She was right.
We pulled into a pharmacy parking lot.
Rachel got into my passenger seat.
For five minutes, I could not speak.
I just cried.
Not gracefully.
Not movie tears.
My nose ran.
My chest hurt.
I could barely breathe.
Rachel waited.
Finally, I said:
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
“I don’t.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
I swallowed.
“There was a recorder inside the cake.”
“Greg recognized it.”
“He tried to take it.”
“Barbara acted like she knew something.”
“Greg shoved me.”
“Then grabbed me.”
Rachel nodded.
“What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“What has been weird recently?”
I stared through the windshield.
Everything.
Nothing.
That was the problem.
When dysfunction develops slowly, each step can look too small to name.
Greg checking my phone location because he worried when I drove with Leo.
Greg wanting access to our joint credit card alerts because we were budgeting.
Greg asking why I spent forty-two dollars at Target.
Greg becoming irritated if I visited Rachel without telling him first.
Greg complaining that my friends “filled my head with nonsense.”
Barbara repeatedly suggesting I was overwhelmed and perhaps not “emotionally equipped” for full-time motherhood.
The odd questions.
“Do you ever feel like you might snap?”
“Does Leo’s crying make you angry?”
“Are you sleeping enough?”
“Have you thought about going back on medication?”
Medication.
That made me sit upright.
After Leo’s birth, I had experienced postpartum anxiety.
Not depression.
Not psychosis.
Anxiety.
For several months, I had trouble sleeping even when Leo slept.
I checked his breathing repeatedly.
I worried about driving.
I imagined accidents constantly.
My doctor prescribed a low-dose medication and recommended therapy.
It helped.
By Leo’s first birthday, I was doing well.
Greg had been supportive then.
Or at least I believed he had.
Recently, however, he and Barbara had begun bringing it up during arguments.
“You know how you get.”
“Remember after Leo was born.”
“Maybe your anxiety is coming back.”
At first, I believed they were concerned.
Sitting in the pharmacy parking lot with the recorder inside my diaper bag, the questions sounded different.
“Rachel.”
“What?”
“Greg has been asking me if I’m taking my anxiety medication again.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“I haven’t needed it in almost a year.”
“Why is he asking?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked at the diaper bag.
“Maybe we should find out what’s on that thing.”
I reached toward it.
Rachel stopped my hand.
“No.”
“Don’t start pressing buttons.”
“What if you erase something?”
That was the first sensible thing either of us had said in fifteen minutes.
We called the non-emergency police number.
I explained that I had discovered an electronic recording device hidden inside food prepared for my son’s birthday and that my husband had become aggressive when I found it.
The dispatcher did not tell me what the device meant legally.
She did something more useful.
She told me that if I felt unsafe, I should remain somewhere safe and speak to an officer in person.
We met an officer at Rachel’s house.
Officer Elena Morris arrived around noon.
She was in her early forties and had the calm, slightly tired manner of someone who had learned that frightened people rarely tell stories in perfect order.
She photographed the marks on my arm and shoulder.
Photographed the recorder without handling it unnecessarily.
Photographed the plastic wrapping.
Then asked me to start from the beginning.
I did.
When I reached the part about Greg recognizing the device, she interrupted.
“What exactly changed in his behavior?”
“He stopped yelling.”
“Immediately?”
“Yes.”
“He looked scared.”
“Did he identify the object?”
“No.”
“Did he deny placing it?”