Someone had been feeding it to me.
I did not scream. I did not cry. I went completely still in the way that happens when information arrives that is so far outside anything your brain has prepared a category for that the whole system simply stops processing. The man who handed me tea and said good night. The man who kissed my forehead before work sometimes. That man had been dissolving my nervous system by spoonfuls, one evening at a time, for five months.
Detective Fam let the silence sit for an appropriate length of time and then began asking questions in a methodical, undramatic way that I found, under the circumstances, deeply reassuring. When did the tea taste change? Who made it? How often? What did Leo do for work?
When I said auto parts distributor, she wrote something and underlined it twice.
She asked about our finances, about Freya’s involvement in daily life, about whether Leo had taken out any insurance policies recently. I said I did not know. Her expression told me she already suspected the answer.
