“I shouldn’t have asked you to look after my child while I was hospitalized. It was my fault you lost control and lashed out. I was desperate when I saw my kid unconscious—I panicked and in my panic, I dragged Ginny into this and exposed everything. That’s why you were sent here for a month.”
“It’s all my fault. If you want to hit someone or curse someone, take it out on me. Ginny’s your wife—she’s only ever tried to help you. She doesn’t deserve this. You didn’t have to hurt her like that…”
I said nothing. So Steve kept bowing, again and again, until his forehead started bleeding. But even as the blood smeared across the floor, I stayed cold. Unmoved. At that time, my own daughter was only a month old. And as a father, I’d developed an instinctive tenderness for all small, fragile lives.
I treated Steve’s child like my own. I loved her deeply. But he had the heart to poison his own daughter—then pinned the crime on me.
“Steve, stop kneeling to him!” Ginny cried out, pulling him up and locking him in a protective embrace. “Tom is heartless. He won’t listen to reason. He doesn’t deserve your respect!”
She then turned her fury on me, her voice shaking with rage.