Chapter 1 - The Boy on the Grass
Sarah Bennett saw her son’s sneakers before she saw his face.
One blue shoe stuck out from behind the picnic table at Liberty Oak Park in Rockville, Maryland. Lily knelt beside him, sobbing so hard she could barely speak.
“Mom said it was just a prank,” the ten-year-old gasped. “But he won’t wake up.”
Sarah dropped beside nine-year-old Caleb.
His skin felt clammy. His breathing was shallow enough that she lowered her ear toward his chest just to convince herself he was still breathing.
“What did you give my son?”
Twenty feet away, Amber leaned against an oak tree with her phone in one hand.
Sarah’s sister-in-law did not look frightened.
She looked irritated.
“Just a drink to calm him down,” Amber said. “Maybe if you raised him better, he wouldn’t be such a brat.”
Sarah surged to her feet.
She shoved Amber back against the tree before Lily grabbed Sarah’s cardigan.
“Please! Caleb!”
Sarah dropped immediately beside her son again.
Sirens were already approaching. A jogger had called 911 before Sarah arrived.
Paramedics rushed across the grass. One began checking Caleb while another asked Sarah what he might have swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Amber folded her arms.
“He had juice. That’s it.”
A police officer named Grant Holloway approached Amber.
“Ma’am, empty your pockets.”
Amber laughed.
“This is ridiculous.”
When she turned away, something cylindrical showed beneath her jacket.
Officer Holloway removed a prescription bottle.
Amber lunged for it.
“That bottle wasn’t in my bag, and you know it!”
Sarah looked up as Caleb was lifted onto the stretcher.
Lily pointed toward the bottle with shaking fingers.
“I saw Mom put something in his cup.”
Holloway turned the label toward himself.
His expression changed.
“Then why is the prescription under a different name?”
Amber stopped fighting.
Sarah caught only two words on the label before the officer placed it inside an evidence bag.
Walter Bennett.
May you like
Her father-in-law.
The man Amber had spent the past year insisting was losing his mind.
