Chapter 2

From that day on, our lives fell into a strange routine.

During the day, I ran myself ragged, taking care of Cyrus, cooking, cleaning, doing whatever needed to be done.

Wendy shut herself in her room. She only came out for meals, ate in silence, then disappeared back behind the door.

At night, after Cyrus was asleep, I would sit alone in the living room, smoking one cigarette after another.

I devoted myself entirely to the family.

I thought that if I gave enough, sacrificed enough, maybe someday I could finally atone for what I had done.

However, I was wrong.

In Wendy’s eyes, my attempts at redemption were nothing but a joke.

She began tormenting me in increasingly cruel ways.

Sometimes, she would storm out of her room in the middle of the night, knock the ashtray off the table and scream at me for daring to smoke.

Other times, when I was not looking, she would dump Cyrus’s medication down the drain. Then she would stand there coldly and watch me tear the house apart looking for it.

“What are you looking for? He’s going to be like this for the rest of his life anyway. What difference does it make if he takes his medicine?

“You probably think the same thing deep down, don't you? I'm just saying it out loud for you.”

Her words cut like knives.

I finally snapped. “Wendy, have you lost your mind? That's our son!”

“Our son?” She laughed, the sound raw and bitter. “The moment you forgot to turn off the stove, you lost the right to call yourself his father.”

I trembled with rage, but I could not argue with her.

What she said was true.

My parents and my in-laws came over several times, hoping to make peace between us.

Wendy pointed straight at me and tore me apart in front of everyone.

“Ask him! Ask this murderer! He destroyed my son. He destroyed our family! Every night, I dream about that fire. I dream about Cyrus crying for his mommy while he was trapped in the flames! And him? How does he still sleep peacefully at night? Why wasn’t he the one who burned? He’s nothing but a murderer!”

My parents lowered their heads in shame. My in-laws held Wendy as she sobbed.

In the end, everyone looked at me with the same mixture of disappointment and blame.

I was completely alone.

Then my boss called. He carefully explained that, given my family situation and mental state, the company thought it would be best for me to take an indefinite leave of absence.

I knew what that really meant. I had been fired.

The neighbors started whispering about me too.

Wendy told them I was an irresponsible man with something seriously wrong with my head… someone who had wanted to kill his own son.

Whenever I walked through the neighborhood, I could feel countless eyes staring daggers at me.

To everyone, I had become a monster, a sinner.

Wendy had become the poor, broken woman who was left to suffer alone.

I tried to explain but no one believed me.

“He’s a monster who wouldn’t even spare his own child.”

“There’s no smoke without fire. A man like that can’t be any good.”

I could not defend myself.

I went to Wendy and begged her to stop. I told her I would spend the rest of my life taking care of her and Cyrus.

I would spend the rest of my life making up for what I had done.

“What do you want from me?” I begged, my voice breaking.

She stared at me coldly. The look in her eyes sent a chill from head to toe.

“What do I want? I want you to know what it feels like to wish you were dead.”

I was completely broken.

I felt like I was slowly being broken down from the inside, drowning in guilt and misery until there was barely anything left of me.

I stopped sleeping. Night after night, when I closed my eyes I heard Cyrus screaming for his daddy from inside the flames.

I heard the neighbors cursing me and Wendy’s accusations echoing in my head.

“Why don’t you just die?”

“Why are you still alive?”

I would jolt awake from nightmares again and again. Eventually, I became afraid to sleep at all.

Then, one night, I was struggling through another nightmare when the sharp, overwhelming stench of gasoline hit me.

My eyes flew open.

Wendy stood beside my bed, holding a red plastic gas can. Gasoline streamed from the opening, soaking my blankets, and me.