ time, our daughter will arrive.

Happy she got closure and was able to move on