THE COLOR OF THE WATER
I never imagined a Tuesday morning could change the way I looked at my own family. Tuesdays had always been background noise to me—neither loved like weekends nor hated like Mondays. Just another square on the calendar. But that Tuesday, the one when I took my sister-in-law for her prenatal checkup because my brother couldn’t, would stick to me like a stain I couldn’t scrub away.
My name is Evan Carter, twenty-eight, born and raised in Colorado but living in Arizona the last four years. My brother Michael, five years older, still lived in Colorado Springs near our mother. His wife, Alyssa, was seven months pregnant with their first child—a girl. They were over the moon. Mom was over a different moon—one shaped like expectations, traditions, and the kind of superstitions she picked up from her own grandmother, who believed in everything from moon phases to herbal “gender balancing teas.”
And that was where everything began:
With a thermos of tea.
Mom had been brewing “pregnancy tonics” for Alyssa ever since she announced she was expecting. Each batch of the concoction had a different smell—sometimes floral, sometimes earthy, sometimes like the inside of an old wooden shed. You’d think I’d have stopped sniffing them after the third time, but curiosity is a stupid little gremlin inside me.
That morning, Michael called me in a rush.
“Dude, I’m stuck at the project site. They brought in the inspectors early. Can you take Alyssa to her OB appointment? It’s at ten.”
“Sure,” I said. “Where’s Mom? Isn’t she going?”
“Oh, she’s going too—she’ll meet you there. She already sent the thermos with Alyssa. Said it’s ‘special’ today.”
Special. Right.
I knew that meant it would smell like a forest dying.
I left a little early so I could grab coffee on the way. Alyssa was already waiting on her porch when I pulled up, hand cradling the curve of her belly, a bright yellow maxi dress shifting around her in the wind. She smiled at me, tired but sweet.
“You’re a lifesaver,” she said as she got in.
“Always,” I said. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like there’s a bowling ball under my lungs.” She rubbed her stomach. “Oh—and your mom dropped off another drink.”
She lifted the thermos from the tote bag at her feet. Stainless steel, same as always. But when she unscrewed the lid slightly to take a whiff, I saw her nose wrinkle.
“Smells… different today,” she said.
“Different good or different ‘your mother is trying to turn you into a forest sprite’?”
She laughed. “Probably the latter.”
We drove the twenty-five minutes to St. Mary’s Medical Center. The appointment was one of the usual checkups—ultrasound, measurements, the works. When we walked through the sliding doors, the quiet disinfected air welcomed us like always.
Mom hadn’t arrived yet.
“Shocking,” I muttered. Mom lived ten minutes away, but she’d never been on time for anything that wasn’t bingo night.
We checked in at the front desk and sat in the waiting room. Alyssa sipped a little of the tea—hesitantly, like it was a dare—and then capped it.
“Sweet?” I asked.
“No. Bitter. Really bitter. But she said it helps with iron absorption and keeps my blood pressure stable.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I drink small amounts just so she feels involved.”
That was Alyssa—the kind of woman who never wanted to hurt anybody’s feelings, even when she had every right to set boundaries.
Fifteen minutes passed. Our mother was still nowhere to be found.
When the nurse finally called Alyssa’s name, I stood to help her. The nurse smiled at me.
“You can join for the ultrasound if you’d like.”
“Yeah, I came in place of her husband.”
We followed the nurse down the hallway, turning into Exam Room 4. When we stepped inside, a doctor in a navy-blue coat bumped into us—literally. He was coming from behind the door with a clipboard in hand and didn’t see us right away. The collision wasn’t hard, but it was enough to send Alyssa off balance.
And it was enough to knock her thermos out of the bag.
It clattered onto the floor, the lid popping open. A splash of its contents spilled across the white linoleum.
A thick dark-brown liquid, almost black.
The smell hit instantly—bitter, smoky, almost metallic.
The doctor froze. His face paled.
“What… what is that?” he asked, staring at the puddle like it wasn’t just tea. Like it was blood.
Alyssa blinked. “Just some herbal drink my mother-in-law made. It’s supposed to help—”
But the doctor didn’t look at her. He looked at me.
And the look wasn’t confusion.
It was alarm.
“Sir…” His voice tightened. “I need you to step out of the room for a moment.”
“What? Why?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he crouched closer to the spill, sniffed, and recoiled.
Then he stood and spoke with unshakable urgency:
“Call security. And someone notify the police.”
My stomach dropped.
Alyssa’s eyes widened as she tightened her grip on the exam table.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice trembling.
The doctor turned to her with a gentleness that didn’t touch his eyes.
“Ma’am… we need to run some tests on you immediately.”
Then he looked back at me.
“If she drank any of that, she could be in danger.”
I felt my breath empty as though someone had punched me.
“What’s in it?” I demanded.
He hesitated, as though weighing whether to say it aloud. “We won’t know until it’s tested, but it smells like something we’ve been trained to recognize. A compound sometimes found in… toxic herbal mixtures used to induce uterine contractions.”
A chill ran up my spine.
“You mean something to—”
“Yes,” he said sharply. “Something that can harm the fetus. Possibly the mother.”
Alyssa gasped and clutched her belly.
The room blurred for a moment as a thousand thoughts collided in my skull.
Mom made that drink.
Mom.
My mother.
Security came quickly. They asked questions—Who made it? Did Alyssa drink any? How much? When? Did she feel pain? Nausea? Anything odd?
Alyssa was taken for urgent blood tests.
I was escorted to the hallway, pacing under the bright fluorescent lights. My hands shook. My brain refused to settle on one thought long enough to make sense of it.
Five minutes later, Mom finally showed up.
She walked briskly, clutching her purse, looking annoyed more than concerned.
“Evan, where’s Alyssa? I got caught up at the store—why are there security guards here?”
I stared at her. Really stared.
“Mom… what was in that tea?”
She blinked. “Tea? The one I gave Alyssa? Just herbs, honey.”
“What herbs?”
“Oh, the usual—raspberry leaf, dong quai, little bit of pennyroot—”
“Pennyroot?” one of the security officers repeated sharply.
Mom looked startled. “Yes. It’s an old remedy. Helps clean the blood.”
“It’s toxic,” he snapped. “Under federal guidelines, pennyroot is a restricted herb because it can induce miscarriage.”
Mom’s face drained of all color.
“What? No—no, that’s not—my grandmother used it all the time—”
The officer held up his palm.
“Ma’am, you need to come with us and answer some questions.”
Mom’s voice cracked. “Questions? Why? I was just trying to—”
“Mom,” I said, stepping closer. “Alyssa might be in danger.”
The look she gave me then—confusion, fear, denial all knotted together—was one I would never forget.
“I would never hurt her,” she whispered.
But the officers led her away.
And I stayed in the hallway feeling like someone had torn open the floor beneath me.
Two hours passed. The longest two hours of my life.
Finally, the doctor came out.
He didn’t look grim, but he didn’t look relieved either. A middle ground I hated instantly.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s stable. And so is the baby.”
My body sagged with the force of that relief. I had to grip the chair beside me to stay upright.
“She did ingest some,” he continued. “But only a small amount. We believe the risk of severe complications is low because we caught it quickly.”
I almost cried.
“Alyssa wants to see you,” he added.
I rushed into the room.
She lay on the bed, IV hooked into her arm, monitoring pads on her stomach. Her eyes were red around the edges, but she smiled when she saw me.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
“I will be,” she said. “Baby’s okay too.”
I sat beside her.
She squeezed my hand.
“Evan… what’s going to happen to your mom?”
“I don’t know.”
And I didn’t.
Because I wasn’t sure where the line stood between ignorance and negligence… and whether love was enough to erase the danger she’d put them in.
A few minutes later, Michael barged in, breathless, face stricken. He hugged Alyssa gently, touching her stomach as if to reassure himself she was really there.
When he faced me, his eyes were red.
“What the hell happened?”
I told him everything I knew.
When I mentioned pennyroot, his face twisted.
“Mom knew,” he said under his breath. “She’s mentioned pennyroot before. Said it ‘balances hormones.’ I told her not to use anything weird. I told her we were following the doctor’s guidance.”
He ran his hands through his hair.
“I can’t believe this.”
“Do you think she meant to—?” I hesitated.
He shook his head violently.
“No. God, no. She can be stubborn, but she’d never hurt Alyssa. Never.”
But then his voice broke.
“She just… can’t accept letting go of control.”
The three of us sat in silence.
A family split wide open by a thermos of tea.
Mom was questioned for hours. They didn’t arrest her—intent had to be proven—but they issued a warning and confiscated her entire cabinet of herbs for investigation. She cried when they let her go. Not the noisy kind. The quiet kind that shakes a person from the inside.
She wouldn’t talk to me for two days.
When she finally did, she asked me to come over.
Her house felt different when I walked in, as if the walls were holding their breath. She sat in her armchair, hands clasped.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
“I want to believe that,” I said.
“Evan…” She looked at me, really looked. “I was trying to help. That’s all.”
“I know,” I said. “But helping means listening. And trusting that they know what’s best for themselves.”
Her face crumpled.
“I guess I never learned how to… let my children grow up,” she said.
For the first time, I didn’t see her as my mother—the unshakable force of my childhood.
I saw her as a woman. Flawed. Scared. Trying too hard to matter.
And messing up in the worst way possible.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I nodded.
Sometimes forgiveness doesn’t come as a grand gesture.
Sometimes it starts as a nod.
Alyssa made a full recovery. So did the baby. Two months later, little Emma Grace Carter came into the world—a squirmy, red-faced miracle. Mom cried harder than anyone.
But she never made another herbal drink again.
Sometimes she’d glance at a thermos or a cup of tea and press her lips together like she was remembering a ghost.
One day, months later, while holding Emma, she said quietly:
“I almost lost all this because I thought I knew better than everyone else.”
I sat beside her.
“We didn’t lose anything,” I said. “We just… learned.”
She smiled through tears.
And I realized that sometimes the darkest things that spill out in front of us—brown, bitter, frightening—aren’t signs of evil.
Sometimes they’re signs of ignorance.
Or fear.
Or the human desire to fix things we don’t understand.
But it’s what we do next that defines us.
And my family—fractured, imperfect, loud, loving—chose to grow.
Chosen to heal.
Chosen to keep fighting for one another.
Even on Tuesdays.
