Minutes later, paramedics filled the house. A police officer asked who had been there, what they had eaten, and whether anything looked unusual.
At the hospital, Michael arrived soaked from the rain, still in his work shirt. He wrapped his arm around me and held me upright while we waited.
At 9:37 p.m., the doctor finally came out.
“They’re alive,” he said.
Then his expression changed.
“But we found a harmful substance in their system.”
The hallway seemed to tilt beneath me.
It was not a fall.
Not a gas leak.
Not a stroke.
Someone had done this to them.
Police opened an investigation. My sister Kara cried over the phone, saying again and again that it made no sense.
And it didn’t.
My mother remembered everyone’s birthday. My father cried during sad dog movies. They were gentle, ordinary people. Who would want to hurt them?
One week later, Michael came home pale and trembling.
He had gone back to my parents’ house to meet an officer and pick up a few things: the mail, my mother’s charger, my father’s spare glasses.
Instead, he found something everyone had forgotten.
