My name is Frank O’Connell, I’m thirty-eight years old, and I live outside Chicago where the wind off the lake finds every crack in your coat and every crack in your marriage. I learned that winter, both literally and metaphorically, when I discovered that the people you trust most can be the ones inflicting the deepest wounds. Ashley had been texting me all week about her mother “needing help” with Christmas decorations, like the holiday was a theatrical production and Christa Raymond was the director.
My mother-in-law had always treated family gatherings like Broadway premieres—everything had to be perfect, everyone had to play their part, and any deviation from the script was met with the kind of cold disapproval that could frost a room faster than Chicago weather.
I’d been married to Ashley for nine years. We met at a fundraiser where she worked as an event coordinator, and I was immediately drawn to her warmth, her organizational skills, the way she could make everyone feel welcome.
What I didn’t see then, or chose not to see, was how much of that warmth dimmed when we were around her family. Christa Raymond had a way of pulling all the oxygen out of a room, and Ashley had spent her entire life learning to breathe in that thin atmosphere.
Todd was seven years old, our only child, and the center of my universe.
He was quiet, thoughtful, the kind of kid who noticed everything and processed it all internally. He’d started becoming even quieter over the past year, especially after visits to his grandmother’s house. When I’d ask him about it, he’d shrug and say things were “fine” in that careful way kids do when they’re protecting the adults from something they don’t think the adults want to hear.
I should have paid more attention.
I should have asked better questions. The week before Christmas, Ashley had been staying at her mother’s house more than usual, ostensibly to help with holiday preparations.
Todd was with her, and while I missed them both, I’d been buried in work—I’m a project manager for a construction company, and December is always chaos as we try to close out the year. Ashley assured me everything was wonderful, that Todd was having a great time with his cousins, that her mother was spoiling him.
I believed her because I wanted to believe her.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
