THE GREEN SAUCE: PART 2 – News

The wood of the bathroom door groaned under the impact of Daniel’s palm.

Inside the suffocating, dimly lit space, the air felt thick, smelling faintly of lavender soap and the metallic, sour tang of the poison coursing through my veins. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass. My stomach twisted in a violent spasm, but I clamped my hand over my mouth, swallowing down the bile. I couldn’t make a sound. Not now.

“Rachel!” Daniel’s voice came again, dropping an octave, losing every shred of the charming, upper-middle-class husband persona he had maintained for eight years. “I know you’re holding the door. Don’t make this harder than it already is. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”

Beside me, Noah let out a tiny, pathetic whimper. His small, seven-year-old body was burning up, a fever spiking rapidly from whatever toxin Daniel had laced into our dinner. His eyes, usually so bright and full of mischief, were glassy and unfocused, rolling toward the back of his head.

Stay with me, baby, please stay with me, I screamed in my mind, pulling him closer until his damp forehead rested against my collarbone.

On the floor beside my knee, the cell phone emitted a faint, almost imperceptible hiss. The 911 operator was still there, a disembodied lifeline to a world that felt miles away. I brought the receiver to my ear with a trembling, numb hand.

“Ma’am?” the operator’s voice was a microscopic thread of sound. “Officers are two minutes away. Sirens are off to avoid alerting the suspects. Hold on. Just hold on.”

Two minutes. It might as well have been two lifetimes.

“Daniel, please,” the woman’s voice whispered from the hallway. I could hear her pacing, the sharp click-clack of her stilettos stuttering on the hardwood. “The car is packed. We have the passports. If they… if they took the chicken, they’re already dead or dying. We don’t need to do this. We need to go before the neighbors notice anything!”

“Shut up, Vanessa!” Daniel hissed, his tone sharp enough to cut. “If she’s in there, she has her phone. If she called anyone, we’re ruined before we even reach the state line. I need to make sure. I need to see them.”

The utter coldness in his voice shattered the last remaining fragment of my heart. This was the man who had kissed me goodbye before work every morning. The man who had coached Noah’s little league team. He wasn’t trying to hide his crime out of panic; he wanted to confirm his success. To him, we were just loose ends on a balance sheet that needed to be zeroed out.

Thud.

He threw his shoulder against the door. The old brass lock jingled, the wood splintering slightly around the frame.

Noah jolted, a sudden, violent convulsion racking his small frame. He gagged. I knew the signs—the poison was rejecting his stomach, but if he vomited loudly, Daniel would know exactly where we were positioned behind the door. Terrified, I forced my own hand over his mouth, weeping silently as my son choked back the fluid, his tears scalding hot against my palms.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I mouthed into his hair, my heart shattering into a million pieces.

Thud!

Another heavy strike. The top hinge of the bathroom door gave way with a sickening crack. A sliver of light from the hallway cut through the darkness of the bathroom, illuminating the haze of dust motes dancing in the air. Through the crack, I could see a sliver of Daniel’s face. His eyes were wide, manic, completely devoid of the man I loved. He looked like a predator staring into a trap.

“I see you, Rachel,” he whispered, his voice dangerously close to the splintered gap. “I see the shadow of your feet. Open the door, honey. Let me help you. It’ll be quicker that way.”

“Daniel, look!” Vanessa suddenly shrieked from the living room. “On the counter! Her purse—her keys are still here, but her phone isn’t!”

“Damn it!” Daniel roared.

He didn’t throw his shoulder against the door this time. Instead, he kicked it. The heavy, solid wood shuddered, and the bottom latch tore completely out of the drywall. The door swung inward by a few inches, blocked only by my body weight and the heavy wicker laundry hamper I had dragged in front of it.

The gap was now wide enough for him to see us clearly.

Daniel’s eyes locked onto mine. A sickening, cruel smile spread across his lips. “There you are. Look at you. Look at what you’ve done to our son, Rachel. If you had just signed the divorce papers and let me have the trust fund, we wouldn’t be here.”

“You… you monster,” I choked out, my voice raspy, my throat burning as if filled with acid. It was the first time I had spoken, and it took every ounce of my remaining strength.

“Call me what you want,” Daniel said smoothly, reaching his arm through the cracked door, his fingers straining to reach the inner handle to push the obstruction away. “But in an hour, the police will find a tragic murder-suicide. A depressed mother, unable to cope with an impending divorce, poisons her own son and takes her own life. And me? The grieving husband, comforted by his loyal assistant, miles away on a business trip.”

“The police… already know,” I wheezed, lifting the phone just high enough for him to see the glowing screen.

Daniel’s smile vanished. His face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage.

“You bitch!” he screamed.

He threw his entire weight against the door. The wicker hamper crushed into splinters. The force slammed the door into my shoulder, sending a bolt of agonizing pain down my spine. I was thrown backward onto the cold tile, losing my grip on Noah.

The phone flew from my hand, skittering across the floor and sliding directly under the clawfoot bathtub.

“Ma’am! Ma’am! We hear him! Units are turning onto your street now!” the operator’s voice echoed faintly from beneath the tub, but it sounded like it was underwater. My vision was tunneling. Black spots flared at the edges of my sight. The poison was shutting my body down. My muscles felt like lead; I couldn’t lift my arms.

Daniel stepped into the bathroom.