Chapter 3
I stayed in the hospital for three days.
Monitoring for the twins.
Tests for the drugs in my system.
Interviews with detectives.
Linda had been arrested and charged with assault.
But now, with the toxicology report confirming the methotrexate, the charges were upgraded to attempted murder.
The police searched her house.
They found a prescription bottle in her name.
Methotrexate.
Refilled regularly for the past eight months.
They found emails to her doctor, lying about symptoms to get the prescription.
They found text messages to her sister, talking about how "that woman" was ruining her son's life and she needed to "take care of it."
The evidence was overwhelming.
But Ethan still struggled.
He'd spent his whole life making excuses for his mother.
"She had a hard childhood," he'd say.
"She doesn't mean it."
"She just loves me too much."
Now he was faced with the truth.
His mother wasn't just overbearing.
She was dangerous.
She was a monster.
One night, he came to my hospital room looking exhausted.
He'd been to see his mother in jail.
"What did she say?" I asked.
He sat down heavily.
"She says you're lying," he said. "She says you planted the drugs. She says you attacked yourself to make her look bad."
He let out a bitter laugh.
"She actually tried to convince me you kicked yourself in the stomach."
I said nothing.
I'd heard it all before.
Linda was a master manipulator.
She'd spent Ethan's whole life twisting reality to suit her narrative.
"And?" I asked.
Ethan looked at me.
His eyes were red.
Tired.
But clear.
"And I told her I didn't believe her," he said. "I told her I saw what she did. I told her I knew about the drugs. I told her she was dead to me."
He started crying then.
Quiet, broken sobs.
"I lost my mother today," he whispered.
I reached for his hand.
"I'm sorry," I said.
And I was.
Because even though she was a monster, she was still his mother.
And losing a parent—even a terrible one—hurt.
"But I gained my wife back," he said, looking at me. "And I'm going to be a father. To twins. And I'm not going to let her ruin that."
I leaned my head against his shoulder.
"We're going to be okay," I said.
But I didn't know if I believed it.
Because Linda wasn't going down without a fight.
And her family was closing ranks around her.
Ethan's aunt called him, screaming that he was a traitor.
His cousins sent angry texts.
His grandmother refused to speak to him.
They all believed Linda.
Or they wanted to believe her.
Because the alternative was too terrible to face.
The woman they'd loved and trusted for decades was a violent, manipulative criminal.
I was discharged from the hospital on a Thursday.
Ethan had changed the locks on our house while I was gone.
He'd packed up all of Linda's things that she'd left there over the years.
He'd installed a security system.
He'd done everything he could to make me feel safe.
But as I walked through the front door, I couldn't shake the feeling that Linda was still there.
Watching.
May you like
Waiting.
Planning her next move.
