PART 2
“Daddy,” Josie said, “is that the water you put in Mom’s medicine? I have it on my iPad.”
The pool deck went silent.
Even the swimmers in the next lane stopped.
Spencer laughed. It came out wrong.
“Josie, sweetheart, you’re confused. Go get your towel.”
But Josie was already running to her swim bag. She came back with her iPad in its glittery case and held it out to Luis with both hands.
“I was practicing a sleepover video for TikTok,” she said, her voice shaking. “On Tuesday. In the kitchen. I didn’t know what he was doing. I just thought it was weird.”
Luis pressed play.
The video was dark and grainy. Josie’s whisper narrated: “Okay, it’s 2 a.m., this is a midnight snack mission.”
Then the camera swung toward the kitchen.
Spencer at the counter. The IV bag. The syringe. My vials.
He pulled the needle out of one and held it up to the light. Exactly the way Luis had just done.
Then Brielle walked into the frame in one of my robes.
“How many more?” she whispered.
“A few more weeks,” Spencer said. “Her numbers are already up. Nobody questions a diabetic who doesn’t take care of herself.”
Josie’s little voice on the video: “Uh oh. Abort mission.”
The screen went black.
Joan stood up in the bleachers, her hand over her mouth.
Brielle was already walking toward the exit.
“Officer,” Luis said to the policeman who had come in with the call, “I need you to secure that woman, that man, and this vial. Now.”
Spencer took one step back.
“This is insane. It’s saline. It’s harmless. I was going to—”
“Diluting a diabetic’s insulin with saline isn’t harmless,” Luis said. “It’s how you put someone in a coma.”
They loaded me onto the stretcher.
Josie climbed in the ambulance beside me, still in her wet swimsuit, holding my hand the whole way.
I spent four days in the ICU with diabetic ketoacidosis.
My doctor said that if I’d waited one more day, I wouldn’t have woken up.
The lab tested the vial. Ninety percent saline.
Then the police tested every other vial in our refrigerator.
All of them.
The detective on the case, a quiet woman named Sergeant Hollis, came to my hospital room on the third day.
“We found the motive,” she said. “Your father’s trust.”
My father had left me a family trust when he passed. Spencer couldn’t touch it while I was alive. Our prenup made sure of that.
But if I died while we were still married, it went to my spouse.
“He set up an account in Brielle’s name two months ago,” Sergeant Hollis said. “They’d already picked out a house in Sarasota.”
Spencer was charged with attempted murder.
Brielle was charged as an accessory. She took a plea deal in the first week and told the police everything. Including the part where Spencer had joked about “speeding things up” before Christmas.
The state board revoked his pharmacy license.
Joan came to the hospital on my last day.
She stood at the foot of my bed holding a bag of sugar-free candies, like a peace offering.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I swear to God, Dana, I didn’t know.”
“You called me lazy,” I said. “You laughed when I was shaking on that floor.”
She cried. I let her.
Then I asked her to leave.
When I finally came home, Josie had taped a handwritten sign to my bathroom mirror.
NEW RULE: ONLY MOM TOUCHES MOM’S MEDICINE.
Underneath, in smaller letters:
P.S. I won 3rd place in the 100 free. You missed it. That’s okay. You can come to the next one.
I went to the next one.
I sat in the front row with a brand-new insulin pen in my purse, filled by a pharmacist I’d never met.
Josie won second place.
She looked straight at me from the water and waved with both arms.
Some people think kids don’t notice anything.
Mine noticed everything.
THE END.
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Sometimes the smallest person in the room is the one who saves your life. 💛
Should Joan get another chance to be part of Josie’s life? Tell us in the replies.