Chapter 1
I came home early and found my mother-in-law holding my screaming five-year-old daughter down, forcing pills into her mouth. I didn’t ask what they were—I slapped her before she could make my little girl swallow another one.
“Get away from her!” I screamed.
My daughter, Lily, was curled against the kitchen cabinet, coughing so hard her whole body shook.
Three small white tablets rolled across the floor.
My mother-in-law, Margaret, slowly touched her cheek and stared at me like I was the one who had lost my mind.
“How dare you hit me?”
“How dare YOU put pills in my child’s mouth?”
Lily crawled toward me and wrapped both arms around my leg.
“Mommy, I said no,” she sobbed. “Grandma wouldn’t stop.”
My hands started shaking.
I had trusted Margaret to watch Lily after preschool because my husband, Daniel, kept insisting his mother was “better than any babysitter.”
Margaret bent down and began picking up the pills.
I kicked them away.
“What are those?”
“Vitamins.”
“Then show me the bottle.”
Her face changed.
Just for a second.
But I saw it.
“I threw it away.”
“You threw away a full bottle of vitamins?”
She looked toward the hallway instead of answering.
That was when Lily whispered something that made my stomach drop.
“Grandma gives them to me every day when Daddy isn’t home.”
I stared at Margaret.
“What did she just say?”
Margaret’s voice suddenly became calm.
Too calm.
“Emily, Lily makes things up when she’s tired.”
“I don’t!”
Lily started crying harder.
“She says they make me sleep so I won’t tell you about the basement.”
Everything inside me went cold.
We had lived in that house for three years.
There was no basement.
At least, that was what Daniel had always told me.
Margaret grabbed my wrist.
“You need to stop asking questions.”
I pulled away and reached for my phone.
“I’m calling 911.”
Before I could unlock it, the front door opened.
Daniel walked in.
He wasn’t supposed to be home for another four hours.
He looked at the pills on the floor, then at his mother, then at Lily hiding behind me.
May you like
And instead of asking what happened, my husband quietly locked the front door.
“Emily,” he said, “give me your phone.”
