Chapter 7 - The Woman in the Photograph
The old contact card was buried in the shared tablet’s address book, attached to the number Heather had used in her messages. Heather Vale. Cedar Women’s Center. The card was years old; the pin beneath the clinic’s name led to a prenatal office across town.
June watched me read it.
“You don’t have to meet her.”
“I know.”
I slid my old appointment card into my purse beside my phone. Its softened edges pressed against my fingers, a small reminder of the years I’d spent letting other people’s judgments tell me what my life lacked. I wasn’t going to let anger make my next choice for me—but I wasn’t going to let fear make it, either.
June drove. We parked across from the clinic and waited beneath a bare-branched maple while the late-afternoon wind scraped dead leaves along the curb. When a woman stepped through the glass doors, one hand at the small of her back, I recognized the name before I recognized her face.
Heather was visibly pregnant. She wore a loose gray coat and held a white envelope against her stomach. For one suspended moment, I saw only the baby she’d mentioned in those messages—the life she said she couldn’t bring into this if I was still alive.
Then I remembered that she had known enough to ask whether Edgar’s mother had taken care of it.
I crossed the sidewalk before I could change my mind.
“Heather?”
She stopped. Her eyes went to my face, then to the phone in my hand.
“Nora.”
I hadn’t told her my name. The silence between us answered the question I hadn’t asked: Edgar had.
June came up beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine.
“I’m not here to yell at you,” I said. “I’m here to hear what you know.”
Heather looked toward the clinic doors. A woman in blue scrubs pushed through them, glanced our way, and kept walking.
“I didn’t know he’d put a real snake in your bed.”
The words came out too quickly, as if she’d been rehearsing them.
“You knew there was supposed to be a snake.”
Her mouth tightened. She looked down at the envelope in her hands.
“I knew his mother was going to scare you. I thought she’d make it look like an accident—something that would make you leave, or make you look unstable. Edgar said no one would get hurt.”
“Did he say that before or after he told you the first attempt was supposed to work?”
Heather flinched. The answer didn’t need words.
My anger rose hot and clean, but beneath it was something worse: the knowledge that she had built a place for herself inside my marriage while I sat in fertility-clinic waiting rooms, trying to believe that wanting a family was still enough to make Edgar love me.
“You talked about me like I was an obstacle,” I said. “Like the baby mattered only if I was gone.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Her eyes shone. “I don’t know how to fix what I did.”
“I didn’t ask you to fix it.”
I held up my phone. “I saved the messages. The one about the cabin, too.”
At the word cabin, Heather’s gaze snapped to mine. She reached for my phone.
I pulled it back.
“Don’t.”
“I need to see exactly what you have.”
“No. You need to tell me what you know.”
For a second, her face hardened. Then fear broke through it.
“Edgar came up with the cabin,” she said. “He said you’d feel safe there because it belonged to his mother. He said nobody would suspect anything if something happened out there.”
June’s hand closed around my elbow. Heather’s words made the cold feel suddenly sharper, the traffic louder, the open stretch of sidewalk less like a public place and more like a stage someone else had chosen.
“Did you agree to go?” I asked.
“I agreed to the affair. I agreed to let him tell me whatever I needed to hear.” She swallowed. “I didn’t agree to this.”
The confession didn’t absolve her. It did, however, sound like a person who had finally heard the shape of her own choices.
A dark sedan rolled slowly along the curb. It passed the clinic entrance, then eased toward us, its front wheel angling against the gutter. Heather saw it. Her fingers tightened around the envelope.
June stepped forward.
“Hey!”
The sedan surged away, tires hissing over the pavement. It cut through the next intersection without stopping.
Nobody spoke until its red taillights disappeared.
Heather’s hand was trembling now. She looked at June, then at me, and took a step back.
“I can’t stay here.”
“Then tell me what he’s planning.”
“I don’t know all of it.”
“Do you know enough to help?”
Her gaze dropped to my phone again, and suspicion tightened in my chest. Was she afraid for us—or afraid of what my screenshots could do to her?
“I have to go,” she whispered.
She pulled her own phone from her coat. The screen lit her face from below, turning her pale.
“He knows I talked to you.”
She turned the screen toward me.
May you like
The message was from Edgar.
Bring Nora to the cabin. Tonight. Don’t let her come with anyone.
