Chapter 2 - THE BOTTLE IN HER PURSE
Police recovered the bottle from Mom’s handbag.
No label.
No prescription.
No measuring instructions.
Just dark liquid inside an old glass container.
Detective Elena Morales asked me:
“Did your mother ever tell you what was in it?”
“She said herbs.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she say she gave any to Noah?”
“No.”
Then I remembered.
That morning, Mom had asked:
“Has his fever broken?”
“No.”
“Did you try the old family medicine?”
I told her absolutely not.
Noah was six weeks old.
His pediatrician had already warned us not to give him anything except approved feeding and medication.
Mom muttered:
“Doctors make everything complicated.”
I thought it was just another argument.
I had grown up hearing those sentences.
“Doctors don’t know everything.”
“People survived before hospitals.”
“Your grandmother cured us with what she had.”
It had always sounded annoying.
Not dangerous.
Now the words felt different.
Detective Morales asked:
“Has your mother ever ignored medical instructions before?”
I started to say no.
Then stopped.
When I was eleven, I developed pneumonia.
Mom waited two days before taking me to urgent care because she insisted steam and herbal compresses would “pull the sickness out.”
When I was seventeen, I had an allergic reaction and she made me sit in a cold bath before Dad drove me to the ER.
Dad.
The thought of him hurt.
He died six years ago.
He had always been the one who eventually stepped in when Mom’s remedies went too far.
I never understood that until now.
Mark returned from Noah’s room.
He had heard enough.
“You knew she did this kind of thing?”
“Not like this.”
“Sarah.”
“I swear.”
He looked at me.
Not accusing.
Terrified.
That was worse.
“I thought it was old-fashioned nonsense.”
He sat beside me.
Then Detective Morales said:
“We found something else in your mother’s car.”
My pulse jumped.
“What?”
A plastic storage box.
Inside:
Homemade powders.
Dried herbs.
Glass droppers.
A notebook.
And printed pages from websites about “healing fever naturally.”
Some instructions were highlighted.
One line read:
HEAT FORCES COLD SICKNESS OUT OF THE BODY.
I felt sick.
Then Morales opened the notebook.
Mom’s handwriting.
Dates.
Temperatures.
Remedies.
At first I thought they were notes about Noah.
They weren’t.
The earliest entries were almost thirty years old.
Before I was born.
Names appeared.
Lily.
Evan.
Then:
Baby Michael.
I stared.
“Who is Michael?”
Detective Morales looked at me carefully.
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
I shook my head.
I had never heard that name.
Then she turned the page.
One entry was circled several times.
MICHAEL - 7 WEEKS - FEVER - KEEP WARMER NEXT TIME.
My throat closed.
Seven weeks.
Almost exactly Noah’s age.
Below it, in different ink, my father had written one sentence:
Diane, we are never doing this again.
I looked at Morales.
“What happened to Michael?”
She hesitated.
“Your mother hasn’t answered that question.”
Then an officer arrived with information from an old county archive.
A birth certificate.
Michael David Bennett.
Parents:
Diane Bennett.
Thomas Bennett.
My parents.
Date of birth:
Thirty-one years ago.
There was also a death certificate.
Michael had lived fifty-three days.
May you like
My parents had another baby before me.
And no one had ever told me he existed.
