“And she’s not going blind,” the boy continued, his gaze steady and unwavering, “someone is taking her sight away from her.”
A cold sensation spread through Gregory’s body as his mind struggled to process what he was hearing. “What are you talking about?” he asked sharply, unable to hide the tension in his voice.
The boy did not hesitate or look uncertain, and his next words landed even harder. “It’s your wife,” he said quietly.
Silence settled heavily between them, and the sounds of the park seemed to disappear.
Gregory felt his heart pounding violently in his chest as he stared at the boy. “Explain that,” he demanded, his voice lower now but filled with urgency.
“She puts something in the girl’s food every single day,” the boy said calmly, as if he was stating something obvious.
Anger rose quickly inside Gregory, but it could not push away the memories that suddenly surfaced. He remembered the timing of Daisy’s symptoms and how they often worsened after meals, and he thought about how his wife, Amanda Fletcher, always insisted on preparing Daisy’s food herself.
“It’s safer this way,” she would say with a reassuring smile that now felt different in his memory.
Gregory searched the boy’s face for any sign of dishonesty or manipulation, but there was nothing there except quiet certainty. “How would you even know something like that?” Gregory asked, his voice tight.
“I clean windows near your house,” the boy replied simply, “and people like you never look down, but I do, and I saw her more than once.”
Gregory felt a chill as the boy continued speaking.
“She wears a silver pendant around her neck, and she opens it sometimes,” he said, “and there’s white powder inside that she mixes into the soup.”
Gregory’s blood seemed to freeze in his veins.
The pendant.
Amanda never took it off, and she always brushed off questions about it with casual answers that now felt suspicious.
Then suddenly a voice called out behind him.
“Gregory?”
He turned immediately.
Amanda stood a few steps away, perfectly composed as always, her appearance elegant and controlled, but her smile faltered the moment she noticed the boy. Something shifted in her expression in a way Gregory had never seen before.
For a brief second, her face revealed something raw and unmistakable.
Fear.
That single moment was enough for Gregory to understand that something was terribly wrong.