Part 2He Starved Us Until I Owned Him

"Corinne! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Trevor’s furious roar bounced down the concrete stairwell. The elevator doors slid shut with a heavy chime, slicing his voice in two.

The hospital basement smelled of industrial bleach and wet concrete.

I signed the long ream of release forms. My signature, once sharp and confident, looked like the seismograph of an earthquake.

When the crematorium furnace roared to life, I didn't shed a tear. There was only a wide, cavernous hole carved out behind my ribs, through which the winter wind blew freely.

I carried the small, velvet-draped cedar urn back to the house just as the grey light of dawn began to seep over the suburbs.

The moment I pushed the front door open, the sound of drawers being pulled and heavy furniture scraping against floorboards echoed from the second floor.

"Trevor, the morning light in this corner is amazing," Lindsay’s voice trilled from Toby’s nursery. "If I set up my ring light right where the crib is, the lifestyle engagement for my morning streams will double."

My pulse flatlined. A cold, static roar filled my skull.

I dropped my keys and moved up the stairs, my boots making no sound on the runner.

When I reached the doorway, the sight nearly dropped me to my knees.

Toby’s white spindle bed had been shoved violently into the far corner, its little cotton sheets stripped and tangled on the hardwood. The picture books I had read to him every evening—the soft velvet touch-and-feel editions, the dog-eared Dr. Seuss paperbacks—lay piled in the hall like yard waste.

Trevor was standing by the closet, holding an open heavy-duty contractor trash bag, stuffing Toby’s prized limited-edition Iron Man figures inside.

"Get your hands off his things," I said.

The words didn't come out loud. They came out venomous and cracked.

Trevor paused, turning his head. There was no flicker of shame in his features—only the irritated impatience of a man whose morning coffee had arrived lukewarm.

"Why are you yelling at six in the morning? You scared Lindsay half to death."

Lindsay immediately retreated toward the window sill, crossing her arms over her chest, her doe eyes brimming with well-rehearsed moisture.

"Corinne, I'm so sorry... I just thought the room was sitting empty. Trevor told me Toby went to that overnight enrichment camp in the Berkshires for the month..."

Enrichment camp.

I stared at Trevor Mercer.

The night our boy was burning alive from the inside out, I told him the child was seizing. And he had lied to his assistant, claiming his four-year-old was away at camp, simply to preserve his façade of unbothered executive prestige.

"This is my son's room," I said, stepping into the space. I reached out and ripped the contractor bag directly from Trevor’s grip.

The thick plastic tore with a sharp, violent shriek.

Plastic limbs, painted shields, and wooden blocks clattered across the floor.

A small, hand-carved cherrywood music box rolled across the floorboards, coming to rest against the toe of Trevor’s designer sneaker. As it struck, the internal brass teeth caught the cylinder, chiming out three tinny, uneven notes of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

Trevor had carved that music box himself for Toby’s second birthday.

He had stayed up three nights straight in the garage, his thumbs covered in blisters and wood glue, presenting it to Toby like a king offering up a crown.

This means Daddy will watch over you forever, buddy, he had whispered back then.

Now, Trevor looked down at it.

He lifted his foot.

Crack.

The cherrywood casing shattered beneath his sole. The brass cylinder bent into scrap. The music died instantly.

A physical spasm hit my chest, sharp enough that my vision blacked out for a fraction of a second.

"Have you had your little episode yet, Corinne?" Trevor sneered, kicking the splintered wood aside. "It’s four walls and a bunch of cheap plastic. Lindsay has been putting in eighty-hour weeks on our Series B pitch; she needs a dedicated studio space to run the brand marketing. You used to run corporate strategy—do you have zero concept of the bigger picture? You can’t make one small sacrifice for the firm?"

The bigger picture.

I looked at the man I had given up my career for. He stood amidst the debris of our child's life, using corporate jargon to sanitize his cruelty.

"The bigger picture," I whispered, "is bringing another woman into my dead son’s nursery and stomping on his memory?"

Lindsay pulled at Trevor’s sleeve, letting out a soft, theatrical sob. "Trevor, forget it. I’ll go back to my studio apartment... Corinne clearly thinks I’m contaminating the house. I can handle the mold and the commute. It’s fine."

The martyr routine worked like lighter fluid.

Trevor stepped in front of her, thrusting an aggressive index finger within an inch of my nose.

"Look at you! Bitter, resentful, hollow! You’re not a mother—you’re a shrew! Lindsay is working in this room starting today. You want to hoard this garbage? Fine. I’ll clear it out myself!"

He began violently grabbing Toby’s belongings—his framed watercolor finger-paintings, his tiny winter coats, his wooden building blocks—and hurling them out into the hallway.

He grabbed a crayon drawing from the low table—a sketch Toby had made of the three of us holding hands under a yellow sun—crumpled it into a tight ball, and threw it directly into my face.

"Take your trash and get the hell out of this room!"

The paper ball hit my cheekbone. It didn't hurt. But the air around me felt suddenly sub-zero.

I dropped slowly to my knees.

In the middle of the wreckage, I smoothed out the wrinkled paper. The crayon figures of the father, the mother, and the little boy were distorted by creases.

The boy in the drawing was gone. And the man in the drawing had never truly existed.

I held the small urn tightly under my arm, folded the drawing into my breast pocket, and stood up.

"You are going to regret every single second of this, Trevor," I said. My voice was level, empty of tears, stripped of any human warmth.

He blinked, thrown off by the lack of screaming. But his arrogance returned instantly.

"Regret? Corinne, the only regret of my life was putting a ring on your finger."

I nodded.

I turned and walked out of the room.

Behind me, Lindsay’s voice floated through the doorway, sweet and saccharine.

"Trevor... the slate grey paint on this accent wall is a bit gloomy. Can we paint it dusty rose?"

"Whatever you want, sweetheart. Anything you like."