CHAPTER 2 — The Locked Drawer
The house felt different when we returned.
Not empty.
Occupied.
Like something ugly had been living inside it all along, quietly waiting to be seen.
Jack went straight to the kitchen.
I went upstairs.
Marlene followed neither of us.
She tried to leave instead.
I saw her through the upstairs window, walking briskly toward her car with a handbag clutched too tightly.
Jack stopped her at the front door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home,” she said simply. “Since I’m clearly not welcome in this circus anymore.”
“That’s not how this works,” Jack replied.
For the first time, his voice wasn’t confused.
It was hard.
She tried to push past him.
He didn’t move.
“I want to see the milk,” I said from the stairs.
Both of them turned toward me.
Marlene laughed once.
“You’re seriously doing this? Going through my things?”
“Yes,” I said. “Open the drawer.”
Silence stretched.
Then Jack moved first.
He walked into the kitchen, pulled open the bottom drawer beneath the counter where Marlene always kept “tea supplies.”
It stuck slightly.
Then opened.
Inside were neatly arranged packets.
Not tea.
Not sugar.
Small, identical sachets with no labels.
The kind you don’t mistake for anything ordinary.
Jack picked one up.
“What is this?” he asked.
Marlene didn’t answer.
For the first time since I’d met her, she looked uncertain.
“Those are… herbal sleep aids,” she said carefully.
I stepped closer.
“Why are they hidden?”
“They’re not hidden,” she snapped. “They’re mine.”
Jack turned the packet in his hand.
Then he looked at her.
And something in his face broke—not confusion anymore.
Recognition.
“You’ve been dosing her,” he said quietly.
Marlene exhaled sharply.
“You’re overreacting. I was helping her sleep. That child was anxious, restless—”
“You drugged my daughter,” Jack said.
The sentence didn’t rise.
It dropped.
Heavy enough to end everything in the room.
Marlene’s mask finally cracked.
“I did what was necessary in this house!” she shouted. “You think she would ever behave without structure? Without me?”
I felt something inside me go still.
Not fear.
Decision.
Jack stepped back, as if he no longer recognized the woman in front of him.
“Get out,” he said.
She froze.
“What?”
“Get out of my house.”
For a moment, she looked like she might argue.
Then she picked up her bag.
And left without another word.
May you like
The door closed softly behind her.
Too softly.
