My mother-in-law’s eyes shifted toward the notebook.
“In some cases.”
There it was again.
Controlled.
Treatment.
Cases.
Words that made what had happened to my baby sound clinical enough to hide the horror underneath.
I remembered her telling me, weeks before my son’s birth, that newborns were more resilient than people realized.
I remembered laughing nervously and telling her she was scaring me.
She had smiled.
“You young mothers worry about everything.”
I had dismissed it.
Now every harmless conversation felt different.
The officer asked whether anyone had consented to the procedures described in the notebook.
My mother-in-law didn’t respond.
My husband did.
“I don’t think they knew what she was actually doing.”
The officer wrote something down.
“Did you know that?”
“I suspected.”
I turned toward him.
“You suspected?”
He looked at me with tears beginning to gather in his eyes.
“I wanted to believe she was helping.”
