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He blew his breath out and went on.
“She laughed, and spat out that I was incapable of taking care of my son, that I’d ruin him, that Henry would become a blue collar nobody. Just like me. She always knew how to punch me right in the gut, both metaphorically and literally. I, however, was determined to take it all standing, to be the strong parent my son needed. So I told her that she could sleep on it, decide if she wanted to leave or keep the house. Either way, we were broken up, and I wanted her out of my life.”
“And?” I asked, hanging on his every word, so anxious to finally unfold Carter, to read all his parts.
“I put Henry in his crib. I slept in his room that night. Don’t know why, just had a funny feeling that I ought to. Turns out, that was the finest decision I ever made. Because when I woke up at three, I smelled smoke.”
Despite myself, I let out a gasp. “What?”
“Yup. I grabbed Henry — none of our stuff, not even a change of diapers — smashed a window and jumped out the side. I got all cut up and a little scorched, but Henry was safe and sound, which is what mattered. After running about a hundred feet away, I stopped to look back, and saw that our house, the one we’d built a life in, was burning to the ground.”
“As I walked to the fire station to alert the firefighters, only one thought ran through my head — Meghan did this. I knew it sure as you know the sky is blue. She was vindictive, unhinged, violent. She’d do anything to prove her point, even if it meant burning her baby alive. Suppose it made sense, really — she’d never really bonded with Henry, anyways.”
Carter shook his head, as though that were the most baffling part of the story. I sat in the seat, grasping my hands and holding them to my mouth, trying to make sense of everything I’d just learned. So that was why he was so closed off, so frightened. He had been burned before, in every sense of the word. A woman he trusted more than anything, who he’d built a life with, had tried to kill him and his baby son. God, of course he was reticent.
How had I been such an idiot? Guilt sank in my throat like a giant rock. Here I was, pushing him constantly, insisting that he open up. Imagining that it was some kind of infidelity, that maybe I was to be the Other Woman. Instead, I found laid bare a tale of absolute horror. People’s lives are not a psych class. The thought stung, but was no less true for the stinging.
“What happened next?” I asked quietly, not entirely certain I wanted to know more.
Carter’s foot had eased up on the gas pedal, as if he were finally feeling some relief, the truth no longer weighing him down.
“She got brought to court. Didn’t take a rookie firefighter more than oh, two seconds, to figure out that the fire was man-made. Or, in this case, woman-made. At first, they suspected me, thinking that maybe I’d done it for the insurance money or something, but after the judge looked at Meghan’s rap sheet, it became pretty obvious who was the criminal in the family.”
“We got eventually divorced. It took me a long time — too long — to come around to it, but I finally realized that the town’s good opinion of me didn’t mean shit if I wasn’t alive to care. Meghan didn’t want to sign the papers, but I was granted a divorce because of the circumstances. Anyways, not long after that, we went to court.”
“What for?” I asked.
“She was on trial for knowingly setting fire to a structure, with the intent to harm or kill two people. I testified against her, my then ex-wife. She looked truly murderous in that courtroom, baring her fangs at me. As if my little boy had been the cause of all this.”
Carter’s face clouded over. Again, the only way he could find the ability and energy for anger was when he thought of Henry. Despite my intent not to psychoanalyze, I worried that he wasn’t letting himself feel wronged in all this.
“So she’s sentenced for life?”
He laughed. “Yeah, not quite. See, the judge decided that, though Meghan set the fire, there was, and I quote, ‘no way’ she did it intentionally. In his old-fashioned eyes, a woman would never harm her baby and husband. He was naïve. He didn’t know Meghan. I tried to tell him, tried to explain that she hated us. She would freely and gladly burn down our house.”
“Go on,” I said quietly.
“He wouldn’t listen. Instead, he charged her with accidentally endangering our lives. She got off the arson charges on a plea of insanity, though I knew it wasn’t mental illness that had driven her to start the fire. It was pure, unstrained spite. So, no, she wasn’t sentenced for life — Meghan was sentenced for just ten years.”
