Chapter 3 - “SLEEP NIGHTS”
Mason’s interview lasted less than an hour.
What came out of it changed everything.
He called them sleep nights.
Sometimes Brian and Marissa wanted to attend parties, business dinners, casino weekends, or overnight trips without arranging childcare.
They would give the children “night medicine.”
Usually liquid.
Sometimes crushed into juice.
Then Brian would lock Mason’s bedroom from the outside because Mason had once woken up and tried calling me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked later.
Mason looked embarrassed.
“Dad said you’d get sick if you worried too much.”
That sounded exactly like Brian.
Concern turned into control.
A lie wearing the face of kindness.
Lily had been easier for them to manage because she trusted adults longer.
Mason had stopped trusting.
Two months earlier, he began pretending to swallow the medicine and then spitting it into tissues he hid behind his dresser.
That was when he started noticing things.
Different prescription bottles.
Different names.
Sometimes bags Marissa brought home from work.
Marissa worked as a home-health nurse.
Margaret Hollis—the woman whose name appeared on Lily’s bottle—had been one of her former patients.
“She died,” Mason said.
Detective Alvarez looked up sharply.
“How do you know?”
“Mom said it.”
“When?”
“Maybe before Thanksgiving.”
Yet medication prescribed to Margaret Hollis had been sitting on Brian’s kitchen counter in January.
That was no longer merely irresponsible parenting.
The hospital contacted the proper authorities regarding suspected medication diversion.
Marissa’s employer was notified through formal channels.
Meanwhile, police obtained location information on Brian’s SUV through an emergency request.
At 7:40 a.m., Detective Alvarez walked into the hospital waiting room.
“They’re not in Florida.”
I stood.
“Where?”
“Atlantic City.”
For a second I thought I had misheard.
“They left an eight-year-old drugged on the floor and locked their ten-year-old in a closet so they could go gambling?”
Alvarez’s expression remained carefully neutral.
“We don’t know yet why they’re there.”
Then she handed me a photocopy of something officers found beneath Mason’s mattress.
A page from a spiral notebook.
Dates.
Times.
Initials.
Medication-bottle names.
And beside several entries, Mason had drawn black squares.
“What are these?” I asked.
May you like
He answered from behind me.
“The nights Mom took the black bag.”
