Chapter 2 - A House Full of Lies
The responder at the foot of the stairs asked me to point out where I’d seen the snake. Edgar answered before I could.
“It was probably an accident,” he said. “We’ve got brush behind the house. It could’ve come in through an open door.”
I looked at the streak of soil near the stairs. “It was under my blanket. On my side of the bed.”
The responder’s expression sharpened. Edgar’s didn’t.
“I’m just saying we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” he added. His phone stayed facedown in his hand.
I pointed upstairs, then told the responder what I had seen: the cloth sack, the gloves, the fireplace tool in Kristina’s hands. The words came out steadier than I felt. Every time I said them, Edgar watched me as if he were waiting for a mistake.
At the open front door, Kristina had stopped beside her car. She turned when I called her name. For a beat, she stood motionless, the porch light washing her face in a pale yellow glow. Then she came back to the doorway, one hand pressed to her chest.
“Nora, please,” she said. “I was frightened. I only wanted to help.”
“Help me do what?”
Her eyes flicked toward Edgar. “You were sick. You needed to rest.”
“I heard what you said in the bedroom.”
A little crease appeared between her brows, exactly where it did when she wanted people to mistake disapproval for worry. “You were upset. You might have misunderstood.”
“I heard you say Edgar deserved a wife who could give him children.”
Edgar stepped between us, not quite blocking the doorway but making sure I had to look at him. “Mom was trying to get you to lie down. You’ve had a terrible night.”
“No.” I kept my eyes on Kristina. “You were holding a sack. You wore gloves. You pushed something under my blanket with the fireplace tool.”
Kristina’s lips parted, then closed. She looked past me to the responders.
“I didn’t put anything in that bed,” she said.
The responder beside the stairs glanced from her to Edgar. Kristina’s hand tightened around her purse strap.
Edgar exhaled as if I’d embarrassed him. “There’s no way to know how it got there. We don’t need to turn one awful accident into something it isn’t.”
“One minute ago, you said it came in through an open door,” I said. “Which door?”
He held my gaze. “I don’t know, Nora. That’s the point.”
Kristina nodded once, quick and obedient. “We don’t know.”
The words settled between them like a rehearsed line. I could still see the two of them upstairs in my mind: his mother bent over our bed, his face waiting downstairs, the private words she’d whispered as if I were already gone.
I turned away before either of them could see how badly my hands were shaking.
The responders finished their check and told me the bedroom was clear. I thanked them, though the sound of my voice seemed to come from somewhere outside me. When they asked whether I needed anything else, Edgar answered that I was fine.
“I can answer for myself,” I said.
The responder gave me a small, sympathetic nod. Edgar’s jaw tightened. For the first time that night, I understood how much of our marriage had been built on the space between what I felt and what he told other people I felt.
When the responders left, I went upstairs with my phone. I photographed the disturbed blanket, the twisted corner of the quilt, and the indentation where something had shifted beneath the covers. The bedroom smelled of dust and the sharp, clean scent of whatever the responders had used. I kept the camera steady by gripping the phone with both hands.
Edgar appeared in the doorway.
“You don’t need to make this into a case,” he said.
I took one more picture. “I’m making sure I remember what I saw.”
“You’ve been through a lot. Maybe you should wait until morning before deciding what you think happened.”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
His silence lasted half a second too long.
Downstairs, the policy folder still sat on the dining-room table where I’d left it. The blue cover looked ordinary beneath the kitchen light. My name was printed across the front, clean and unmistakable.
I lifted my phone and photographed it.
Edgar came into the room behind me. “Why are you taking pictures of that?”
“Because it was on the table when your mother saw it.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
He reached for the folder. I put my palm flat on it.
“Let go,” he said.
His voice was quiet, but something in it had changed. This wasn’t the embarrassed patience he’d worn for the responders. It was the tone he used when he expected me to make things easier for him.
“No.”
He drew the folder toward himself. I pressed down harder, the edge biting into my palm.
May you like
For one sharp instant, neither of us moved. Then his fingers slipped free, and I looked down.
A fresh scratch cut across the blue cover exactly where the folder had dragged beneath my hand.
