I took out a loan to open a restaurant, and out of nowhere business exploded.

Once I had something steady under me, I got ready to propose to my girlfriend. But before the ring ever reached her finger, a fire tore through my restaurant and burned it down to nothing.

I didn't just lose everything. I owed the bank a million on top of it.

Two blows at once. The grief was so heavy I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes again, every single person around me was gone.

Alone, carrying that grief, I went looking for my fiancée, only to end up outside her private dining room, overhearing her and her friends:

"Holy crap! Sid Dickerson's restaurant was torched by his own mother?"

"Yeah. But it was my idea."

"Elmer's business failed and Sid was doing great. I was scared it would crush Elmer, so I suggested his mother burn the place down."

"What? Why would his mother listen to you?"

"You all know Sid's the family's adopted son, but what you don't know is that Sid is the son of his mother's first love. She loves the man, so she loves everything about him too, I guess."

"God, Sid's got it rough. Last night you were behind his back messing around with Elmer, and his mother torched his restaurant."

"You two are cold."

"…"

1

Standing outside the door, I felt the blood freeze in my veins, my mind gone blank.

The talk inside blurred into nothing. All I could hear was a roar in my ears.

So the one who set fire to my restaurant was my mother. That was something I would never have dared to imagine, not even at the point of death.

All because Elmer was the son of her first love, she loved everything about that man and took Elmer's side and destroyed my livelihood.

But I was the one who was good to her. When she was sick and in the hospital, I was the one who cared for her the whole time.

My money was her money. If I went broke, she'd have nothing to spend either.

And yet she'd rather have nothing than watch my restaurant keep thriving. Was she afraid of bruising Elmer's pride?

My hands clenched into fists, and a mouthful of blood surged up and clogged my throat.

Before I could even cough it out, I heard the next bombshell.

"I feel a little guilty now. Wasn't this too cruel to Sid?"

Her friend shot her a look. "You mean because you're carrying Elmer's baby?"

The words set the whole room off again.

"What? I thought you two only slept together last night. Pregnant already?"

"God, maybe they've been at it for way longer. You're really something."

"Honestly, I think there's something wrong with you. Why would you do this?"

Ella Harding took out her wallet, opened it, and glanced at the photo of us.

The next second, she pulled another photo out from behind ours.

It was her and Elmer together, both of them the way they'd looked back in college.

"I didn't even like Elmer at first. But one afternoon, just like that, he walked right into my heart."

"He drove off some girls who were harassing me. He saved me a few times."

"Seeing him covered in bruises, it made my heart ache for him, and it ached even more for the life he'd had."

"From then on, whenever I said I was going to see Sid, the truth was I just wanted to see Elmer."

"I never thought he'd become my one regret. But I couldn't just abandon Sid either. So we started a secret relationship, one that could never see the light of day."

The whole room went silent at once. No one said a word.

"His mother knew too, and she didn't stop us. Sometimes she'd even quietly cover for us."

Hearing that, my heart felt like it was being cut apart, as if someone were taking the sharpest knife and slicing it away piece by piece.

I pressed my back hard against the wall. That was the only thing keeping me from collapsing.

I'd always noticed my mother favored Elmer a little more, but thinking of the life he'd had, I gave way at every turn.

Because I honestly thought I was the luckier one. I had a girlfriend as wonderful as Ella, and I had family who cared about me.

I never imagined I'd stand here overhearing her secrets and learn that the happiness I'd been so proud of was all a lie.

If that's how it is, then I don't want any of it anymore.

"Are you trying to drive Sid to his death?"

"Exactly! Burning down his restaurant is the same as cutting off every road he's got left."

Ella wanted to say more, but a wave of nausea cut her off.

And I fled, disgraced, out the door. I got outside and my manager's call came through.

"Boss, the restaurant's burned down. What are we supposed to do now?"

"A few of the staff want their wages so they can go..."

Whatever came next was probably too cruel, so he stopped there, sparing my feelings.

Something hollow spread through my chest, and even my voice came out rough.

"You—you tell them."

I fought to hold down the sob, refusing to let myself cry out loud.

"I'll get every last dollar of their wages into their hands soon. Tell them not to worry."

"All right. And don't dwell on it too much."

"Try to see past it. You've got a long road ahead. You just start over, that's all."

I hung up and walked to the burned-out restaurant.

A tear slipped from my eye and struck the cold floor.

For that runaway success of a place, I'd gone countless sleepless nights reworking the design, studying the menu, refining the service.

Because I wasn't a rich man. That one shop was all I had to build myself up with.

I never imagined my own mother's fire would burn away every last hope I had.

And it was right then that a call came in.

"Sid, I heard you opened a seafood restaurant. Is that true?"

"Then next time I'm in town, I'll come try it..."

Hearing Pamela Winfield's voice, I couldn't hold the sob back.

"Sid, what's wrong? Is someone giving you trouble?"

Pamela was instantly on edge.

"My restaurant. It's gone."

"There was a fire last night. Burned the whole thing to nothing."

That calm, sharp-minded woman fell apart in a second and cried right along with me.

And that was when my mother came over. The moment I saw her, my heart went cold.

I slowly hung up, then fixed her with an icy stare.

Guilt must have been eating at her, because she couldn't meet my eyes. She just spoke in that concerned tone.

"Oh, well. The restaurant's gone now, so try to let it go."

"Listen to your mother. Don't open another restaurant. Just go find a regular job."

I looked coldly at that kind, gentle face of hers. The words sounded like concern, but they were really for Elmer's sake.

She was afraid that if I opened another restaurant, it would stir Elmer's jealousy, so she wanted me stuck working some job.

Did she not know how hard it is for a man without a college degree to find work?

I'd eaten so much hardship, worked myself half to death to save that money, taken on the risk of a loan to open that restaurant.

I never thought she'd go so far, for Elmer, as to set fire to her own son's restaurant.

Leaving me with nowhere to turn, and no way even to call the police.

I wanted so badly to ask her to my face why she'd done that to me. Then I remembered what Ella had said in the private room, and it stopped being a mystery.

So it turned out Elmer was the son of her first love, and she loved the man so much that it stretched to his boy, enough to throw away her own son's future.

No wonder she'd treated the two of us so differently since we were little, no wonder she'd frozen my father out with the same cold cruelty.

My father died carrying that regret with him, because she never came to see him one last time. She went to bring Elmer home instead.

I should have hated her back then.

"Why can't you look at me?"

Now that I knew what she really was, I had no patience left to spare her.

Faced with my sudden coldness, my mother lost her composure at once.

Her eyes darting away, hiding. That was the panic she always fell into.

"Son, why would you ask me that? It wasn't—it wasn't me who set fire to your restaurant."

I said nothing. I just moved in on her, cold and steady, backing her toward the restaurant door.

"That fire—you set it. Don't think I didn't know."

It came out almost as a roar. No one alive could feel what I felt in that moment.

Because the person who'd destroyed me wasn't an enemy. It was my own mother.

I couldn't accept it. I really couldn't.

She froze, then lifted her head and stared at me with disbelief in her eyes, as though she'd never imagined I knew her secret.

My fists clenched hard, and the fury sitting in my chest wouldn't lift.

"Mom, why did you do this to me?"

"Ever since I was a kid I never understood why you played favorites. I'm the one you gave birth to, but your heart always leaned toward him. You made me give in to him every time, never let me refuse a single thing he asked."

"He wanted my room, and you switched us without even asking me. He ruined my homework, and before I could even yell at him you'd jump in and say he had no parents, that he was so pitiful—using my soft heart to get him off the hook."

"I was naive enough to think you just felt sorry for where he came from. I never dreamed he was your first love's son. The son of the man who drove my father to his grave."

"He's useless, he's a failure, so you burned my restaurant down. You wouldn't let me make it, just so he could feel at ease."

It tore out of me in a shout, and with every sentence the tears came down.

Her mouth opened. She wanted to explain something, but not a single word came.

I turned and walked toward the restaurant burned to ash, my heart in shreds.

I thought of opening day, all of them standing in the doorway clapping, smiling, wishing my business good fortune.

And all the while they'd already been cursing it in their hearts, praying it would die, praying it would never take off.

The human heart. The most sinister, treacherous thing in this world.

She came up behind me, looked at my back, and sighed.

"Since you already know, can Mom just apologize to you?"

"If I hadn't burned your restaurant, Elmer Delgado would have gotten so jealous he'd fall into depression."

"So he might get depressed, and that's why you burned my restaurant. But when I lost it, did you ever once think about me? Whether I might be crushed enough to kill myself?"

"You knew I opened that restaurant on a loan!"

If she weren't my mother, there was no way I'd have let her walk away from this.

"Get out. I don't want to see you."

But she didn't move. There wasn't a trace of guilt on her face, only that tangled look of someone with something she wanted to say and hadn't.

Seeing that look, I laughed coldly inside.

"Sid, there's something Mom wants to talk to you about."

I turned back and looked at her without any feeling at all.

She hesitated, then chose to speak anyway.

"Elmer's rented a storefront to buy into a bubble tea chain that's really blowing up right now, but he's a little short on cash—"

"So—"

"So you came to squeeze the last of the blood out of me to help him?"

I cut her off and finished it for her.

No one knew how fiercely the fury inside me was burning.

"You destroyed my restaurant. You bankrupted me. I can't even pay my workers' wages. How much do you have to favor him to still have the nerve to come ask me to help him?"

"I don't want to push this to the point of cutting family ties. Get out."

But right then, a voice reached us, disbelieving and full of guilt.

"Mom, is what my brother said true?"

"Did you really set fire to his restaurant when it was doing the best it ever had?"

The moment my mother saw Elmer, it was as if she were looking at her dead lover. She hurried over at once and stood at his side.

Ella looked at me, then came over to comfort me.

"Sid, try to let it go."

"It's already burned, there's nothing to be done. You just have to accept it. She's your mother, after all. You can't cut ties with her over something like this."

"Why not?"

I turned and looked at her, and for some reason I was so sick of that hypocritical face of hers right now.

Then Elmer dropped to his knees in front of me with a thud.

"Brother, I'm sorry. I really never imagined Mom would do something like this for me!"