Gretchen's hand froze mid-reach where she'd been shielding Rex. She looked at me, her expression tangled with guilt.
Rex went white. He spun around and climbed onto the windowsill. While my parents screamed, he let out a bitter laugh through his tears:
"Max, I had no idea you'd been suffering so much because of me all these years."
"I've always known I was nothing but a burden, dragging all of you down. If it weren't for not wanting to break Mom and Dad's hearts, if it weren't for meeting Gretchen, I would've killed myself a long time ago."
"It's not too late. Let me die now. Consider it my way of making it up to you."
My mother shrieked, begging Rex not to move, then whipped around and hit me:
"You won't be satisfied until you've driven your brother to death, is that it?! Tell him now! Tell him you were wrong!"
Even Gretchen grabbed my hand, squeezing it so hard her knuckles went white, demanding I apologize to Rex immediately:
"Max! Just listen! Apologize to Rex first! You can't just stand there and watch him die!"
I let a mocking smile spread across my face.
"In your dreams."
"He's been pulling this suicide stunt for over a decade. If he actually wanted to die, he'd be dead already."
"He's just using your sympathy to put on a show and push me around."
A slap cracked across my face. My mother glared at me like I was her worst enemy and screamed:
"How did I raise such a vicious son?! If anything happens to my boy because of you, I will never let this go!"
In the end, Rex didn't jump.
Because Gretchen broke down sobbing, screaming that it was all her fault, that if anyone should die it should be her.
She ran downstairs with her swollen belly and threw herself into traffic.
I ran after her on instinct.
The moment the car was about to hit her, the part of me that still loved her made me reach out and shove her out of the way.
I was rushed into emergency surgery. They replaced nearly every drop of blood in my body before they managed to keep me alive.
But I was left permanently disabled, and I would never be a father.
Outside my room, Gretchen knelt on the floor, begging, her voice cracked and trembling as she asked what she could possibly do to earn my forgiveness.
I used every ounce of strength I had left to say one sentence.
"Gretchen, I will never forgive you. Not unless you're dead."
I lay in the ICU for three days.
On the third day, I was transferred to a regular ward. The first thing I did was have a lawyer draft a divorce agreement and a family severance document.
But before I could send either one out,
the news arrived first: Gretchen and Rex were dead. A lovers' suicide pact.
My parents burst into my room like they'd lost their minds and dragged me off the hospital bed,
calling me a murderer, a curse on the family.
My in-laws collapsed against the doorframe, fingers shaking as they pointed at me and screamed:
"You drove your brother and Gretchen to their deaths!"
"Why couldn't it have been you who died, you jinx?! You killed them! You'll rot for this!"
The scene drew a crowd of bystanders in the hospital. Someone filmed it and posted it online.
"Apparently this guy accused his own wife of cheating with his brother. She was heavily pregnant and he tried to force her into an abortion and a divorce. Then he got hit by a car. His wife was on her knees outside his room begging him not to leave her, and he told her to go die."
"His brother had depression and couldn't take the stress. So the brother and the wife drove off a cliff together. Said it was to atone..."
Fragments of the truth, twisted just enough to set the entire internet on fire.
Everyone called me delusional, psychotic, said I'd killed my own child, driven my wife and brother to their deaths.
My parents signed the family severance papers with bloodshot eyes, then looked at me and said coldly:
