CHAPTER 32
THE CYCLE STARTS ANEW

EVERETT WAS SICK as a dog.

It started with a fever, which Sloane had misconstrued as his bedroom just being too hot. He began sweating profusely. Then his skin got paler. Sabrina would visit his room with medicine, but he would vomit it all out an hour later. No one could figure out what was wrong with him. Frank suggested calling his doctor, one of the best physicians in the city. But Sabrina said it was useless: "I have a tone of herbal remedies. I'll cure him. Remember when I helped you through that nasty stomach bug?"

For the first time, Frank looked wary of his wife.

Sloane was sitting in the living room for once, her laptop sitting atop a pillow on her lap. She leaned back against the plush cushions of the loveseat. The penthouse was eerily silent, besides Everett's sniffles echoing down the hall. She usually liked to write in the comfort of her room, but since the living room was completely empty today, she decided she needed a change of scenery. It helped more than she realized. The words were flowing out of her like a waterfall, recounting the last few days of news. If she kept this up, she was sure her article would at least be nominated for a Seldon.

The thought of winning suddenly had Sloane wondering what the future held. Her fingers slowly stopped tapping against the keys. Her relationship with Peter had surely thrown a wrench in the mix. She had come to Queens wanting to be out as fast as possible, and now ... she questioned if she ever wanted to leave. It wasn't just the sex anymore; her feelings for Peter were rooted deep within her. What was she gonna do when the article was finished and she had to go back to Vermont? She couldn't just leave now. But Vermont was her home. She missed her cat, her team, even Bobby.

Sloane began to bite the end of her fingernail out of habit, but her eyes quickly reverted away from the bright laptop screen when her mother emerged from the master bedroom. She walked from the other end of the hall to Everett's room, a vintage metal tray with glass vials in her hands. Some of the glasses were labeled, some weren't. But Sabrina seemed to know exactly which ones worked. She sent Sloane a surprisingly warm smile as she crossed the hall.

Her mother had always kept this tray of medicine by her bedside table. Sloane remembered first seeing it as a child, and when she had reached out to grab one of the bottles, Sabrina smacked her hand away. She said she could only have it once she was older.

"But what is it for, Mommy?" A young Sloane had asked.

"It's used to care for others," Sabrina said. "You see, Mommy's a caretaker, honey. I love to care for others."

Sloane had gone through a period before and after her father's death where she was sick constantly, where she always saw that tray of medicine in her room. The first time Sabrina had brought it to her, she was fourteen, and she had joked, "Am I finally old enough?"

In fact, she was just around Everett's age the last time she was really sick around her mother ...

━━━━━━

Sloane held the mopping bucket to her mouth and vomited what little she ate of her breakfast. She usually had her mother bring the bucket to her bedside when she was too sick to run to the toilet. Her stomach grumbled. Her headache was pounding against her temples. She was hungry and nauseous at the same time.

It was January 10th – her birthday. She was 17 today.

And she wasn't sick from alcohol. This was a very, very different kind of sick. These days, she was either ill for some unknown reason that even doctors couldn't figure out, or she was suffering from a hangover. She was hardly getting by in school, but she was still set to graduate – hopefully. Sloane was going to do whatever it took to get out of New York.

Her throat was too hoarse to ask her mother to clean the vomit bucket. She slumped back against the pillows on her bed, feeling how hot her forehead was. Her mouth wobbled, wishing for this to be over. Why couldn't anyone figure out these random flare-ups? It was just yesterday she had visited another doctor with her mother who broke the news that he didn't know what the root cause was. At one point, he had taken Sabrina into the hall and began asking her questions. The conversation must've not gone over well, from what Sloane could see through the crack in the door, because Sabrina started screaming that the doctor "didn't know anything," and "how dare he accuse her of such a thing!"

Sloane looked at her calendar hung up beside her bed. It was Sunday, and she had scheduled a tutoring session with Peter Parker. She groaned loudly, knowing she had to cancel. There was no way she was getting out of bed today. This was the third week she was sick and had to ditch him.

Grabbing the old iPhone 4 from her bedside table, she opened her text thread with Peter.

SLOANE BERNSTEIN: heyyyyy I'm gonna have to cancel our tutoring again. I'm sorry :( just another day with my mystery illness.

PETER PARKER: Sorry to hear that :( Hopefully I'll see you at school tomorrow.

Sloane breathed a sigh of relief. Peter was easy like that, never made her worried about canceling. He knew how sick she'd been recently.

He texted again a minute later.

PETER PARKER: Is everything okay? Like at home?

Sloane chewed on her bottom lip. Ever since the first day he met her mother, he had this weird suspicion that something was up. She told him he was being too paranoid, that Sabrina was just a hover. "I don't know, Sloane," he had replied. "I just ... I think she might be making you sick sometimes."

She had told him that Sabrina was uptight, but she'd never do that.

SLOANE BERNSTEIN: everything's fine. swear.

PETER PARKER: Okay. Btw happy birthday!

She had sent him a heart emoji back as Sabrina came waltzing in with her tray of remedies. Sloane felt even more nauseous at the sight of it. With a smile, her mother picked up a vial of blackberry-colored liquid and poured some into a spoon. "Time for your medicine, honey," she said, approaching her daughter with the spoon. "Open wide ..."

The medicine had knocked her out in ten minutes. Sloane had woken up briefly when she realized she had sweated through her shirt. She pulled on a new one and then looked out her window. Through sleepy eyes, she could've sworn she saw a familiar red and blue spandex suit fly in front of her window, someone she saw far too many times on the news. But Sloane chocked up the sight to her own imagination.

When she woke up again for another dose of medicine, she found a birthday balloon tied to the bird feeder stuck on her window.

━━━━━━

Sloane jumped out of the memory when her phone vibrated next to her. It was just Bobby. He sent a picture of Jerry sleeping on the couch near his small antique fireplace. Rubbing her eyes, she thought of the tray again, of the blackberry-colored medicine. She remembered the throw-up bucket and the headaches and the few times that blood had been in her vomit. The soft grip of her mother's hand as she held her hair back. What have you done to our daughter? Her father had screamed once.

She looked up, staring at her laptop screen absentmindedly. The brightness was burning into her retinas.

Had her mother actually done something to her?

In the autopsy report, the doctor detected a handful of medicinal poisons in some of the victims' systems.

All four victims were related to her stepbrother. Girls that Sabrina wasn't fond of.

Sloane tried to remember all the medicines her mother kept on that tray. But she never labeled any of them; she just knew what each was. What in the hell did she keep on that tray?

And then there was the murder weapon.

A dirty gardener's mallet was discovered in the dumpster outside Mary Ann Harper's family home.

Sloane's eyes went wide. "Oh, my fucking god," she muttered under her breath.

"What was that, honey?"

She glanced up, seeing her mother staring at her with that goddamn tray in her hands. Sabrina had just come out of Everett's room and had been heading in the direction of her own.

Sloane swallowed hard. "Nothing."

Sabrina looked at her for a second longer, and then continued on her way, that tray of medicine never slipping from her grip. Sloane's own hands began to shake. She had to stand from her seat and shut her laptop, starting to pace around the coffee table. Everything was adding up now. How had she not put together the facts before? She had assumed originally that her stepbrother might be involved; that she was living in the same place with someone dangerous. Maybe she was right all along; maybe she had just got the person wrong.

Was her own mother the Jawbreaker?

It all added up. The medicinal poisons – possibly. The missing mallet from her gardening toolbox. The victims. Had she started with the girls she didn't like – Everett's friends, his girlfriend, her husband's other children – and now, she was changing the game? But if she was the Jawbreaker, how did her mother have the strength to knock all those teeth out? She did go to the gym four days a week ... And how could she have sent Sloane that RSVP with no guilt?

This started for a reason. But why? Did it all begin because she loved Everett a little too much? Sloane knew what her mother's love felt like: it was suffocating, all-encompassing. When she had gotten too old, Sabrina had to find someone else to care for, and along came her new husband's son.

The only way Sabrina knew how to care was through healing. You see, Mommy's a caretaker, honey. I love to care for others. Sloane dealt with it when she was sick in her teens, and now Everett was facing the same wrath. But ... was Sloane really sick to begin with? What if the medicine her mother had been feeding her caused all of it? It could've been poison, for all she knew. It would explain her horrible memory loss, how scenes only came back in bits and pieces.

If Sabrina was doing the same thing to Everett now after isolating him from his peers ... he was going to end up exactly like Sloane.

She wasn't going to let that happen.

Sloane walked over to the hallway and peered down it. The light was on in the master bedroom and she could hear her mother's favorite show tunes playing from the tiny vintage radio near her vanity. For a moment, she wondered how she was going to get her attention. She was focused on Everett right now, after all. But then Sloane remembered how well she used to lie. Being an alcoholic, you kind of had to perfect the art of lying. She could do this; she had to.

Without a second thought, Sloane released a fake wheeze and collapsed to the floor.

Sabrina was exiting her room in seconds upon hearing the sound. When she looked at the floor and saw her daughter lying there, she gasped and ran over. Cradling Sloane's head in her lap, she whispered, "Honey? Sloane? Are you alright, sweetie?"

Sloane was giving the acting performance of her life. She fluttered her eyes open dramatically and licked at the corners of her lips. "Mom?" She said softly.

"I'm right here, honey," Sabrina cooed.

"I ... I think I might've blacked out," Sloaned lied, rubbing at her forehead. "I started to feel queasy, so I stood up to get my water bottle from my room, and then everything went black."

"Oh, Sloane –"

Sloane's expression twisted. "I don't feel well, Mom. My stomach hurts and my head is all hot and pounding. I think I have what Everett has." Lifting her eyes to her mother's, she said in the most heartfelt voice she could muster, "Can you take care of me, Mom?"

"Of course, honey. Let's get you back in bed." Sabrina ran over and grabbed Sloane's laptop. With that in one arm, she lifted her daughter up in the other, practically dragging her back to the guest room.

Sabrina tucked her in, paying special attention to cramming the comforter around her, and then set her laptop on the desk. Sloane curled herself into a ball and clutched one of the throw pillows against her head. She wasn't stupid enough to think her mother would leave her alone to rest after that. Only a minute later, Sabrina walked in with her tray and set it on top of the drawer. Sloane took a good look at all the glasses on it: vials of every shape and size, liquids of every color, and some remedies were placed in metal containers instead of glass. She gulped.

"This will help," she said while pouring dark blue medicine into a spoon. "Open up."

Sloane dug her nails into her palms as she opened her mouth. Sabrina placed the spoon in her mouth and she swallowed every last drop. It tasted vile, like battery acid. "Good job," her mother praised, lifting her tray off the drawer. "Now, rest up. I'll make sure to wake up when it's time for more medicine."

Sloane sent her a wary smile until she shut the door. Her body was shaking again, nervous about what was about to happen now that this poison was back inside her. Eventually, the medicine made her fall asleep.

It was only an hour later that she woke up vomiting in her own hand, and the cycle started anew.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: HERE WE GO PPL!!!!!! this is where we get to the really exciting parts of the story 🥳🥳