“Dorothy… it’s the children.”
My entire body went cold.
“What happened?”
Laura could barely speak through her tears.
“They ate the chocolates. The doctors think they’ve been poisoned.”
Suddenly, Thomas’s strange phone call made horrifying sense. The unexpected gift, his urgent questions, his panic when he discovered I hadn’t eaten anything, and his desperate need to know whether the children had touched the chocolates all pointed toward the same possibility.
I stared at the birthday card still sitting on my kitchen counter.
The chocolates had never been a peace offering from my son.
They had been intended for me.
PART 2 — [THE TRUTH INSIDE THE CHOCOLATES]
The next three days became a nightmare of hospital corridors, medical tests, and hours spent waiting for updates about Anne and Charles. Fortunately, both children survived, although they had become seriously ill after eating several chocolates, and the doctors quickly realized they weren’t dealing with ordinary food poisoning.
On the third day, Laura found me sitting alone in the waiting room. She looked exhausted and frightened, with none of the coldness that had defined our relationship for years, and when she sat beside me, I could tell from her expression that the doctors had finally identified what made the children sick.
