For the first time in many years, no words bubbled in my throat. No sarcastic response, no joke or usual sexual deflection to sidestep the uncomfortable moment. All of it fled from me.
An unpleasant frown climbed my face.
It felt like Pyre Saint had just poked something I had buried deep.
I opened my mouth… and closed it.
'Why does morality matter to me?'
The question echoed in my skull, and for a horrible moment, I couldn't find the glib answer.
Instead, something else surfaced. A memory I kept locked in a box I never opened.
A nine-year-old boy standing in a room that smelled like smoke and melted plastic. His father's laptop, destroyed. Retaliation for the belt marks still burning on his back. The satisfaction of watching something his father valued turn to ruin.
And then.
The sound of sirens. His mother's face. The sequence of events that followed, one domino tipping into the next until she was gone and he was standing at a funeral wondering if he had killed her.
