her life.
His glass tipped beside him, spilling apple juice across the floor.
Lucy tried to stand, but her legs folded under her.
Steven rose slowly.
Not like a frightened father.
Like a man checking whether a plan had worked.
Lucy hit the floor hard, her shoulder taking most of the impact.
Pain flashed through her body, but even that felt distant, as if it belonged to someone else.
Darkness gathered at the edges of her vision.
Then instinct took over.
She stopped fighting her body.
She let herself become limp.
Her eyes stayed half closed.
Her breathing became shallow.
Inside, every part of her screamed.
Outside, she became still.
Steven came closer.
His shoes stopped inches from her face.
He nudged her arm with his foot.
Then he nudged Tommy.
Lucy wanted to open her eyes.
She wanted to crawl to her child.
She wanted to shout that if Steven had any piece of a soul left, he would call an ambulance immediately.
Instead, she listened.
‘Good,’ Steven whispered.
One word.
Soft and satisfied.
Then he walked away and made a phone call.
Lucy could not see him, but she could hear the change in his breathing.
He had been holding himself together all evening.
Now, with his wife and son lying motionless on the floor, he sounded relieved.
‘It is done,’ he said quietly.
‘They both ate.
Soon they will both be gone.’
The woman on the other end spoke too softly for Lucy to catch every word, but her tone came through clearly.
Excitement.
Impatience.
A sick kind of victory.
‘You are sure?’ the woman asked.
‘I used the amount you told me,’ Steven said.
‘It will look accidental.
Food poisoning, maybe.
She has been tired for weeks.
The boy eats whatever she gives him.
By the time I call, there will be nothing anyone can do.’
Lucy’s thoughts scattered.
The boy.
Not Tommy.
Not his son.
The boy.
That was when Lucy understood that Steven had not only stopped loving her.
He had found a way to stop seeing their child as human.
The woman asked something else.
Steven answered with chilling calm.
‘No loose ends.
That is what you said.’
Lucy had never hated anyone the way she hated him in that moment.
Not with anger.
With clarity.
He had served their son poison in a dinosaur glass.
He had stroked his hair while waiting for the drug to take effect.
He had sat at the same table and pretended to be a father while planning to become a widower.
Lucy heard him move into the bedroom.
A drawer opened.
A zipper rasped.
Keys jingled.
Something hard clicked against something metal.
When he returned, he dragged a duffel bag down the hall.
He stopped over them one more time.
‘You should have made this easier,’ he whispered.
Then he left.
The front door opened, and cold air rolled through the house.
The door closed.
Silence followed.
Lucy did not move immediately.
Fear told her he might still be watching through a window.
Fear told her he might be standing outside the door, testing her.
Fear told her that one mistake could kill them both.
So she counted.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
At fifty, she moved her mouth without lifting her head.
‘Tommy.
Do not move
