"He told me you were sick," she said. "Nora, I swear to you. He showed me things. He said you'd done things. He said you were going to hurt Eli."
"You crushed pills into my tea, night after night, Lorraine."
"Because he said it was the only way to keep you calm! He said if we didn't get you help, you'd lose the house, you'd lose Eli—"
"You took photographs of me while I slept."
Her eyes closed.
"You wrote things in a binder that never happened. You told the whole church I'd left a kettle burning."
"I thought if I wrote it down," Lorraine whispered, "it would be true."
And there it was. The thing I'd been trying to understand for three weeks.
She hadn't been a monster. She'd been a frightened woman who'd cosigned her way into a corner and let her son convince her that the only way out was to make me the villain. And once she'd stepped into the lie, every night made it easier to keep going, until she could no longer see the edges of it.
That doesn't make it right.
But I finally understood it.
"Eli told me about the special sugar," I said.
Lorraine let out a sound I will remember until I die.
"He's six years old. You told him it was a secret. He was frightened for days, and he didn't know why."
"Oh, God," Lorraine whispered. She curled forward over the folder. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
Derek stood frozen, one hand gripping the back of his chair. His face was the color of putty.
"Nora," he said. "Please. Let me explain."
"You've had six weeks."
I took out my phone. I typed a single word to a number in my contacts.
Cake.
Two seconds later, the doorbell rang.
Detective Angela Ruiz walked in with a uniformed deputy at her shoulder.