The Glass House

The vitamins sat on her nightstand like accusations. Thirty small, rounded pills—prenatal, he'd thought, when he bought them. But she wasn't pregnant anymore. She hadn't been for six weeks, though she hadn't found the words to tell him.

Instead, she swallowed them anyway. One. Two. Three. A ritual of something like hope.

His iPhone buzzed against the mahogany, vibrating across the silence of their bedroom. 2:17 AM. The screen lit up—*Cassandra: Are you awake?* —then died back to darkness before she could make herself look away.

She'd been wearing his hat to bed lately. A gray beanie she'd stolen from his closet three weeks ago, pulled down over her ears like armor. It smelled like him—cedar and expensive cologne and the faint metallic tang she'd started noticing recently. Blood, maybe. Or just the mint gum he chewed to cover something else.

*Are you awake?*

She thought about the vitamins again. How he'd started buying them organic, vegan, sourced from some boutique supplier he wouldn't name. How careful he was about her health now. How he'd stopped letting her cook.

The hat was too tight suddenly. She pulled it off and her hair sprang loose, sweat-damp at the temples. Her hands were shaking.

The iPhone lit again. *Cassandra: We need to talk about the insurance policy.*

She counted the vitamins on the nightstand. Twenty-seven. She'd taken three tonight, same as always. But the bottle was lighter than it should be, she realized. Had been for weeks.

She reached for the iPhone, his password burning in her memory—*her birthday*—and typed it in with fingers that wouldn't steady. The messages were there. Not Cassandra. Not an affair. Worse.

*Policy active. Beneficiary unchanged. Dosage increased per protocol. Subject showing expected symptoms.*

The hat lay in her lap like a dead thing. Outside, the neighborhood slept, unaware that the glass house on the corner had never been transparent at all. It had been a prison all along, and she had just helped lock herself inside.