For three weeks, Anna had been telling herself the tea tasted different because Dererick had bought another brand. It was easier to blame dried flowers than the man who stood at the kitchen counter each night, steeping chamomile with the same patient care he brought to everything else. He warmed the cup first. He never left the bag in too long. Sometimes he added honey without asking because he remembered exactly how much she liked. Those gestures had once made her feel cherished. Lately, watching his back as he prepared the drink made a thin uneasiness gather beneath her ribs.
She could not point to one thing that had changed. That was what made the feeling embarrassing. Dererick still kissed her forehead before bed. He still complained about the loose cabinet hinge and forgot to put his shoes on the rack. He still laughed at the same terrible television commercials. Yet each morning Anna woke with a heaviness that did not resemble ordinary sleep. Her mouth felt dry. Her limbs seemed to belong to somebody else for the first few minutes. Once she discovered a bruise high on her arm and spent breakfast trying to remember where she had struck herself.
Dererick had glanced at the mark and smiled. “You toss around more than you think.”
She had accepted that because accepting it preserved the shape of her life.
Then, on a damp Thursday evening, Anna lifted the cup and noticed something beneath the chamomile: not exactly a flavor, more a faint medicinal emptiness at the back of her tongue. Dererick was standing beside the refrigerator, scrolling through his phone. He looked up almost immediately.
“Too hot?”
“No.” Anna swallowed nothing. “Perfect.”
His attention returned to the screen.
She waited until he went into the bathroom.
The instant the door clicked shut, she carried the mug to the sink. Her courage nearly failed there. Pouring away tea should not have felt like betrayal, but her hand shook as she tipped the amber liquid into the basin. Steam curled against the faucet. She rinsed the cup, left a wet ring on the counter as if she had finished drinking normally, and went upstairs.
Her heart was still beating too quickly when Dererick joined her.
“You’re already in bed?”
“Long day.”
He stood beside the mattress for a moment. Anna kept her face turned toward the lamp while pretending to read. There was nothing visibly suspicious in his expression. That almost frightened her more.
Dererick bent and kissed her temple. “Get some sleep.”
Anna switched off the lamp.
He remained beside her for perhaps two seconds longer than usual.
Then he left.
She heard him downstairs. A cupboard opened. Water ran. Floorboards answered his footsteps. Eventually the house settled into its nighttime rhythm, every familiar sound becoming strangely important now that Anna had decided not to surrender consciousness to whatever had been in that cup.
She lay on her side with her eyes closed.
Ten minutes passed.
Then thirty.
At midnight she began to feel ridiculous.
At one she almost sat up.
By two, embarrassment had given way to exhaustion, and exhaustion was beginning to persuade her that she had invented everything.
Then the digital clock changed to 2:17.
The bedroom door moved.
Anna's entire body went rigid beneath the duvet.
Dererick entered without turning on the light.
He did not move like a husband worried about waking his wife. He moved like someone who had practiced not waking her.
Through the narrow gap between her lashes, Anna saw him cross the room. His silhouette was unmistakable, but something about his hands looked wrong. A weak stripe of streetlight slipped between the curtains and caught his fingers.
Latex.
He was wearing pale disposable gloves.
A black zippered bag hung from one hand.
Anna felt the first true surge of terror then—not suspicion, not marital unease, but the primitive certainty that something dangerous was standing beside her bed.
Dererick crouched.
The zipper made almost no sound.
He removed a compact camera.
Anna watched him attach a clamp to the bedframe. He adjusted the lens toward the mattress, checked the angle, moved it a fraction, checked again. Nothing in his movements suggested improvisation. There was no fumbling. No hesitation.
He had done this before.
Her lungs wanted deeper breaths. She refused them.
Dererick reached into the bag again.
Small glass vials appeared in a foam holder.
He placed them on the nightstand one by one.
Anna counted three.
The fourth object was a syringe.
For an instant she thought she would scream.
Her muscles actually prepared for it—abdomen tightening, throat opening—but another instinct overruled panic. If Dererick believed she had consumed the tea, then unconsciousness was the only protection she possessed.
So she remained still.
He positioned the syringe beside the vials and leaned toward the camera.
His voice became barely audible.
Anna caught fragments.
Timing.
Response.
Breathing.
Dosage.
The vocabulary was worse than rage would have been. Dererick sounded calm. Professional. He spoke as though he were documenting a procedure whose outcome mattered more than the person lying beside him.
Anna's mind began throwing explanations at the scene because accepting the obvious felt impossible. Perhaps there was some medical reason. Perhaps he was monitoring something. Perhaps the camera had another purpose.
Then Dererick lifted one vial and studied its label.
He checked his watch.
Every excuse died.
Anna remembered mornings she could not fully account for. Headaches. Missing fragments of dreams. The bruise on her arm. Dererick telling her she had slept deeply.
Her stomach contracted.
How many nights?
Dererick set the vial down and touched her pillow.
Anna nearly recoiled.
His gloved fingers smoothed the fabric beside her cheek with grotesque tenderness. He moved a strand of hair away from her face. This was the same hand that had steadied her waist while she climbed a ladder to paint their kitchen. The same hand she had held at her father's funeral. The same hand that now smelled faintly of latex and something sterile.
“Rest easy, Anna,” he whispered.
She had heard similar words from him countless times.
Never like this.
He straightened and examined the camera frame once more.
Anna noticed something else. He was not simply recording her. He had arranged the vials so their labels faced the lens.
Documentation.
A record.
The realization changed the shape of her fear. Whatever Dererick was doing had a system.
Her right foot twitched.
It was tiny—barely a movement beneath the sheet.
Dererick froze.
Anna stopped breathing.
He turned toward her.
Seconds stretched.
She could feel his gaze on her face.
One.
Two.
Three.
Her chest began to ache.
Dererick leaned closer.
Anna forced her jaw loose and let her lips part slightly, imitating the slack expression she had seen on Clare after hospital night shifts.
Dererick remained there.
Then he touched two fingers lightly to Anna's wrist.
Her pulse hammered beneath them.
Surely he could feel it.
Surely he knew.
Instead, after several unbearable seconds, he withdrew his hand.
Anna heard a faint exhale.
He turned back to the equipment.
Only then did she understand something that chilled her almost as much as the syringe: Dererick expected her body to behave in a particular way. He knew what her pulse, breathing, and sleep should look like after the tea.
He was observing results.
That meant there had been previous results to compare.
Dererick rearranged the contents of the bag. He murmured another short note toward the camera, then replaced two vials. The syringe remained on the nightstand.
Anna stared through her lashes at its narrow silhouette.
She could not see whether it was empty.
She could not see whether he intended to use it.
The room had never felt so large. The distance from the bed to the door might have been a mile. Her phone sat charging on Dererick's side of the mattress, unreachable without exposing herself.
She thought of Clare.
Her sister would believe her.
At least Anna hoped she would.
She thought of Mr. Peterson across the street, perpetually stationed on his porch with a book and thermos, noticing everything that happened on their block.
Then Dererick moved again.
He bent over Anna.
His face came within inches of hers.
She smelled toothpaste.
The domestic familiarity of it almost broke her.
He looked at her for so long that Anna became certain the performance had failed.
Then he whispered something too quiet to understand and adjusted the blanket over her shoulder.
A husband tucking in his sleeping wife.
A gloved man arranging a subject.
Both were Dererick.
That was the part Anna could not yet fit inside her mind.
Finally, he gathered the syringe and vials. He left the camera attached for another moment, watching its tiny display, then switched it off and removed the clamp.
Everything disappeared into the black bag.
Dererick checked the nightstand.
Checked the floor.
Checked Anna.
He was erasing the evidence of his own presence.
The bedroom door closed behind him.
Anna did not move.
Not after his footsteps descended the stairs.
Not after a downstairs door opened.
Not even after she heard what might have been the garage.
She waited another forty minutes before allowing herself a full breath.
Her hands had cramped into fists beneath the duvet.
When she finally opened her eyes, the clock read 3:11.
The nightstand was empty.
No camera.
No syringe.
No vials.
Nothing to prove what she had seen.
Anna sat up slowly.
Her legs trembled when they touched the floor.
She walked to the bathroom and locked the door, then stared at herself in the mirror.
The woman looking back appeared ordinary. Tangled hair. Pale face. Old sleep shirt. Nothing about her reflected the fact that her marriage had changed beyond recognition during the previous hour.
She pressed both palms against the sink.
Think.
That was what Clare always said in emergencies.
Don't decide everything. Decide the next thing.
Anna's next thing was survival.
She returned to the bedroom and searched the obvious places without touching much. Under the bed. Behind the dresser. Inside the nightstand.
Nothing.
The black bag had gone with him.
She sat on the edge of the mattress.
Memory began reorganizing the previous months.
The tea.
The mornings.
The bruises.
Dererick's occasional questions about whether she had dreamed.
His fascination with her sleep tracker.
The weekend when she had awakened at nearly noon and he claimed she must have been exhausted.
None of those details proved anything alone.
Together, they became unbearable.
Another possibility surfaced.
The camera.
If he recorded these nights, where did he keep the recordings?
Anna's gaze shifted toward the hallway.
Dererick's study was downstairs.
She had entered it hundreds of times. He never forbade her. Yet he disliked anyone moving things on his desk. Even when cleaning, Anna had learned to leave his papers exactly where they were.
She suddenly understood that preference differently.
At dawn, she went downstairs.
The house looked innocent.
A dish towel hung from the oven handle. Two apples sat in a bowl. Dererick's coffee mug waited beside the machine.
Anna stared at the mug and experienced a sudden wave of grief so sharp she had to grip the counter.
She had loved this life.
Perhaps part of her still did.
That did not make it safe.
She brewed her own tea and stood beside it from kettle to cup.
When the first gray morning light reached the windows, Anna made herself a promise.
She would behave normally.
She would not confront Dererick.
She would not tell him what she had seen.
And before another cup of tea touched her lips, she would discover what was inside that black bag—and whether she was the first person Dererick had ever watched through that camera.
