When she arrived, Emma had dropped her purse on the sofa and a small bag of pills had fallen out. Olivia wasn’t into the drug scene, but she knew exactly what she was looking at when she saw the small white pills with smiley faces on them.
Molly.
“Emma,” Olivia said, picking the small plastic bag off the floor and waving it at her. “Seriously, Sammy could have gotten into these.”
“Shit, sorry,” Emma had replied. “They’re not mine. One of the girls from work asked me to take them for her. Long story.”
Olivia shook her head.
“I didn’t think you were into this stuff.”
Emma had flushed, and she’d thought it was weird. She had handed the Molly back to her and Emma had tossed it onto the coffee table.
“I should just flush it down the toilet,” Emma had said.
“Doesn’t your friend want it back?” Olivia asked, knowing vaguely, as much as the next person, drugs weren’t cheap. Throwing someone’s stash away seemed like a drastic thing to do, but then again, herlong storycomment had felt loaded, so perhaps it was the right thing to do.
Not her problem, she’d decided, so they drank their coffees and Emma had changed the subject to Sammy and how she was coping with all the change.
In hindsight, it was a clever distraction.
A few minutes later Emma’s phone had rung, and she’d jumped up mouthingmedia emergencyand flown out the door.
The Molly was left lying on the coffee table.
Olivia tucked them away in the medicine cabinet above the sink where Sammy couldn’t find or reach them, intending to give them back to Emma the next time she came over. She was walking back to the sofa to text Emma when she felt odd.
Before she could sit down the room began spinning.
Fifteen minutes later Simon had suddenly shown up, busting down the door. Sammy, who had been having an afternoon nap, began crying and clinging to her while Simon shouted about Olivia taking drugs.
She had been so confused.
Initially Olivia thought she’d suddenly come down with a bug.
That’s when Child Protective Services arrived.
Through the foggy buzz in her head, she heard Simon tell them he was her ex-husband, and that she had a history of drug use but had never been caught.
A white-collar user, he called her.
Then they’d found the bag full of drugs in the cupboard. Simon had shaken his head and said something about it being the same stuff she’d taken when they were married.
Lies.
All lies.
She had wobbled and screamed, accusing him of lying and setting her up, looking exactly like a druggie, as they packed up Sammy’s things and took her.
Took her damn daughter.
It had taken months of legal action and proving she was not—or in the court’s minds, no longer was—a drug user, and that she was a good mother, to finally get her three-year-old daughter back.
The longest time in her life.
With no prior convictions of any kind, including drugs, and no proof to support his claim, along with a solid job history, her lawyer had done an amazing job of getting her shared custody.
Simon and Emma had set her up. They had drugged her. It had been the hardest and most heartbreaking time of her life.