No one knew the real me except for my mother, who spent every moment when she wasn’t working praying on her knees for my soul’s salvation.

When I met my wife, I thought she looked like an angel – she was so beautiful and so good – and I wondered if my mother’s prayers had come true. I thought that maybe she’d been sent to save my soul. And for a time when I was with her, everything was peaceful and I began to kid myself that the devil had gone away; that maybe my wife’s love and my mother’s prayers had worked a miracle.

But the devil inside me hadn’t gone away. After a time, he began to stir. Out he would come, like a jack-in-the-box, every time my wife crossed me. I started to wonder if she did it on purpose, like a child wanting to press the button despite knowing exactly what’s going to come leaping out, because she did it so often, despite knowing the consequences.

She stopped respecting me even though she tried to hide it behind a fake smile. She stopped loving me even though she pretended by offering kisses and smiles and lies coated in sugar. She planned to leave me. And it made me angry. My mother’s words rang in my head: you’re not loveable; you’re worthless; you’re a devil; you’re damned.

I’m sure she regrets it. She didn’t want the boy to die. She begged me not to hurt him. But his death was hardly my fault – it was hers. She made me so angry with her betrayal, and he was collateral damage.

I think about them now. I think about them all the time, in fact. I think about how I chased her out of the house. How she was barefoot and how she ran through the snow, glancing over her shoulder, eyes wide with fear, looking exactly as if the devil was chasing her.

Chapter Fifteen

We while away the hours like condemned prisoners awaiting the hour of execution, on edge and barely speaking. I tend to the bird, disheartened to see that it’s weakening. Its heartbeat is rapid and the food and water I gave it remain untouched. If it succumbs to the shock, it won’t last the night. I will it to find some strength and fight.

Liam stokes the fire and when it gets too dark inside the cottage I get out the candles and a torch that I found in a drawer in the kitchen, and we listen to the winds start to howl and the rain firing arrows at the windows.