Gloria pushed herself upright against the cabinets, hand still pressed to her cheek, staring at her son like she genuinely couldn't process what had just happened to her in her own son's kitchen.
Chapter 02 - Gloria pushed herself upright against the cabinets, hand still pressed to her cheek, staring at her son like she genuinely couldn't process what had just happened to her in her own son's kitchen.
"How dare you!" she said, voice cracking with shock and fury both.
Behind them, Jake had climbed into his mother's lap, still crying, and Megan held him tight, coughing now, her chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with crying.
Derek slammed both hands down on the kitchen island, the sound cracking through the room like a gunshot.
"Get your things," he said, teeth clenched, voice shaking with a rage Megan had never once heard from him in nine years of marriage, "and get out of my house."
Gloria's eyes filled with tears, disbelief written across every feature of her face. "You're kicking me out?"
Nobody answered her.
Something small and orange caught the light near Derek's boot, rolling slowly across the tile until it bumped against his foot.
He looked down. Bent. Picked it up.
He crossed back to his mother, crouched in front of her, and held the pill up between them, close enough that she couldn't look away from it.
His other hand caught her chin, firm, forcing her to meet his eyes.
"Tell me what you did to them," he said, voice low, shaking now with something closer to fear than anger. "Now."
Gloria's fury vanished all at once. Her face went pale, bloodless, her eyes darting past her son toward Megan, who had started coughing harder, one hand braced against the counter.
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Derek followed his mother's gaze, understanding beginning to dawn on his face; the specific dread of a man realizing he had no idea what was actually happening to his wife's body in this exact moment.
Three days on a job site four hundred miles away, and he'd missed this entirely, every warning sign, every exhausted phone call where Megan's voice had sounded thinner than usual, every time his mother had reassured him over the phone that everything at home was handled, that Megan just needed rest. He'd believed every single word of it, grateful, even, for his mother's help, never once imagining help could look like this.
