Gloria's Fear
Chapter 06 - Gloria's Fear
Detective Wren Ostrander, assigned to the case once the hospital's mandatory reporting requirements triggered a formal police referral, interviewed Gloria the following day, her attorney present given the seriousness of the emerging charges.
"I want to understand your reasoning," Ostrander said, once the formal questioning began. "Why you believed drugging your daughter-in-law was necessary."
Gloria sat rigid, hands folded tightly in her lap, considerably smaller and more fragile than the commanding woman who had once forced pills between her daughter-in-law's lips without a flicker of hesitation.
"I need you to understand something first," Gloria said, voice unsteady. "About my older son, David. Derek's brother."
"Derek doesn't have a brother," the attorney said, surprised.
"He did," Gloria said, tears rising immediately. "David died eleven years ago. Before that, though, his marriage collapsed, badly, and his wife took my grandson, Tyler, across the country. I fought for visitation for three years. I lost every single time. I never saw that boy again after he turned six years old."
Ostrander made careful notes, though her expression remained skeptical. "How does that connect to what you did to Megan."
"I couldn't lose Jake the same way," Gloria said, tears falling freely now. "I watched Megan growing tired, overwhelmed, distant from Derek during his travel weeks. I convinced myself, somewhere along the way, that their marriage was heading toward the same collapse David's had. I told myself if I could just make her seem unstable enough, unfit enough, a judge would eventually place Jake primarily with me instead of losing him entirely to a divorce and a mother I'd convinced myself couldn't actually handle raising him alone."
"You were trying to make her seem incompetent," Ostrander said slowly, "to secure custody of her son for yourself."
"I know how it sounds," Gloria said. "I've had considerable time to sit with how it sounds, since yesterday. I told myself, every single morning I put those pills in her tea, that I was protecting Jake from ever experiencing what Tyler experienced. I understand now that I was actually protecting nothing except my own fear of losing another grandchild."
Ostrander sat with the confession, the specific, tragic shape of grief curdled into calculated, sustained harm, a woman so devastated by one loss that she'd convinced herself extreme, criminal action was justified to prevent a second one.
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"Did you ever consider what this was actually doing to Megan," Ostrander asked. "Her health, her sense of her own mind."
"I told myself the dose was small enough to just make her tired," Gloria admitted. "I understand now I was lying to myself about that too, the same way I lied to myself about everything else these past several months."
