Chapter 2 - The Children on the Rug
“Call 911!” I shouted.
Thomas didn’t move.
I put two fingers against Evan’s neck. Pulse. Fast, but there. Charles too. Breathing, thank God. Barely, but breathing. My own hands were shaking so badly I could hardly feel them.
Then Laura rushed in from the hallway, hair half-brushed, her face already wet with tears. One look at the boys and she dropped beside Charles so hard her knees hit the rug with a crack.
“Oh my God—oh my God—Charles, honey, wake up.”
Thomas lunged forward then, not toward the children but toward the candy box. Instinct took over. I snatched it first and pulled it against my chest.
“What are you doing?” I said.
His hand froze in midair.
Laura looked up sharply. “Thomas?”
He swallowed, backing off. “I—I need to see what they ate.”
I had already hit the emergency call button on my phone. “You knew something was wrong before you got here,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine anymore. “That’s why you called me.”
“Mom, not now.”
“No,” I said. “Right now.”
But the sirens were already coming, and the next ten minutes blurred into flashing lights, uniforms, oxygen masks, and Laura crying so hard she could barely stand. I rode in the ambulance with Evan while Laura went with Charles. Thomas followed in his truck.
At Riverside Methodist, the boys were taken back immediately. A pediatric doctor told us they were alive, unconscious, and being treated for suspected ingestion. Suspected. As if the wrappers still stuck to Charles’s sleeve didn’t make it obvious.
We waited in a bright, awful hallway that smelled like sanitizer and fear.
That was where my son tried to bury me.
“This never would’ve happened if she hadn’t handed them candy without asking,” Thomas said to the ER nurse, loud enough for everyone near the desk to hear. “My mother forgets things. She gets confused.”
I turned and stared at him.
Laura’s head snapped up too. “Thomas—”
“No,” he said, stepping into the performance. “She’s been off for a while. She means well, but she doesn’t think.”
The humiliation hit hotter than anger. He wasn’t just blaming me. He was building a story.
“Don’t you dare,” I said quietly.
He looked at me with that tight, hard face I hadn’t recognized for years. “Maybe if you acted your age instead of playing hero, my kids wouldn’t be in there.”
My chest tightened. “You called me in a panic before you even saw them.”
Detective Elena Ruiz, a compact woman with kind eyes and a notepad in her hand, had just walked up in time to hear that.
Her gaze shifted to Thomas. “Is that true, sir?”
Thomas hesitated. Just once. But I saw it.
“I was checking on the gift,” he said. “She sounded strange.”
Detective Ruiz wrote something down.
An hour later the boys were stabilized. Sedated, the doctor said. Their systems had been hit with enough medication to put them in real danger, especially Evan. They’d likely recover, but they’d need monitoring.
Laura folded in on herself when she heard that. I reached for her, and she let me hold her.
Thomas stood a few feet away, silent now.
Detective Ruiz asked for the chocolate box. I handed it over. One contaminated piece remained in its wrapper. She sealed it in an evidence bag.
Then she asked the question that changed the air in the room.
“Mr. Mercer, where exactly did those chocolates come from?”
Thomas answered too quickly. “A chocolatier downtown.”
Laura turned to him slowly. “No, they didn’t.”
He stiffened. “What?”
“You told me yesterday you ordered them online.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. “I meant—through their site.”
Laura stared at him, and for the first time I saw something shift in her face.
May you like
Not confusion.
Recognition.
