Chapter 9 - The Bottle in the Bathroom
My first pregnancy had ended at ten weeks.
The doctors called it an early miscarriage. Common. Unexplained.
I had spent months blaming my body.
Now Richard was staring at Daniel as if he had been saving this knife for years.
"What did you find?" I asked.
Daniel's voice cracked. "Nothing proven."
"What did you find?"
He rubbed his forehead. "Your prenatal bottle looked different. The seal had been broken."
I could not breathe.
"When?"
"Two days before you started bleeding."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I sent the capsules to a private lab."
Patricia dropped a glass.
It shattered near her feet.
Everyone looked at her.
Daniel stared at his mother.
"You said you threw the bottle away."
Her lips parted.
I felt the room tilt.
"She had it?" I asked.
Daniel's eyes never left Patricia. "Mom was at our apartment when it happened. She packed the bathroom while I took Claire to the hospital."
Patricia shook her head. "This is disgusting."
"Did you throw away my vitamins?"
"Yes."
Richard began laughing softly.
Evelyn turned on him. "What's funny?"
"Nothing," he said. "Just watching everyone finally meet each other."
I moved toward Patricia.
"Did you touch my pills?"
She backed away.
"Claire, grief is making you irrational."
I slapped her.
The sound shocked even me.
She raised one hand to her cheek.
Then Daniel's phone rang.
Detective Alvarez.
He answered on speaker.
"We opened the files from the flash drive," Alvarez said. "There's a payment from a Bennett family account to a private pharmacy two weeks before Claire's miscarriage."
Nobody moved.
"What was purchased?" Daniel asked.
"We don't know yet. But the authorization came from someone using Patricia Bennett's credentials."
Patricia grabbed her purse.
Two officers entered through the dining room doors.
She looked at Richard.
Not Daniel.
Not me.
May you like
Richard.
And she screamed, "You said they would never find it!"
