One Piece of Chocolate

My mother once had an acquaintance—a slightly peculiar woman.

Her daughter was in the same grade as my brother, and the mothers had become close through a school event.

At first, she seemed cheerful and sociable.

But soon, something felt off.

She called every day.

If we didn’t pick up, the phone would ring again the moment the dial tone stopped.

Her voice was high and sweet, her words spilling too fast—

as if she were always laughing on the edge of panic.

Her husband was a doctor.

One day she said, almost casually,

“He told me, ‘I could write one note and have you committed. You’d never come out.’”

She laughed when she said it, but her eyes were empty.

Whatever kind of woman she was, the man who could say that—

there was another kind of madness in him.

The whole family felt fractured, like a house with a cracked foundation.

Their daughter was being bullied at school—

anonymous pizza deliveries, whispers about her looks.

The mother kept saying she wanted her girl to become a doctor too,

but the child didn’t seem built for that weight.

I saw her once—awkward, fragile, almost translucent.

Then one day, the mother brought over a box of chocolates,

brightly wrapped like a souvenir from Hawaii.

My mother thanked her and left it in the living room.

That night, we opened it.

One piece had already been eaten.

Maybe she didn’t like the flavor.

But the fact that she still offered it as a gift—

it was unsettling in a way words couldn’t touch.

My mother called her, her voice calm and polite.

“We don’t need things like this.”

That single sentence ended everything.

The phone never rang again.

Still, I couldn’t stop looking at the box.

Something about it lingered.

The innocence of handing someone what’s already touched your own mouth—

saying, “Here, this is for you.”

Like a friend who comes to stay the night, asks,

“Can I borrow a toothbrush?”

You hand her a brand-new one,

and she gives it back the next morning saying,

“Thanks, I’ll return it.”

It wasn’t malice.

Just the gesture of someone who never learned

where the world ends and they begin.