Chapter 6
I wait three days before I bring it to Drew.
On the third night, I dream about Lakeview.
Not a memory — I don't have memories of it.
A construction. White walls, a window with a view of too-green grass, a bed with rails, the sound of a door locking.
In the dream, I know where I am. I know I shouldn't be here.
But I can't speak. My mouth won't form the words.
And through the window, I can see Colette in the parking lot, leaning against her car, checking her phone, waiting.
Not all of it. Just enough. I need his version before I show him mine — because once he sees the chart, once he reads what Colette wrote, he'll rewrite his own memory to match the horror. That's what people do. I need what he remembers NOW, before the truth contaminates it.
It's Saturday. He's making eggs. The kitchen smells like butter and coffee and I'm sitting at the table with my hands around a mug, watching him the way I haven't watched him in years — like a study. Like a patient.
"Drew."
"Mm?" He doesn't turn from the stove.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to be honest with me."
He turns now. Spatula in hand, a streak of egg on his wrist. His face does that thing — the quick scan, the worry. Looking for signs. Looking for symptoms.
"Of course," he says. "What's going on?"
"Last March. When I went to my mom's."
He goes still. Not the brief hesitation from Wednesday — a full stop. The spatula hangs in the air. I can see him deciding something.
"What about it?" he says.
"I didn't go to my mom's."
The eggs start to burn. He doesn't move. I can hear the butter crackling, the edges going brown.
"Drew. The stove."
He turns it off. Sets the spatula down. Leans against the counter with both hands gripping the edge, facing me. His knuckles are white.
"How did you find out?"
"It doesn't matter how. I need to hear it from you."
His jaw works. He looks at the floor, the ceiling, the window. Then he looks at me and his eyes are already wet and I feel nothing.
"She said you were going to hurt yourself.
" His voice cracks on the last word. "Colette.
She came to me — it was a Wednesday, I think.
Maybe a Thursday. She came here, to the house, after you left for work.
She sat where you're sitting and she told me—" He wipes his face with the back of his hand.
"She said you'd told her things. That you were having thoughts.
That she was scared for you. That as your friend she'd been trying to handle it but it was past what she could manage. "
"What things? What did she say I told her?"
"That you wanted to die." He says it like the words are broken glass in his mouth. "That you told her at brunch — that brunch we had in February, do you remember? — that you said you couldn't keep going. That you looked at your pill access every shift and thought about it."
I don't move. I don't blink. I keep my face still because if I react right now — if I show him what those words do to me — he'll try to comfort me, and I can't be comforted right now. I need information.
"Go on."
"She said — she said I needed to act. That as a professional, she was telling me you were in immediate danger.
That she could help. That she knew a place that was quiet and private and they'd take care of you.
" He's crying openly now. Tears running into the stubble on his jaw.
"She said if I didn't do something you might not — that you might—"
"That I might die."
"Yes."
"And you believed her."
"She's your BEST FRIEND, Wren." It comes out loud — louder than Drew gets.
His voice breaks upward. "She's a nurse.
She knows you. She sat in my kitchen and CRIED.
She cried and told me she was terrified of losing you and she couldn't live with herself if she didn't say something.
What was I supposed to do? NOT believe her? Would you have done different?"
The question hits something in my chest. Because the answer is complicated.
Because Colette is good. She's VERY good.
She cried real tears — or tears that looked real.
She said the right words in the right order.
She spoke the language of clinical concern and she gave him actionable steps and she made doing nothing feel like murder.
I would have believed her too.
I almost say it. I don't.
"What happened on March 14?"
He looks at his hands. "She came and picked you up. She said she'd drive you — that you were too agitated to drive yourself. She said she'd stay with you through intake, make sure you were okay."
"And you let her take me."
"I watched you get in her car." His voice is thin.
Stripped. "You were — I don't know. Groggy.
You'd been asleep and she woke you up and you didn't seem confused, exactly, but you weren't — you were just kind of...
compliant. She said that was normal. That sometimes people are relieved when help finally comes. "
Groggy. Compliant. Not confused but not present.
"What was I wearing?"
"What?"
"When I got in her car. What was I wearing?"
He blinks. Wipes his face. Thinks. "Your — your pajamas. The gray ones. And slippers. She said she'd bring you clothes."
Pajamas and slippers. She drove me to a psychiatric facility in my pajamas. Like a patient. Like someone who couldn't dress herself. Like evidence.
"And the three days," I say. "While I was gone. What did you do?"
"I — went to work. Came home. Waited." He's gripping the edge of the counter so hard his forearms are shaking. "She texted me updates. Every evening. Said you were responding to treatment. Said you were safe."
"Show me."
"What?"
"The texts. From March. Show me her updates."
He pulls his phone from his back pocket. Scrolls. His thumb is unsteady on the screen. He finds it. Turns the phone toward me.
March 15, Colette to Drew: She's settled. Sleeping well. The team is taking good care of her. Try to rest tonight. You did the right thing. ??
March 16, Colette to Drew: Better today. More alert. Accepted medication. She's going to be okay, Drew. I promise.
March 17, Colette to Drew: She's ready to come home! I'll bring her back this evening. She might be foggy for a day or two — that's normal. Just love her. You saved her life.
"You saved her life," I say aloud.
Drew flinches.
"That's what she told you. That you saved my life."
"I thought I did." His voice is nothing. A whisper in a kitchen full of burned eggs and broken things. "Wren, I thought I saved you."
"Drew. Did you give me anything that day? Before she came? Did she ask you to give me anything?"
His face changes. Something flickers behind his eyes — not guilt, exactly. Something worse. Realization.
"She gave me something to put in your tea." His voice is barely a whisper now. "A few days before. She said it was herbal. For anxiety. She said it would help you sleep better. She said—"
"It wasn't herbal."
"I didn't know." He's looking at me the way patients look at me when they finally understand what's happening to them. Wide. Unmoored. "Wren. I didn't know. I thought it was—I thought I was helping. She said—"
"I know what she said."
We sit in the ruined morning — burned eggs, cold coffee, a marriage cracking along a fault line that's fourteen months old. Drew is crying. His hands are shaking. He looks like a man whose foundation just liquefied beneath him.
I should feel something. Rage, maybe. Or pity. Or love strong enough to override what he did.
What I feel is clinical. Detached. Like I'm reading his chart. Patient presents with acute distress upon realization of complicity in harm. Affect labile. Insight emerging.
"She drugged me," I say. "Through you. And then she came to get me. And then she took me to a facility where she has active staff privileges and she admitted me on a 72-hour involuntary hold for a psychiatric crisis that never happened."
Drew makes a sound. Not a word. A sound like something collapsing from the inside.
"And then she sent me home to you and told you I was better. And you never questioned it. You never called me during those three days—"
"She told me not to. She said contact during the stabilization period would be counterproductive. That you needed—"
"I know what she said you needed to think." I hear my own voice — flat, precise, quiet. The voice I use in a code. "What I need you to understand is that none of it was real. I wasn't suicidal. I wasn't having a breakdown. I was tired. That's all I was."
He stares at me. "Why? Why would she—"
"I don't know yet." The lie comes easily.
I do know. I'm almost certain. But I need Drew confused and unsteady, not focused.
I need him to sit with the horror without a tidy explanation — because if I give him the board election motive now, he'll want to help.
He'll want to fix it. He'll call Colette or a lawyer or the hospital.
And I'm not ready for anyone to call anyone.
Not yet.
"I need you to not contact Colette," I say. "Can you do that?"
"I'll kill her." It comes out raw. Real. "Wren, I'll—"
"You won't. You'll do nothing. You'll answer her texts normally. You'll act like nothing has changed."
"How can you ask me to—"
"Because I'm handling it. And if she knows that we know, she'll destroy whatever documentation exists." I lean forward. "Drew. Look at me."
He looks.
"You signed the papers. You gave consent for the hold.
You administered medication without knowing what it was.
None of that makes you a monster — it makes you a man who was manipulated by someone with credentials and access.
But if you contact her now, if you tip her off, everything gets harder. For me. Specifically for me."
He nods. Slowly. Like a man underwater.
"Okay," he whispers. "Okay. I won't — I'll be normal. I'll try."
"Good."
I get up from the table. I take my cold coffee to the sink and pour it out. I don't look at Drew because if I look at him right now — at his wet face, his shaking hands, his destroyed innocence — I'll either comfort him or scream, and neither one moves me forward.
"I'm going to go for a drive," I say.
"Do you want me to—"
"No."
I take my keys from the hook by the door. I walk out of the kitchen, through the hallway, out the front door. The air is clear and cold and I stand on the porch for a moment with my eyes closed.
He drugged my tea because she told him to. He put something in my cup — the cup I drink from every morning, the cup he bought me for our fourth anniversary, the blue one with the chip on the handle — and he thought he was saving me.
Love as a delivery system. Trust as a weapon.
I get in my car. I don't drive anywhere. I just sit in the driveway with the engine running and I press my fingers to my wrist and I count.
Sixty-six. Low. Too low for what just happened.
I'm not in crisis. I'm past it. I'm on the other side of something — the part where the ground stops shaking and you see clearly for the first time.
I put the car in reverse and I drive.