Chapter 3: What the Document Said
Nora crossed the hallway in four steps.
The young woman flinched but didn't pull the document back.
Her hands were shaking.
Up close, Nora could see her eyes were red — not from crying tonight, but from crying for a long time.
Nora took the document.
It was a petition for divorce.
Filed eleven days ago.
Edgar's signature was already on it.
She read the first paragraph twice.
Then she looked up at her husband.
"You filed this before the insurance policy," she said.
Edgar's jaw tightened.
"Nora—"
"The policy was purchased two days ago.
This was filed eleven days ago." She held the papers up.
"You were already planning to leave."
"It wasn't like that."
"Then tell me what it was like."
He looked at his mother.
Kristina gave him nothing — just that same folded-arm stillness she had worn at the top of the stairs.
"I wasn't happy," Edgar said finally.
"I haven't been happy for a long time."
"And her?" Nora looked at the young woman directly for the first time.
"What's your name?"
The woman swallowed.
"Heather.
Heather Perkinson."
"How long?"
Heather glanced at Edgar.
He looked at the floor.
"Two years," Heather said quietly.
Two years.
Nora did the math without meaning to.
Two years ago she had been in the middle of her third round of fertility treatment.
She had come home from the clinic exhausted and Edgar had made dinner and held her hand across the table and told her they would get through it together.
She set the divorce papers on the entry table.
"Were you aware," Nora said, her voice still level, "that your mother put a live rattlesnake in our bed tonight?"
Heather's face went white.
Edgar's head came up.
"What?"
"She used a stick and a cloth bag.
She arranged the comforter over it so it looked undisturbed." Nora watched his face.
"She whispered that with the $25 million, you and Heather could start over and raise your child."
The silence that followed was total.
Then Heather turned to Kristina.
"You said you were just going to talk to her."
Kristina's expression didn't change.
"I handled it."
"You said—" Heather's voice broke.
"You said you were going to ask her to sign the divorce papers quietly.
That's what you said."
"And instead," Nora said, "she put a snake in my bed."
Edgar turned to his mother.
Something moved across his face — not guilt, not quite.
Something closer to the look of a man realizing the plan he thought he understood was actually a different plan entirely.
"Mom." His voice was low.
"What did you do?"
Kristina lifted her chin.
"What needed to be done.
You were too weak to do it yourself."
"That's not—" He stopped.
"That's not what I asked you to do.
That was never what I asked you to do."
"You asked me to fix it." Her voice was sharp and final.
"I was fixing it."
Nora picked up her phone from the couch cushion where she had left it.
"I'm calling the police," she said.
Kristina's composure cracked for the first time.
"You have no proof.
The snake came from the garden.
Animals get inside.
You can't prove anything."
"I recorded it," Nora said.
The room went completely still.
She had not planned to say that yet.
But watching Kristina's face shift — watching the certainty drain out of it — she was glad she had.
"You were in the hallway," Kristina said.
"You didn't have time—"
"I have a security camera inside the bedroom.
Motion-activated.
It's been there for eight months." Nora looked at her steadily.
"I installed it after you went through my desk."
Kristina's arms dropped from their folded position.
Heather sat down on the bottom stair without being invited.
Her hand went to her stomach.
Edgar said nothing.
He was looking at his mother the way a person looks at something they should have seen a long time ago and didn't.
Nora walked to the kitchen, picked up her car keys from the hook by the door, and turned back.
"I'm going to a hotel tonight," she said.
"By tomorrow morning, I'll have spoken to my attorney.
And by tomorrow afternoon, I'll have sent the camera footage to the police."
She looked at Edgar one last time.
"You should find somewhere else for your mother to stay.
Because this house is mine.
Every room of it.
Every brick."
She walked out.
Behind her, she heard Heather's voice, quiet and unsteady: "Edgar.
What did we do?"
May you like
She didn't hear his answer.
She was already through the garage door.
