Chapter 3

Michael arranged Ethan's funeral alone.

He picked the casket, the flowers, the music.

Each choice was a fresh stab of pain.

Jessica was a ghost. She stayed in their small, rented house, claiming she was too distraught.

But Michael heard her on the phone with Kevin, her voice normal, discussing Brandon's college dorm furnishings.

The day of the funeral was grey and cold.

Michael stood by the grave, a handful of Ethan's friends and a few distant relatives beside him.

Jessica was supposed to meet him at the cemetery.

He waited.

Her car finally pulled up as the service was about to begin.

She got out, looking composed, wearing an expensive black dress he'd never seen.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, not looking at him. "Work emergency."

"Work?" Michael asked, his voice flat.

"Kevin called. Brandon has a bit of a sniffle, he's worried it might be the flu. I needed to make sure he was okay."

A sniffle.

Ethan was in a coffin a few feet away.

Michael turned away from her, unable to speak.

As they were lowering Ethan's casket into the ground, Jessica's phone rang again.

"I have to take this," she whispered, annoyance in her voice.

She walked back to her car, talking animatedly.

When the service ended, Michael stood alone, watching the gravediggers.

He had placed a large wreath of white lilies, Ethan's favorite, on the fresh earth.

Jessica's car started.

She backed up, not looking, her tires crunching over something.

Michael looked.

She had driven directly over Ethan's wreath, crushing the lilies into the mud.

She didn't even notice. She just drove away.

Michael sank to his knees.

The betrayal was absolute. It was a physical weight crushing him.

He picked up a single, mud-stained lily.

His son was gone. His marriage was a lie.

He was utterly alone.

He got the death certificate later that week.

"Cause of death: blunt force trauma, vehicular impact."

A hit-and-run.

Some monster had killed his boy and driven off.

He clutched the paper, the official words a cold finality.

Ethan, Valedictorian, National Merit Scholar.

Reduced to a statistic.

The small, rundown rental house felt emptier than ever.

Everywhere he looked, he saw Ethan.

His worn-out sneakers by the door, his textbooks on the cheap kitchen table.

His dreams, his future, all gone.

Michael sat in Ethan's small room, holding one of his son's old baseball caps.

The grief was a living thing, tearing at him from the inside.

He hadn't just lost a son. He'd lost his reason for living.