Tears came down her face without any sound, the same silent way she’d cried in the park.

“What if she doesn’t love me anymore?” And then, before I could answer, she asked the thing that broke my heart clean in half, in a small and practical voice, as though checking a house rule.

“Do I have to take anything before I go to sleep tonight?”

For a second I couldn’t breathe.

Because I understood, in that one question, the entire shape of what had been done to her — deeper than any pharmacy record or notebook could show it.

She was not asking out of fear.