My toddler’s first words have left me totally paranoid.

Part 1

I know it’s cliché, but ever since Edward was born, I’ve wanted him to say “Mama.”

Before I go any further, please know that I’m in a state of grieving. 

If you’re going to make rude statements protected by the anonymity of this platform, you can keep those to yourselves. 

I've seen what people say here, from my husband's post, which the mods said I had to call Part 1 (even though that makes it sound fake… It isn't). 

To the users on that post who said, “Throw that whole baby away,” and the two who said to “punt” the baby: How dare you?

And it's not like the other comments were any better.

If anything, they were explicitly unhelpful.

My husband came to people he trusted with a problem and all of you just laughed in his face.

Now, he’s dead. And I partially blame all of you.

Actually, I almost wholly blame you.

Obviously, this is not Darren. I’m Hannah, his widow.

I don’t want to be posting here from his old account.

This is literally the last thing I thought I’d be doing three months after burying the love of my life.

And I’m not here for an apology either.

If anything, I need you all to make this right. Because I can’t ignore what’s going on any longer.

I'll start at the beginning: Darren was recently killed in an accident.

He hadn’t been sleeping well and was working in the yard. He didn’t secure his ladder when Eddie ran out to play, and it got tipped.

When I got outside, Eddie was squealing and Darren had fallen, lying unconscious.

He never woke up after that.

My husband didn’t have a will, but he had secretly taken out a life insurance policy a few weeks prior. 

The insurer wasn’t happy, but there were no two ways around it: they paid after investigating.

(They had to use a detective to make sure Darren wasn’t fraudulent or faking his death. Apparently, that’s common in life insurance.)

That was how I learned about Part 1, when they did his “digital autopsy.”

Reading Part 1 was horrible, even if no one had ever commented and upvoted that dumb crap.

For instance, Darren saying he’d seen Eddie kill Coco? And lying about it to me. 

Then, Darren saying he feared for his own life now that Eddie could say “Dada”?

The story sounded ludicrous!

It still does. 

Having a fear that your toddler-aged son might kill you because he could say your name?

No wonder he never said anything to me. I don’t know I would have believed him. I wouldn’t have.

Until now.

Now, I’m worried that my own life may be in danger.

It all started the day of the ladder accident.

There we were in the hospital room, where the ER doctor had just told us they couldn’t bring Darren back, and Eddie just turned to me and blurted out,

“Mama!”

After weeks and months of hoping to hear that, and realizing he may have some kind of speech disability, he finally said Mama.

It brought tears to my eyes.

I think I must have bawled for like ten minutes, just sitting there.

After that, Eddie didn’t stop either…

Not on the car ride home,

Not at his dad’s funeral,

And not in the weeks that followed.

All that Eddie says now is “Mama.”

Like I said, he probably has a speech impediment or learning disability.

(Maybe it’s my fault, buying too much baby food with artificial red dye.)

But then–and I don’t really know how to say this…

That’s when strange stuff started to happen.

Like, weird stuff.

I had a near-miss with an electrical outlet. I swear I’d turned it off when I was working on our pool. But then, pow: I got the shock of my life.

If it hadn’t been for the, like, trip wire, or whatever it’s called, I’d have been electrified.

I checked our Ring camera after that. Eddie had fiddled with the outlet when I wasn’t looking.

He managed to peel off the outlet covers and plugged the cable right back in.

I thought it was a sign of intelligence. You know, maybe he'd be one of those kids who was a late bloomer talking, but his brain was still great.

Then came the kitchen knives.

They’d ended up in Eddie’s hands twice, despite toddler locks on the cabinets.

He screamed bloody murder and tried to slash me when I tried to take them from him.

He actually drew blood the second time.

I sound like a horrible mother, but I swear to you: I’ve got certified toddler-safe locks on everything. More so now after all this.

And it hasn’t stopped. 

When we’re out driving, Eddie manages to wiggle out of his secured car seat and try to distract me. 

Of course, that nearly got us into a massive wreck.

Then there’s our families… Of course, I’m mortified that his parents or mine would ever find out about what’s really inside my head: Eddie feels determined to harm me.

And that’s horrible to say. I’m ashamed to be saying that “out loud.”

That’s when I thought back on Darren’s post. And—this is awful to say—but his words almost made sense.

I pushed that thought away, yet the coincidences just piled on.

Under a deluge of the unexplained, I can’t deny that something is deeply wrong.

Darren said,

I should have been elated, but inside, all I felt was terror.
Eddie said my name and that meant somehow, at some unknown moment, I was going to be next.

Maybe Darren was next.

What does that make me?