“And a few minutes later… your kitchen exploded.”
The room tilted beneath me.
For seventeen years, I had imagined fate.
Bad luck.
An accident.
But now I could suddenly see it clearly:
greed,
cowardice,
men saving money while families burned alive.
And Callahan —
the man I married —
had carried that truth inside him the entire time he loved me.
“You should’ve told me,” I said.
“I know.”
“You let me marry you.”
“I know.”
My voice cracked.
“I told you things I never told anyone.”
Callahan looked shattered now.
“I wanted one selfish thing in my life,” he whispered. “Just one thing untouched by my father’s sins.”
I hated that part of me understood that.
And I hated even more that I still wanted to walk into his arms.
But then he spoke again.
“There’s more.”
The dread returned instantly.
“What now?”
Callahan’s jaw tightened.
“The car accident that blinded me…”
He stopped breathing for a second.
