“What do you and Daddy do during bath time?”
Her shoulders immediately stiffened.
She looked down.
“Games.”
“What games, baby?”
Silence.
Then tears filled her eyes.
My heart nearly stopped.
“Sophie?”
Her lower lip trembled.
“Daddy says bathroom games are secret.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“What kind of secret games?”
She started crying.
Hard.
Violently.
“He said you’d be mad at me if I told.”
I dropped the hairbrush and pulled her into my arms.
“No. No, sweetheart. I would never be mad at you. Never.”
But she wouldn’t say anything else.
That night, I lay awake beside Mark.
He slept peacefully.
One arm thrown across his chest.
Soft snores.
Completely relaxed.
I stared into the darkness and felt terror growing inside me like something alive.
I kept replaying every moment from the past year.
Every bath.
Every excuse.
Every strange silence.
At three in the morning, Mark rolled over and sleepily wrapped an arm around my waist.
I nearly flinched.
The next day, I watched him constantly.
The way he smiled at Sophie during breakfast.
The way he kissed the top of her head.
The way he laughed.
Nothing looked wrong.
That almost made it worse.
By evening, I felt like I was losing my mind.
Maybe I was imagining things.
Maybe Sophie misunderstood something innocent.
Maybe I was turning normal behavior into something ugly.
Then bath time came.
“Soph,” Mark called cheerfully from the stairs. “Ready for our spa night?”
I saw Sophie hesitate.
Just for a second.
But I saw it.
Then she forced a smile.
“Okay.”
I waited five minutes after they went upstairs.
The sound of running water echoed faintly through the hallway.
My hands shook so badly I had to grip the kitchen counter.
Then I walked upstairs.
Barefoot.
Silent.
The bathroom door was cracked open slightly.
Steam drifted into the hallway.
My heart pounded so hard it hurt.
I looked inside.
And everything inside me shattered.
Mark was crouched beside the bathtub.
Sophie sat wrapped in a towel, clutching her stuffed rabbit tightly against her chest.
She was crying.
Mark held a paper cup in one hand.
In the other was a kitchen timer.
“Just drink it,” he said calmly.
“I don’t want to.”
“You know the rules.”
