The annoyance in his chest turned into a cold spike of confusion.
“What did you just say?”
“They say she’s going blind,” the boy continued, looking at Maya with a kind of pity that broke Jerry’s heart. “But it’s a lie. Someone in your big house is slowly taking her light away.”
Jerry felt a rush of anger. He was not about to take medical advice from a kid off the street.
“Are you crazy? Who sent you? If this is some joke from one of my rivals—”
But the boy stepped even closer, dropping his voice.
“It’s your wife, sir. The one with the red hair. She put something in the little girl’s food every single day.”
Jerry’s heart stopped for a second.
Everything—the honking cars, the shouting hawkers, the children playing—just went silent. He could not breathe.
Memory started hitting him like a fast-moving train.
He thought of Victoria, his beautiful second wife. She had been the perfect stepmother since Maya’s mother passed away. Maybe too perfect.
He remembered when Maya first started getting sick: the stomach aches, the tiredness, the way her vision always seemed worse right after dinner. He remembered how Victoria insisted on cooking Maya’s meals herself.
“You can’t trust these house helps, Jerry,” she would say. “Let me handle her food. It’s my duty.”
He looked at the boy again, searching for a lie. But he did not see a kid looking for a payday. He saw the eyes of someone who had seen something evil and could not unsee it.
“Why would you say that?” Jerry asked, his voice shaking. “Do you know who I am? Do you know what I can do to you for saying things like that about my family?”
The boy just nodded.
