Chapter 3

At four that afternoon, my sister, Maeve, arrived with the lab report.

I had not told Ronan that my sight had returned, but a month earlier, I had told Maeve I suspected something was wrong with my medication.

One day, a pill Blair gave me tasted bitter, even though my usual prescription had no taste at all. When she turned away, I hid one and asked Maeve to have it tested.

The report confirmed that it was not any medication my ophthalmologist had prescribed.

It could disrupt hormonal cycles, reduce the chance of conception with prolonged use, and endanger an existing early pregnancy.

I stared at the final line and instinctively covered my lower abdomen with one hand.

Maeve went pale.

"We're going to the hospital right now. Then we're calling the police."

"The hospital first," I said. "Before we call the police, I need proof that she switched the pills."

Maeve looked at me, her eyes filled with anger and pain.

"Ivy, you don't have to prove every last thing until he has no way left to deny it. You saw them with your own eyes."

"This isn't for Ronan."

I slipped the report into my bag.

"It's for my baby."

We had just reached the medicine cabinet when the front door opened.

Ronan came in alone, irritation written across his face.

"Blair forgot her mother's insurance documents. What are you two doing?"

I poured two pills of different colors onto the table.

"Blair has been switching my medication."

His first instinct was not to look at the pills. It was to look at Maeve.

"Did you put this idea in her head?"

"The lab report is right here." Maeve slapped it onto the table. "Read it yourself."

Ronan scanned the first page. For a moment, his brow tightened.

I thought he might finally ask if I felt sick.

Instead, he said, "There was no chain of custody when this was tested. It doesn't prove the pill came from our house."

"You won't even read the entire report?"

"I am willing to find out what happened." His voice softened, the way it did when he was calming an irrational patient. "But Blair has taken care of you for a full year. She tracks every meal and every blood pressure reading. She knows what you take better than I do. She has no reason to hurt you."

"What if I told you she does?"

"Are we going back to the message she sent by mistake?"

I looked him directly in the eyes.

"Ronan, she is taunting me. She wears my necklace and my clothes. She deletes security footage. Now she's giving me medication my doctor never prescribed. How much more plainly do you need me to say it?"

His face hardened.

"What really bothers you is that I went to the hospital with her. The pills are just your latest excuse to punish her."

His words were a dull blade cutting through the last thread of my hesitation.

It was not that he did not understand what I was telling him.

He simply did not want to understand.

His phone rang. Blair was crying on the other end. She said someone was causing trouble outside her mother's hospital room and she was terrified.

Ronan grabbed the insurance documents.

Maeve blocked the doorway.

"Someone switched your wife's medication. She feels ill, and you're still leaving?"

"Blair is alone at the hospital."

"Ivy is your wife."

"She's in her own home with you. She's safe."

Ronan stepped around Maeve and came to me.

He reached for my face. I turned away.

His hand stopped in the empty space between us.

"We'll talk when I get back. Stop digging through the medicine cabinet, and don't go out by yourself."

The lock clicked behind him.

Maeve swore under her breath.

I did not cry.

I took out my phone, scheduled an emergency appointment with my obstetrician, and then called a divorce lawyer.

"I want to file for divorce."

I paused and looked at the raised-number calendar with only one page left.

"By tomorrow, I want to be gone from this house without a trace."