Chapter 4

Claire's POV

In an instant, the whole room erupted.

"Barb’s having an attack! Somebody get her heart pills! Call Derek!"

I got to the pills first—and someone jabbed a finger in my face.

"Oh, don’t you dare act like you care! If you hadn’t gotten her all worked up on purpose, this never would’ve happened!"

"You haven't worked in God knows how long, and has Barb ever said a word? She runs herself ragged keeping this place together, helps raise your kid, and you just rip into her in front of everyone? Do you have zero shame?"

My face went white.

I wanted to explain that I hadn’t been trying to upset her.

Nobody listened.

Everyone crowded around Barbara.

Ethan heard the commotion and came running out of his room.

Without a word, he hurled his game controller at me. It caught me hard in the ribs. Then he charged, hitting and kicking.

"You made Grandma sick! You’re a bad mommy! I hate you, I hate you!"

He was six years old, but every punch landed like it weighed a ton. I could hardly stay on my feet. I couldn’t catch my breath.

And the women praised him.

"Oh, look at Ethan! Such a big boy, sticking up for his grandma!"

"Kids are like mirrors, you know. They can always tell who’s good and who’s bad. If he’s hitting his own mother, that tells you everything about what kind of mother she is."

"Barb, honey, your grandson’s defending you! Take your pills, try to calm down."

Someone was giving her the pills.

Someone was calling Derek.

Nobody noticed that my lips had started to turn blue.

When Derek finally came through the front door, I hurried toward him. "Derek, I—"

He didn’t even look at me.

"Mom, Ethan, get in the car. I’m taking you to Mercy General. I’ll have my team meet us."

The next second—bang—the car door slammed in my face.

The SUV peeled out of the driveway, leaving me standing in a cloud of exhaust.

All around me, people were murmuring. Saying how vicious I was. How I’d torn into my own mother-in-law until she had a heart attack.

There was an Uber dropping someone off two houses down. I flagged it before it could pull away.

"Can you follow that SUV? They’re taking my mother-in-law to the hospital."

The driver nodded. "Hop in."

I was clutching my chest. It hurt so much I could barely breathe.

I’d researched Barbara’s condition obsessively for years, so I knew exactly what this kind of pain was supposed to mean. Still clutching her pill bottle, I twisted off the cap, tipped one onto my tongue—and froze.

It dissolved into a chalky, familiar sweetness. It tasted exactly like the cheap checkout-aisle candy Ethan was always begging for.

My husband was the one who prescribed these for her. He brought this bottle home. The illness, the scares, the medication—it was all a sick prop. They had been playing me this whole time.

"Ma’am?" The driver’s voice drifted back, puzzled. "Didn’t you say they were going to the hospital? Why are they pulling into Fiorella’s?"

I looked out the window.

Barbara—my "dying" mother-in-law—hopped down out of the SUV without a trace of anything wrong with her.

Derek swung Ethan up onto his hip. The three of them headed for the entrance like they’d done it a hundred times.

We were parked close enough that I could hear Barbara through the open window, gloating.

"There. Now the whole neighborhood will eat her alive. That’s what she gets for mouthing off to me. Give a woman an inch and she’ll take a mile."

Derek nodded like she’d said something wise. "Mom, you’re something else. Eight years, and you’ve got her completely boxed in."

Ethan tipped his head back, sweet and innocent. "Grandma, can we play the sick game again sometime? I want to come to Fiorella’s more. We never get to come when Mommy’s around. I hate Mommy."

Tears welled up and spilled over.

My first year of marriage, Derek had sat me down. "Claire, my mom’s heart isn’t good. I’m her doctor—trust me on this. If you two ever butt heads, just let her have it, okay? She raised me all by herself. It wasn’t easy."

So for eight years, I never once fought with her.

With Ethan, I tried so hard to keep his candy to a reasonable amount.

Barbara would grab a whole fistful and press it into his hands. "Go on, sweet boy, eat as much as you want. Anybody tries to stop you, they’ll have me to deal with."

When Ethan threw a fit about going to school, I took his game controller and told him he’d get it back once he was in the car.

Barbara snatched it out of my hand and cracked it across my wrist.

"You lay one finger on my grandbaby and so help me God, I’ll kill you."

Eight years.

I had put up with it for eight full years.

And now I’d found out the heart condition was fake. The attacks were fake. All of it was fake.

They’d been coming to Fiorella’s all along.

They just never brought me.

It felt like something had sliced me open. The pain came in waves.

I was gasping. My heart hurt so badly my whole body was shaking.

And then something inside me went snap, like a guitar string pulled too tight.

And the pain stopped.

Across the parking lot, Derek and Barbara were walking Ethan inside.

The driver in the front seat started thrashing and screaming in pure panic.

"Help me! Is anyone out there? Somebody help, she’s dying in here!"