Chapter 9: The Question of Guilt
Three months after Linda’s death, I started having doubts.
Not about whether I had done the right thing — I still believed she deserved what happened to her. But I began to wonder if I had gone too far.
I had spent four years methodically destroying another human being. I had smiled while I did it. I had whispered cruel things to her while she was too weak to fight back.
Was that justice?
Or had I become something worse than she ever was?
These thoughts kept me awake at night.
Ryan noticed I was struggling. He suggested we go away for a weekend — just the two of us. He thought it would help me “move on.”
I agreed.
We went to a small cabin by a lake. It was peaceful. Ryan was attentive and kind. For two days, I almost felt normal again.
On the second night, we sat by the fire, drinking wine. Ryan looked at me with so much love in his eyes that it made my chest hurt.
“I don’t say it enough,” he said quietly, “but I’m really grateful for you. The way you took care of Mom… it meant everything to me. I know she wasn’t always easy, but you never gave up on her.”
I looked into the fire so he wouldn’t see my face.
If only he knew the truth.
If only he knew that the woman he loved had spent four years slowly killing his mother.
I felt something crack inside me.
For the first time, I wondered what would happen if he ever found out.
Would he still look at me like that?
Would he still love me?
Or would he see me as the monster I had become?
That night, while Ryan slept beside me, I lay awake and asked myself a question I had been avoiding for years:
May you like
What have I done?
And for the first time, I didn’t have an answer that made me feel okay.
