I didn’t fight for custody of our son. I didn’t ask for a share of the house, the cars, or the retirement fund. I had one condition—I wanted his mother. And he was all too happy to give her up. In fact, he paid me $5,000 to take her with me.
“You’re serious?” Evan asked, blinking behind his wire-rimmed glasses, the same ones he wore when he met me in college. “You want my mother?”
I nodded, cool and calm. “That’s the deal.”
He looked at her—Dorothy—sitting stiff and quiet on the edge of the living room armchair. She didn’t say a word. She hadn’t spoken to Evan directly since the first court hearing, when he told the judge that he had “no objections” if I wanted to take her.
Evan snorted. “Take her. She’s your problem now. Hell, I’ll pay you.”
The lawyer gave him a look, but Evan was already pulling out his checkbook.

One week later, I moved into a small two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Portland with my mother-in-law and a mattress on the floor. Dorothy had one suitcase and a box of her books. No makeup, no framed photos, not even a coat. She never asked why I wanted her. And I didn’t offer a reason.
But I had one.

Four weeks passed. She was quiet, polite, unnervingly neat. Every morning, she folded my laundry. She refused my help in the kitchen. She cooked the same meals she made in Evan’s house—dry chicken, overboiled potatoes, broccoli steamed to a grey-green mush. I choked it down and smiled.

Then, on the 32nd day, something changed.

It was raining. I came home late from work. The apartment smelled strange—sharper than bleach, like something acrid beneath lemon cleaner. And it was silent. Too silent.

I found Dorothy in the kitchen, standing barefoot in the puddle of light from the ceiling bulb, hands shaking. On the floor beside her was a glass jar. Its lid lay on the counter, crusted with something reddish-brown.

She looked at me. “I… I tried to throw it away. It came back.”

“What came back?”

“The jar,” she whispered, eyes wide. “Evan’s jar.”

I knelt to pick it up. There was no label. But I remembered it now—from the pantry in the old house. The one she always said not to touch. The one she kept at the back, sealed tight. He’d once told me, laughing, that it held “old secrets and dead herbs.”

“Don’t open it,” she said suddenly. “Please. Don’t.”

I didn’t. Not yet.
But something had already begun to unravel.

The next morning, I woke to the sound of water boiling and Dorothy humming softly. It was the first time I’d heard her sing.

I found her in the kitchen, pouring tea. The jar was gone.
“Where is it?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.
“Back where it belongs,” she said. “I took care of it.”

I didn’t press further. But later that day, while she was napping, I went searching. Under the sink. In her closet. Behind the toilet tank. I found it in the bedroom, tucked inside the box of books she’d brought—wedged between a tattered Bible and Wuthering Heights.

I stared at it. The glass was thick, the lid rusted slightly. And inside—layers of desiccated herbs, twine, and something else. Something white and crumbly like bone.

I didn’t open it. But I took it out, placed it on the table.

That night, she didn’t touch her food.
“You moved the jar,” she said.
I nodded. “What is it?”

She looked down. Her hands trembled.

“My husband died when Evan was thirteen. You know that.”

I nodded. I’d heard the story—the “heart attack,” the quick funeral, the quiet grieving.

“But that wasn’t the full story,” she said, voice barely audible. “He’d changed in the last year. Violent. Unpredictable. Evan and I lived in fear. Then, one day, he just… collapsed. Right there. In the hallway.”

She paused.
“I didn’t call for help. I watched him die.”

I said nothing.

“Afterward, I went to a woman. Not a therapist. A… healer. I told her I was afraid—afraid the darkness would pass into Evan. She gave me the jar.”

“Why keep it?”

“To bind the pattern. She said as long as I didn’t open it, as long as someone kept it safe, the boy would be clean.”

My breath caught.
“You think Evan is… cursed?”

She shook her head. “No. He was. I believe it skipped him. But I feared what might happen if the jar was ever opened. That’s why I never let him near it. That’s why I stayed.”

And suddenly it clicked.

Evan hadn’t divorced me for someone younger. He hadn’t fought for custody. He hadn’t even hesitated to let his mother go. He’d gotten rid of both of us in one move.
Because deep down, maybe he’d always known.

I watched her over the next few days. Dorothy stopped eating. She barely slept. The jar sat between us in silence. I didn’t know what to believe—but I felt it. The heaviness. The tension. Something unsaid pressing between the walls.

Then, one afternoon, my phone rang.
It was Evan’s sister, Laura.

“Have you heard from him?” she asked, her voice rushed. “He hasn’t returned my texts. He missed work. His car was found at the edge of Forest Park.”

My blood went cold.
“No,” I lied. “I haven’t heard anything.”

That night, Dorothy said nothing. But I saw her standing by the window at 3 a.m., rocking slightly.

The next morning, police found Evan’s body.

He’d drowned. In less than two feet of water. No signs of foul play. No drugs. No injuries. Just… face down in a shallow creek bed. His eyes were open.

The coroner called it “an unfortunate accident.” But I knew better. And so did Dorothy.

“I warned him,” she whispered, hands wrapped around a cold teacup. “You can’t cast off something bound in blood.”

She turned to me.
“I should leave.”

I shook my head. “No. You stay. We finish this.”

We burned the jar that night. Not a ceremony. Just a fireplace and silence. It didn’t explode. It didn’t scream. It just crumbled.

In the months that followed, Dorothy softened. She smiled more. She joined a church choir. She started calling me by my first name. I didn’t ask her any more questions. And she never brought up the jar again.

But sometimes, when the wind hits the window just right, I remember the look in Evan’s eyes that day he handed over his mother like a burden.

It wasn’t hatred.
It was fear.