I PUT LAXATIVES IN MY HUSBAND'S COFFEE BEFORE HE LEFT TO SEE HIS MISTRESS, AND I WATCHED HIM SWALLOW IT AS IF HE WEREN'T DRINKING HIS OWN SHAME. I THOUGHT THE WORST PART WOULD BE SEEING HIM RUN TO THE BATHROOM, BUT TWO HOURS LATER I RETURNED HOME AND FOUND SOMETHING THAT LEFT ME COLDER THAN HIS BETRAYAL.

I slipped something into my cheating husband's coffee and watched him drink it with a smile, believing that a humiliating morning was the worst thing I could ever do to him.

Two hours later, I came home to an open door, his phone on the floor, a message from his mistress begging him to tell me the truth, and a pharmacy bag with my name on it for pills I had never once ordered.

Then the doorbell rang three times, and the young woman standing on my porch looked at me with eyes I swore I had seen somewhere before and said the one sentence that made me realize I wasn't the only one in that house who had been drugging someone.

CHAPTER 1: THE BEST HUSBAND MUG

The morning began with expensive cologne.

Not mine.

The one she'd asked him for in a text the night before.

My husband, Derek, stood in front of our bedroom mirror buttoning the pale blue shirt he called his "important meeting shirt." He sprayed cologne on his neck. Then his wrists. Then his chest. Then his neck again.

Far too much effort for a Monday morning.

Far too much happiness for a man who hadn't noticed that I'd stopped asking him to look at me.

My name is Corinne Hadley. I'm forty-one. Nine years ago, I married Derek in my father's garden on Larkfield Lane, two months before my father died. When he died, he left me the house, a sizable trust, and forty percent of Ellison & Rowe, the engineering firm he founded. Derek was a financial consultant then. He gave it up a few years later to "help me manage everything."

I stood in our kitchen and watched coffee drip into his favorite black mug. The one I'd bought him for our first anniversary.

BEST HUSBAND.

Funny how a mug can turn into a monument to a lie.

In my other hand was a small bottle from the pharmacy. A laxative. I'd been staring at it for a long time.

This wasn't an impulse. An impulse lasts a few seconds. This had been building for months. The missed calls. The late meetings. A woman's perfume on his collar. Receipts from restaurants in the Riverside district, a part of town we'd never once gone to together.

And the message I'd found on his phone three nights earlier, while he slept beside me.

I'll be waiting for you tomorrow. Don't forget the cologne I like.

Chloe.

His new secretary. Twenty-six. Dark hair. Hired four months ago at the consulting office he still kept downtown.

The same young woman who'd smiled at me at his office holiday party and said, "Derek talks about you all the time."

I'd thought she meant it kindly.

She had a strange way of looking at me that night. Too long. Too searching. Like she was trying to memorize my face, or warn me about something with her eyes. I'd assumed it was guilt. Now I thought she must have meant he talked about me the way you'd talk about a chore.

The worst part was that I hadn't even had the energy to confront him. For six months, I'd been so tired. Foggy. Forgetting things. Losing words in the middle of sentences. I'd fallen asleep at my desk twice. I'd missed a board meeting at my father's firm because I simply forgot it existed.

"It's stress, Cory," Derek kept saying, rubbing my shoulders. "You're running yourself into the ground."

He'd taken me to see an old friend of his, Dr. Alan Fenwick, who'd prescribed something "for the anxiety." Derek managed my pills now. Every night, he brought me a glass of water and two little white tablets and watched me swallow them. Doctor's orders, babe.

He was so attentive about that. It was the only thing he was attentive about anymore.

Derek walked into the kitchen, fixing his belt, wearing an excited little smile I hadn't seen aimed at me in a year.

"Is that coffee for me?"

I handed him the mug. "A little treat."

He looked at me for a second. Something flickered in his eyes. Then he shrugged and drank.

One sip.

Two.

Three.

He finished every drop.

He didn't notice my hand shaking. He didn't notice the woman he'd betrayed standing right in front of him.

"Where are you going wearing so much cologne?" I asked.

"A meeting."

A meeting.

I already knew the hotel. The Ashworth, on River Street. I knew the time. Eleven o'clock. I knew the name she'd booked it under. I even knew Chloe had picked his tie. I'd seen her text about it. Wear the navy one. It brings out your eyes.

"Have fun with your strategy session," I said.

He kissed my forehead and walked out to the garage.

I waited. I counted.

Four minutes later, a muffled shout came through the wall.

"DAMN IT!"

The car door slammed. Footsteps pounded back into the house, past the kitchen, straight up the stairs to the bathroom.

I almost laughed.

I didn't wait to see him come down. I grabbed my purse and my keys and walked out the front door to my car. I drove to the lake and sat in the parking lot for two hours with my hands on the steering wheel, waiting to feel better.

I didn't.

I felt ashamed. Small. Petty. Like I'd become someone my father wouldn't recognize.

I thought about my father, George. He built bridges. He used to say the measure of a person was what they did when nobody was watching. He'd have been so ashamed of what I'd done that morning. Not because Derek didn't deserve to suffer. Because I'd lowered myself to his level, in my own kitchen, with my own hands.

I thought about calling Derek and apologizing. Then I thought about the cologne, and the hotel, and Don't forget the cologne I like, and I put my phone back in my purse.

At some point I fell asleep in the driver's seat. That had been happening a lot lately. I woke up with a crick in my neck and no idea how long I'd been out.

Two hours had passed.

When I finally drove home, a little after noon, I pulled into the driveway and stopped.

The front door was wide open.

I walked inside slowly. The house was silent. Derek's car was gone from the garage.

His phone was lying face up on the hallway floor, like he'd dropped it running out.

The screen was glowing. A new message from Chloe.

I already did what you asked. Now tell your wife the truth.

My stomach dropped.

The truth. About what? That he was leaving me? That he'd been sleeping with her for months?

I walked into the kitchen on shaking legs.

On the counter, beside the empty BEST HUSBAND mug, was a white paper pharmacy bag. It must have fallen out of his jacket pocket in his rush to the bathroom.

My name was printed on the label.

CORINNE HADLEY.

A prescription. From Dr. Alan Fenwick.

I didn't recognize the name of the medication. I'd never filled it. I'd never even heard of it.

But the pills inside the little orange bottle were small and white.

Exactly like the ones Derek brought me every night with a glass of water.

That's when the doorbell rang.

Three times. Fast. Urgent.

I walked to the door, still holding the pharmacy bag.

On the porch stood a young woman with dark hair, in a gray coat, clutching a folder to her chest. Her face was pale. Her eyes were red, like she'd been crying in her car.

It was Chloe.

Up close, without her office makeup, she looked even younger. And there was something about her eyes. Something I couldn't place. Like I'd seen them before, on someone else, a long time ago.

She looked at the pharmacy bag in my hand.

And then she said the one sentence that turned my whole world inside out.

"Mrs. Hadley. Please. Stop taking the pills he gives you."

CHAPTER 2: THE NOTARY STAMP

I let her in. I don't know why. Maybe because of her eyes.

She sat at my kitchen table, where I'd made Derek's coffee three hours earlier, and set the folder down in front of her. Her hands were shaking.

"I'm not sleeping with your husband," she said first. "I need you to know that. He's tried. Many times. I've let him think I might. That's all."

I stared at her.

"Then the texts. The cologne. The hotel."

"I sent those on purpose," Chloe said quietly. "I knew you'd started checking his phone. I wanted you to get suspicious. I wanted you to start paying attention to him." She swallowed. "I didn't know how else to reach you without him finding out."

"Reach me about what?"

She opened the folder.

On top was a photocopy of a legal document. PETITION FOR APPOINTMENT OF CONSERVATOR. My name. Respondent: Corinne Elise Hadley. Petitioner: Derek James Hadley.

Filed three weeks ago in Larkfield County Probate Court.

"He's asking the court to declare you mentally incompetent," Chloe said. "To appoint him as your conservator. If the judge grants it, he controls everything. Your trust. Your house. Your father's shares in Ellison and Rowe."

I couldn't speak.

"The hearing is Friday," Chloe said.

Under the petition was a two-page letter on Dr. Alan Fenwick's letterhead. Patient presents with progressive cognitive decline, disorientation, memory lapses, and excessive daytime somnolence. In my professional opinion, Mrs. Hadley is no longer capable of managing her own financial affairs.

Six months of fog. Six months of forgetting. Six months of Derek bringing me a glass of water and two little white pills every single night.

"The pills," I whispered.

Chloe nodded. "Dr. Fenwick's been writing prescriptions in your name for six months. A strong sedative. The kind that makes people sleepy and confused. Derek picks them up himself. I've seen the receipts on his desk." She looked at the bag in my hand. "You're not getting sick, Mrs. Hadley. You're being made sick."

The room tilted. I gripped the edge of the table.

"Why should I believe you?" I asked. My voice came out thin. "You've been texting my husband about hotels and cologne for weeks."

Chloe didn't flinch. She took out her phone and opened a folder of photographs. Pharmacy receipts, every one in my name, photographed on the corner of a desk. Dates going back to June. Sticky notes in Derek's handwriting. Pick up C's refill, Thurs. Call Fenwick re: letter. Hearing date??

"He leaves things lying around," she said. "He thinks I'm a pretty girl who answers his phone. He's never once imagined I can read."

Then she showed me one more picture. A page torn from a yellow legal pad, in Derek's blocky handwriting. A list.

1. Fenwick letter — DONE 2. POA — need notary 3. File petition — DONE 4. Increase dose before hearing

I read the last line four times.

Increase dose before hearing.

"That's the bag," Chloe said quietly, looking at the pharmacy bag still in my hand. "The new prescription. A stronger one. He picked it up this morning on his way to meet me. He wanted you groggy in front of the judge on Friday."

"And what did he ask you to do?" I said. "I already did what you asked."

Chloe closed her eyes.

"I'm a notary," she said. "It's part of my job at the office. Last week, Derek gave me a durable power of attorney with your signature on it, and asked me to notarize it. He said you'd signed it at home and were too unwell to come in." Her voice cracked. "I knew you hadn't signed it. I've seen your real signature on your father's company papers. This one was a copy. A good one."

"Did you stamp it?"

"Yes," she whispered. "This morning. Because if I said no, he'd have fired me and found someone else who'd do it without asking questions. And I'd have lost the only way to stop him." She pushed a second page across the table. A photocopy of the forged power of attorney, with her notary stamp on it, and a small handwritten note in the margin in her own writing: Notarized under duress. Signature not witnessed. — C.M.

"I kept a copy," she said. "And then I texted him. Now tell your wife the truth. I wanted it in writing. On his phone. I gave him one last chance to tell you himself."

"He didn't see it," I said slowly. "He was upstairs. Sick. He must have rushed out to a clinic and left his phone."

Chloe almost smiled. "Sick?"

I looked at the BEST HUSBAND mug in the sink. My face burned.

"I did something stupid this morning," I said.

I sat there across from her, holding a bottle of pills with my name on it, and felt the whole shape of my life rearrange itself.

"If you're right," I said slowly, "then I've been sleeping next to a man who's been poisoning me for half a year."

"I know," Chloe said. "I'm so sorry."

"And you've been sitting at a desk outside his office. Letting him flirt with you. Letting him book hotel rooms. Pretending."

"Yes."

"Why? Why would you do that for a stranger?"

Chloe looked down at her hands for a long time.

"Because somebody should have done it for someone I loved," she said finally. "And nobody did."

I didn't understand what she meant. Not yet.

"Mrs. Hadley," Chloe said, very gently, "he's been doing something much worse to you every night for six months."

CHAPTER 3: SIX MONTHS OF WATER

The first thing I did was call my father's oldest friend, a semi-retired attorney named Walter Prescott. He'd handled our family's affairs for thirty years. He'd known me since I was born.

He was at my kitchen table in forty minutes. He read the conservatorship petition and the power of attorney twice. His face went very still.

"Corinne," he said. "Have you taken one of those pills since last night?"

"No. He gives them to me at bedtime."

"Then you don't take one tonight. Or ever again." He picked up his phone. "And this afternoon, you're getting a blood test. A real one. At Larkfield General. From a doctor who isn't a friend of your husband's."

"There's something else," Walter said, before we left for the hospital. He looked at the forged power of attorney. "Your father asked me to do one thing for him, the week before he died. He asked me to keep an eye on you. He said, Walt, Derek's a charmer. Charmers worry me." Walter's jaw tightened. "I told him he was being a protective old man. I've regretted that every day since you started missing board meetings. I should have come to check on you months ago."

"You didn't know."

"I should have," Walter said. "That's the job."

The lab took my blood at three o'clock. Walter stood beside me the whole time. Chloe waited in the parking lot in her car. Walter asked her to stay out of sight.

Derek came home at six.

He looked gray and shaky and furious. He'd spent the morning at an urgent care clinic. He walked into the kitchen and found me making dinner, and he looked at me for a long, long time.

"You put something in my coffee," he said.

I didn't deny it. "I found your messages. From Chloe. I was angry."

For a second, something cold moved behind his eyes. Then it was gone. He laughed. He actually laughed.

"Cory, Cory, Cory." He came over and kissed the top of my head. "You see? This is exactly what I've been worried about. You're not yourself, babe. Paranoid. Doing crazy things. Chloe's my secretary. It's all in your head." He rubbed my shoulders. "It's the anxiety. I'm going to call Dr. Fenwick in the morning. Maybe we need to adjust your dosage."

Adjust your dosage.

"Where's your phone, Derek?" I asked.

He frowned. "I lost it. I think I left it at the clinic."

It was in my purse. Walter had made copies of everything on it.

That night, at ten o'clock, Derek came into our bedroom with a glass of water and two little white pills on a napkin.

"Doctor's orders, babe."

I took them. I put them in my mouth. I took a sip of water.

He watched me swallow.

Then he went downstairs to watch television.

I went into the bathroom, spat the two pills into my palm, still whole, and put them in a plastic bag Walter had given me.

I lay awake in the dark, beside a man I'd been married to for nine years, and listened to him breathe.

On Tuesday, Derek stayed home. He said he wanted to "keep an eye on me." He made me lunch. He sat beside me on the couch while I pretended to nap. Every so often, I felt him lean close to look at my face.

In the afternoon, I heard him on the back porch, on a new phone he must have bought that morning. His voice was low, but the kitchen window was open.

"...no, she's fine. Groggy. Same as always. She did something stupid yesterday, put something in my coffee. Proves my point, right? Paranoid." A pause. "Friday, Alan. Nine a.m. Just bring the letter and look worried. After Friday, she's not our problem anymore."

Not our problem anymore.

I lay on the couch with my eyes closed and my heart pounding so hard I was sure he'd hear it through the wall.

That evening, Chloe texted me from a number I'd saved under Dentist.

He fired me today. Said my "attitude" had changed. I think he's nervous. Be careful tonight. Lock your bathroom door when you spit them out.

I did.

On Wednesday morning, the blood test came back.

The lab had found a heavy sedative in my system. A dangerous one at those levels. One I'd never knowingly taken in my life. Walter's doctor friend at Larkfield General called it "chronic over-sedation." He said if it had gone on for another few months, the effects on my memory might have become permanent.

And it would have looked, to any judge in the world, exactly like the cognitive decline Dr. Fenwick had described in his letter.

I sat in Walter's car in the hospital parking garage, holding the lab report, and shook.

"Why?" I whispered. "Why would he do this? I gave him everything. My father's money. My house. He didn't need to steal it. I'd have given it to him."

Walter didn't answer. He was looking at something in the folder Chloe had given me. A page I'd skipped. A single photocopied newspaper clipping, folded at the very back.

"Corinne," he said slowly. "Did Derek ever tell you about his first wife?"

CHAPTER 4: THE FIRST MRS. HADLEY

He'd mentioned her once. Exactly once. On our second date.

I was married before. Briefly. She got sick. It ended badly. I don't like to talk about it.

I'd respected that. I'd never asked again.

The clipping was from the Westbrook Gazette, thirteen years ago.

LOCAL WOMAN, 44, DIES OF ACCIDENTAL OVERDOSE. Margaret "Maggie" Hadley, widow of local developer Thomas Mercer and later wife of financial consultant Derek Hadley, was found unresponsive in her home on Tuesday. Mrs. Hadley had been under court-appointed conservatorship for the past eighteen months due to a rapid cognitive decline. Her husband served as her conservator. She is survived by her husband and a daughter, Chloe Mercer, 13.

Chloe Mercer.

I read the name three times.

I called Chloe from Walter's car. She answered on the first ring. I didn't say hello.

"Your mother," I said. "Maggie."

On the other end of the line, I heard her start to cry.

She came to Walter's office that afternoon. She sat across from me in a leather chair too big for her and told me everything.

"My father died when I was eight," she said. "He left my mom a lot of money. From his business. A year later, she met Derek. He was so charming. He made her laugh again. They got married when I was ten."

I closed my eyes. It sounded exactly like my story.

"And then she started getting tired," Chloe said. "Forgetful. Confused. She'd fall asleep in the middle of the day. She'd forget to pick me up from school. Derek took her to a doctor. A friend of his." She looked at me. "Dr. Alan Fenwick."

I couldn't breathe.

"Derek brought her pills every night. A glass of water and two little white pills." Chloe's voice broke. "Doctor's orders, babe. I was twelve. I used to watch him do it from the hallway."

"Then he went to court and had her declared incompetent. He became her conservator. He took over everything. My dad's money. Our house." She wiped her eyes. "Eighteen months later, she was gone. The coroner said she'd taken too many of her pills by accident. Because she was confused. Because she was sick."

"And you?"

"I was thirteen. Derek sent me to live with my aunt in another state. He kept the house. He kept the money. He told everyone he was heartbroken." She swallowed. "I tried to tell people. My aunt. A police officer. A counselor at school. Nobody believes a thirteen-year-old over a grieving husband with a doctor's report."

I couldn't stop shaking. I thought about the six months of fog. The board meeting I forgot. The afternoon I'd fallen asleep in the bath and woken up with the water ice cold and no memory of getting in. The time I'd called my best friend, Gretchen, three times in one hour because I kept forgetting I'd already called.

I'd thought I was losing my mind. I'd thought I was going the way my grandmother went, at the end.

I'd apologized to Derek. Over and over. I'm sorry I'm such a mess, babe. I'm sorry you have to take care of me.

And he'd stroked my hair and said, That's what husbands are for.

The exact words, Chloe told me later, that he'd said to her mother.

"So you grew up," Walter said quietly.

"I grew up," Chloe said. "I got a paralegal degree. I became a notary. I changed my last name to my aunt's, Moran, when I applied for his office, so he wouldn't recognize it. He hadn't seen me since I was thirteen. I'd grown up. Dyed my hair darker. Got glasses. He had no idea." She looked straight at me. "I took the job four months ago because I'd been watching him for years. When he married you, I read about your father's company in the business news. When your father died, I knew. I knew exactly what was going to happen to you."

The eyes. I'd seen them before. In the clipping. A small photograph of Maggie Hadley, smiling, at a charity luncheon.

Chloe had her mother's eyes.

Derek hadn't been having an affair with his secretary.

He'd been trying to seduce the daughter of the wife he'd already destroyed, without ever realizing who she was.

And she'd been letting him, so she could save me.

"Now tell your wife the truth," I whispered. "That's what you meant."

"I wanted him to know it was over," Chloe said. "I wanted him to see that message and feel, for one second, the way my mother felt. Trapped. Found out." She almost laughed through her tears. "I didn't expect you to send him running to the bathroom first."

CHAPTER 5: FRIDAY

On Friday at nine a.m., the Larkfield County Probate Court called the matter of In re: Conservatorship of Corinne Elise Hadley.

Derek sat at the petitioner's table in his blue "important meeting" shirt, with his lawyer and Dr. Alan Fenwick beside him. He'd told me the night before that the hearing was "just a formality" and that I should "rest up and not worry." He'd brought me my pills. I'd spat them out again.

When I walked into the courtroom with Walter Prescott, Derek smiled and stood up.

"Cory! You came. That's great, babe. Sit with me."

Then Chloe walked in behind me.

Derek's smile froze. He looked at her. At me. At her again. Confused.

"Chloe? What are you doing here?"

"Hello, Derek," she said. "It's Chloe Mercer, actually."

I watched the name land. I watched him do the math. I watched every bit of color drain out of my husband's face.

Walter stood up.

"Your Honor, before the petitioner presents his case, we have some evidence for the court."

He handed up the blood test from Larkfield General. The two whole pills from my bathroom, in a sealed evidence bag, with the lab's analysis attached. The forged power of attorney, with Chloe's handwritten note in the margin. Six months of pharmacy records in my name that I'd never filled. Dr. Fenwick's prescriptions.

And the thirteen-year-old clipping from the Westbrook Gazette.

Dr. Fenwick stood up abruptly, muttered something about a medical emergency, and tried to walk out. A court officer stepped in front of the door.

Derek turned to me, white-faced, desperate.

"Cory. Babe. Listen to me. This is insane. She's lying. She's been obsessed with me since she was a child. I can explain everything. Let's go home and talk. Just us. Please." His voice dropped low. "Withdraw your objection, and I'll withdraw the petition. Today. We go home. Nobody needs to know about any of this. Not the board. Not the papers. Think about your father's name."

I looked at the man I'd married in my father's garden.

"My father's name is fine, Derek," I said. "It's yours that's finished."

The judge, a sharp-eyed woman in her sixties named Constance Albee, read every page in silence. Then she looked over her glasses at Dr. Fenwick.

"Doctor. Please sit down. I have some questions for you."

He sat. His hands were shaking.

"How many times have you personally examined Mrs. Hadley?"

"I... once. In June. Her husband brought her in."

"Once. And on the basis of one appointment, you've written her a prescription for a heavy sedative every month for six months. Without seeing her again. And then written this court a letter stating that she's suffering cognitive decline." Judge Albee set down the lab report. "Doctor, are you aware that her blood shows sedative levels consistent with severe over-medication?"

Dr. Fenwick didn't answer.

"Doctor, did you also treat a Margaret Hadley in Westbrook County, thirteen years ago?"

The silence in that courtroom was absolute.

Then Chloe stood up from the gallery. Walter had told her she might be allowed to speak. Judge Albee looked at her and nodded.

"My name is Chloe Mercer," she said, her voice steady. "Margaret Hadley was my mother. I watched that man bring her a glass of water and two white pills every night for two years. Then I watched her die." She turned and looked straight at Derek. "I was thirteen when nobody believed me. I'm twenty-six now. And this time, I brought receipts."

The judge dismissed the conservatorship petition with prejudice. She referred the case to the Larkfield County District Attorney. Derek Hadley was arrested on the courthouse steps for fraud, forgery, and administering a harmful substance. Dr. Alan Fenwick was arrested that afternoon.

As the officers led him down the courthouse steps, Derek twisted around and looked back at me. Not angry. Not pleading. Just blank. Like a man looking at a puzzle he'd been so sure he'd solved.

"You were supposed to be tired," he said. Almost to himself. "You were always so tired."

"I'm not tired anymore, Derek," I said.

Chloe stood beside me on the top step. She didn't say anything to him at all. She just watched him go, the way she must have watched him from a hallway when she was twelve, holding a glass of water she couldn't stop him from carrying.

When the patrol car pulled away, she sat down on the courthouse steps and cried. I sat down next to her. We didn't say anything for a long time.

Three months later, at the request of the district attorney, the Westbrook County coroner reopened the death of Margaret Hadley. Her case is still under investigation. Derek is awaiting trial. He has not been granted bail.

And the laxative in the coffee?

I told the police about it myself, the first day. I didn't want any secrets left in that house. The detective listened, wrote it down, and looked at me for a long moment.

"Mrs. Hadley," he said finally, "considering what he was putting in your water every night, I think the district attorney is going to have bigger concerns." He paused. "But don't ever do that again."

"I won't," I said. And I meant it. I didn't want to be anyone who poured anything into anyone's cup ever again.

EMOTIONAL ENDING

It took four months for the fog to lift completely.

I remember the morning it did. I woke up early, before the alarm, and lay in bed and realized my head was clear. Completely clear. Like a window someone had finally washed. I remembered my dreams. I remembered what day it was. I remembered the name of every board member at Ellison & Rowe.

I cried for an hour.

That spring, I went back to my father's firm. I took my seat on the board. I chaired my first meeting in over a year. I didn't forget a single word.

Chloe started law school in the fall. I paid her tuition. She fought me on it for a week. I told her it was the least I could do for the person who saved my life.

"You saved mine first," she said. "When you opened the door."

On the anniversary of her mother's death, I drove with her to Westbrook. We stood together in front of a small gray headstone. Margaret Anne Mercer Hadley. Beloved Mother. Chloe laid down a bouquet of white tulips. Her mother's favorite.

"I told her about you," Chloe said quietly. "Last night. I said, Mom, he tried to do it again. But this time, somebody listened."

I put my arm around her. She leaned her head on my shoulder.

When I got home that evening, I went into my kitchen and took the black BEST HUSBAND mug out of the cupboard. I looked at it for a long time.

Then I threw it in the trash.

The next morning, I bought a new one. Plain white. No words on it at all.

I make my own coffee in it now, every morning. Black. Nothing added.

And every night, before bed, I pour myself a glass of water.