Fire

When James and I got married, he didn’t want any lights on past ten o’clock and wanted to unplug every electronic device beginning at 9:00.  He never told me why he wanted to use no lights at night or why he wanted the entire house to be dark and silent from dusk until dawn.  I was told that under no circumstance should I ever be lighting candles inside or out and the fireplace that I had fought for was never going to be lit.   

His quirks about the lighting, electronics and no fire situation led me to ask a few questions about his past, but he always seemed to be easily able to avoid my questions or change the subject entirely.  It took some adjustments to get used to the no lights after ten, but since I was usually heading to bed around then, I didn’t honestly mind that much.  It was only a problem when our oldest child was born and I still had no light in the middle of the night.  When he still would not answer my questions about the “WHY” I finally started to poke around in his past.  I was sure something had happened for him to be so paranoid.  That’s when I found the article about his family.  They had been killed in a fire started by an old TV that had shorted out.  Even though he had been spending the night at a friends house, he was still blamed for the fire.