Prescribed Doses

Mara stood at the kitchen counter, the morning light filtering through the blinds in thin ribbons. She placed her prenatal vitamin on the tongue, let it dissolve bitter before chasing it with a glass of water. Three months trying. Three months of James checking her app, tracking her cycle like a project deadline, his concern wrapping around her like a constrictor.

She'd discovered it by accident—a notification on his laptop while he was in the shower. Not an affair. Something that made her stomach turn in a different way: a keylogger installed on her phone, screenshots of her messages, a location tracker pinging every fifteen minutes. He'd been spying on her for eight months.

The orange juice sat on the counter, pulp settling at the bottom. She remembered buying it yesterday, James commenting on her sugar intake, his hand resting too long on her waist as she reached for the carton. All those little corrections—her driving route, her friends, her clothes—she'd written off as care. Now the pattern emerged, sharp and undeniable.

Her phone buzzed. *Running late, meet for lunch?*

She stared at his message. The same man who monitored her ovulation tests also monitored her browser history. The same man who held her while she cried about negative tests also kept a spreadsheet of her movements. She poured the orange juice down the sink, watched it swirl away like something she'd outgrown.

The water glass sat empty on the counter. She filled it again, watched the surface calm. Her mother had always said you can't know what grows in the dark. Well, she knew now. She wasn't pregnant—she was being managed.

Mara typed back: *Busy today.*

Then she opened his laptop, found the spyware files he'd so carelessly left in a folder called "backup." Her fingers trembled as she copied everything to a drive. Not for leverage. For evidence.

The vitamin bottle stood beside her glass. She read the label: *Take with food. Do not exceed recommended dosage.* Some things were only healthy in small doses. Some things were poison pretending to be nourishment.

She packed her bag. She didn't know where she'd go, but for the first time in months, the path ahead felt like her own.