My Personal Demon

11:54

My mother-in-law is calling me more than usual.

For the past few weeks, she gave me the gift of her silence. I suspect that she was busy micromanaging the lives of my brother and sister-in-law. To Marissa Noble, her children were personal improvement projects, pets that would behave the way she wanted them to if she nagged them enough.

It was a shame that I shared her last name.

Not that she was awfully happy about that either. I changed my name to be closer to Charles, not to share blood with her.

But I derived some sweetness from the bitterness of her displeasure. However miserable I may be, she was infinitely more so.

I could hear it in her voice when she yelled at me for the same things.

"He should have never married you," she seethed. "He was too good for someone like you. If only he had listened to me—"

"And married Sarah," I said, cutting her off. "Then he would still be alive."

She grows quiet, unsure of how to respond. I find satisfaction in her shocked silence. I never spoke back to her, fearing that I would seem too disrespectful, but today I had found my breaking point.

"I wish that were true," I continued, speaking into the receiver. "That a better wife could have kept him alive. But you know as well as I do that Charles was not that simple. Without me, he would have destroyed himself a long time ago."

"How dare you speak of him that way? This is what I meant when I said he was too good for you," she snarled.

"Marissa, he almost killed himself. He had many mental issues, most of which you were responsible for. If anything, a better mother would have kept him alive more than you did."

I say those words with more venom than intended, but I doubt that changing the tone of my voice would have shielded her from the brunt of the truth. According to Charles, she was a terrible caregiver. He made sure to move out of his family's home the night after his eighteenth birthday because of how much he hated his life there.

"You crushed his spirit," I continued. "You made him feel small, unwanted, and worthless when he was young. If you wonder why he ended up loving someone like me, just look into the mirror. You're the one who drove him into my arms."

"Making up lies does not make you less guilty of killing him. You can't blame me when you were the one driving the car," she retorted.

"Would it have been better if he drove?"

We both knew the answer to that question. But Marissa wanted to be right. In a reality where I'm my husband's murderer, he had to be a more capable driver than me.

"You killed him," she insisted. "You murdered my son."

"That truck killed him." I must have told her that at least a hundred times already. But that driver died in the accident, leaving me, the sole survivor, to be the only outlet for her anger.

"If you were paying attention, you could've moved out of the way. His life was in your hands."

Guilt splashes over me, a feeling that is simultaneously dirty and warm. I hated that she wasn't wrong. I wished with every fiber of my being that I was at the wheel again, replaying that eternal fantasy of being a hero.

But I quickly snap out of it once I feel tears forming in my eyes.

"Blaming me won't bring him back," I said. "You had your chance to love him as a mother should. Don't make that mistake with your other kids."

I slam the receiver into the wall, not bothering to wait for her response. I unplugged the phone in case it rang again.

For the first time since his death, I hated Charles. I despised him for dying and leaving me alone with his mother's fury. Why did he have to be so fragile, so breakable, and so human?