CHAPTER 2 — THE BABYSITTER’S TRUTH
Mara met me the next morning at a diner off Highway 18.
She looked worse than before—like she hadn’t slept at all.
“You shouldn’t have gone to a lab,” she said immediately.
“How do you know I did?”
She didn’t answer. That told me everything.
Instead, she slid a folded piece of paper across the table.
“I found this in the trash of your garage.”
It was a pharmacy receipt.
Not ours.
Celeste’s.
But the prescription wasn’t for anything normal.
It was for a compound labeled only with a research code.
M-17X.
Mara leaned in.
“Your wife has been feeding your son something. Small doses. Mixed in food. I think the chocolate cup was the final stage.”
My hands went cold.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
Mara hesitated.
Then she said something I wasn’t ready for.
“Because I think she did it before.”
“Before what?”
She swallowed.
“Before your son.”
Silence hit like a physical force.
That was when I realized this wasn’t about Noah anymore.
May you like
It was about a pattern.
And I was living inside it.
