Chapter 23: The Calm Before (Lauren POV)

Chapter 23: The Calm Before (Lauren POV)
The pills taste like chalk.
I swallow them dry on Friday morning, standing at Sarah's kitchen sink while she fusses over Emma's homework sheets spread across the dining table. The antipsychotics make everything feel distant, like I'm watching my life through frosted glass. My hands move, my mouth speaks, but there's a lag between intention and action that wasn't there before.
"Lauren, can you help Sophie find her math book?" Sarah calls from the living room, already in her efficient morning mode. She's in yoga pants and has her hair pulled back, moving through the house with the practiced grace of someone who knows exactly what needs to happen and when.
"Yeah, sure," I say, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. Emptier.
Sophie appears in the kitchen doorway holding a juice box, her fingers already sticky. She's still in her pajamas, purple with dancing cats on them.
"It's in your backpack by the front door," I tell her, pointing even though I'm not entirely sure where her backpack is. Everything's starting to blur together.
"No it's not," Sophie says with the certainty only a seven-year-old can manage. "I looked there already."
I move anyway, following her to the entryway. There are four backpacks lined up against the wall. Four different sizes. I stand there for a moment, staring at them like they're a puzzle I can't solve. Which one is hers? The one with the rainbow straps? The one with the dinosaurs?
Sophie tugs my hand. "That one," she points to the pink one with the glittery unicorn.
I unzip it. Inside is a collapsed math workbook, a half-eaten granola bar wrapped in a napkin, and three library books bound with a rubber band. I pull out the workbook and hand it to her.
"Thanks, Aunt Lauren," she says, taking it and skipping back toward her mother.
I watch her go, noticing that she didn't ask how I was feeling this morning. Neither did Emma when I helped her with her spelling words. They've already accepted that I'm different now. Less present.
By nine-thirty, Sarah's got the kids in the car for school drop-off. She asks me if I want to come along, and I say no, citing a headache. It's not entirely a lie. The medication makes my head feel stuffed with cotton, like I'm underwater.
After they leave, the house settles into the kind of silence that only comes when you're completely alone. I move through the rooms like a ghost. The living room where Tom tried to... where he touched me while Sarah was out. The kitchen where I've been pretending everything's normal. The guest room where I've been sleeping, where my clothes are folded in neat stacks because Sarah organized them for me.
I end up on the couch in the den, which is really just the space between the living room and the kitchen that Sarah optimistically calls a second sitting area. There's a soft throw blanket draped over the back, and I pull it down and wrap it around myself even though the house isn't cold.
My phone sits on the coffee table. It's been buzzing all morning. I turned off notifications after last night, but I can see the red badge showing seventeen unread messages. I don't open them. I just stare at the phone like it might bite me.
The medication makes it hard to care. Hard to feel the urgency that was driving me just days ago. Amanda's dead. Valdez is free. I'm medicated. These are facts now, like water is wet or the sky is blue. They exist regardless of how I feel about them.
I drift off around two in the afternoon.

The alley materializes around me without warning.
It's the same alley where Amanda's body was found, the one I've walked a hundred times since the case started. But in the dream, it's twilight, that weird purple-blue that happens just after sunset. There are no cars parked nearby. No sounds of the city. Just the alley and its brick walls and the rain pooling on the uneven pavement.
Amanda stands in the center of it.
She's wearing the same clothes she died in, black jeans, a red hoodie that's streaked with something darker. But her face is different. Her eyes are open. Wide open. Blood runs from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks in perfect parallel lines, like her tears were made of rust.
"Amanda?" I take a step toward her, but my feet make no sound on the wet pavement.
She opens her mouth. Her lips move. Sound comes out but it's distant, underwater, like she's speaking from very far away or from very deep down. I can't make out words. Just the shape of them. Just the desperate movement of her jaw.
"I can't hear you," I say, moving closer. "Amanda, I can't..."
Her hand shoots out and grabs my wrist.
It's ice cold. Her fingers are bone-thin and they grip me with the strength of someone much larger than the small woman Amanda was. Blood drips from her eyes faster now, running down her neck, soaking into her hoodie.
She whispers something. A name. A warning?
I try to pull away but her grip only tightens. The cold spreading up my arm, into my chest, freezing my heart while it still beats...

I jolt awake gasping.
My hands are shaking. I'm tangled in the throw blanket, my shirt soaked through with sweat. For a moment I don't remember where I am. Then the familiar shapes of Sarah's den resolve around me, the flat-screen TV, the bookshelves organized by color, the family photos in their perfect frames.
I'm at Sarah's. I'm safe. It was a dream.
I check my phone. 2:47 PM. I've been asleep for only forty-five minutes, which feels both like five minutes and five hours. The antipsychotics make time move strangely.
My phone has more messages now. Eighteen from Alex. Two from Sarah asking if I'm okay, if I need anything. One from Captain Rodriguez that just says "Thoughts with you and Amanda's family."
There's also a missed call from a number I don't recognize, and a voicemail I don't bother listening to. Probably a telemarketer. Probably nothing.
I unwrap myself from the blanket and walk to the kitchen. My mouth tastes like metal. I pour a glass of water and drink it standing up, staring out the window at Sarah's backyard. The grass is perfectly maintained. There are garden beds with spring flowers just starting to emerge. Two kids' bikes are leaned against the garage.
This is what normal looks like. This is what I'm supposed to want.
I reach for my phone to text Alex back, then stop. What would I even say? That I'm medicated now? That I told Dr. Voss everything and she's convinced I'm having a breakdown triggered by occupational stress? That I don't even know what's real anymore?
Instead, I put the phone face-down on the counter and go back to the den. I pull the blanket over myself again and close my eyes.
Amanda's voice follows me into whatever space exists between waking and sleeping. Just out of reach. Just barely audible.