The first time my husband tried to lunge across the table at me in the psychiatric hospital, the restraints caught his wrists with a hard metallic snap. He jerked forward, the leather straps biting into his skin, his eyes wild and bloodshot under the harsh fluorescent lights. Behind him, the wall clock above the observation window ticked steadily toward 5:05 p.m., each second a tiny hammer on my nerves and his.
“I am not crazy, Morgan!” he shouted, voice cracking against the reinforced glass between us. Spit dotted the surface in front of his mouth. “Tell them!
Tell them what you did. Tell them this is you. All of this is you.”
I set the phone back in its cradle.
In the visitor room, conversations had to go through the landline on each side of the glass, just like in jail. The handset on my side felt warm against my cheek, the cord looping gracefully between my fingers. “Ethan,” I said softly, letting his name land like a mercy, “I know you’re not crazy.”
His chest heaved.
For a second, hope flickered across his face, fragile and desperate. Then I smiled. “I’m the one who made sure everyone else thinks you are.”
The clock behind him chimed five low, dull notes that echoed down the corridor.
Five chimes. Five years of marriage. Five months since the night this really started.
—
Five months earlier, on our fifth wedding anniversary, the steak I’d cooked for my husband had already gone cold. The ribeye sat in the center of his plate, a perfect sear dulled by time, juices congealing in an unappetizing gray-brown puddle. Candle wax had run in thick red drips down the silver candlesticks, hardened streaks that looked like dried blood against white linen.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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