“Stop clinging to that beast and pretending to be insane! I don’t have time for your games. Where the hell is our daughter?!”
My eyes turned bloodshot as I screamed back, hysterical. “Don’t you dare touch my child!”
As the calf let out a frightened, pitiful moo, I clutched it tighter—and then, without warning, I bit down hard on Ginny’s hand.
She screamed, her face contorting in pain as blood poured from the wound. She stumbled back, cradling her hand in disbelief.
Steve gasped and immediately rushed to her side. “Ginny! Are you alright?!”
Before she could answer, Steve spun around and dropped to his knees in front of me, his forehead hitting the floor with a loud thud.
“Tom, this is all my fault. I never should’ve leaned on Ginny just because we were old classmates. I shouldn’t have turned to her during the hardest time of my life. I disrupted your family…”
“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.
“Tom, are you insane? I’m your wife! You bit me like a wild animal! Is this your way of saying you don’t want to be married anymore?”
Just as she finished, a familiar moo sounded from the barn entrance. My ears perked up. My eyes lit with joy. I shoved past everyone and ran to the door.
“Honey, you’re back!”