Part 4
Inside the small, windowless bathroom, Natalie turned the shower dial all the way past the red indicator. As the old pipes groaned and steam began to fog the mirror, she moved quietly to the vanity. She opened the medicine cabinet, her eyes scanning the neat rows of prescription bottles, tubes of ointment, and Lorraine’s heavy glass perfume bottles. Nothing. She checked behind the spare towels in the linen closet. Still nothing.
It had been a long shot to think Peter would hide anything so easily accessible, but she had to try.
Natalie closed the cabinet door and leaned against the painted wood of the bathroom door. Over the hiss of the shower, she caught the low, muffled cadence of voices from the kitchen just down the hall. She held her breath, pressing her ear flat against the door panel.
“You have to rein her in, Pete,” Lorraine was saying, her voice a harsh, sibilant whisper. “She’s completely out of control. If you let her talk to us like that, we’ll have no peace.”
“And what exactly do you want me to do, Ma?” Peter shot back, the familiar whine creeping into his tone. “If I push her right now, she’s actually going to pack a bag. And then how do we pay the property tax next month?”
“Don’t look at me,” Mike interjected. The scrape of a chair against the linoleum suggested he was sitting down at the kitchen table. “I’m not covering her half of the bills. My paycheck is tapped out.”
“See?” Peter said. “We need her. Just let her cool off. She always comes around.”
A heavy silence stretched over the hallway. Then, Lorraine spoke again, her voice tight with a new anxiety. “What if she knows? What if she talked to someone?”
“Keep your voice down,” Mike snapped.
Natalie squeezed her eyes shut. The steam was making the small bathroom unbearably hot, but she didn’t dare move away from the door.
“Did you hide that envelope I gave you?” Peter asked, his voice dropping an octave. “The one with the drive and the paperwork?”
“I told you I did,” Lorraine said defensively. “It’s in my bedroom. She never goes in there. I don’t want her touching my things anyway.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way,” Peter sighed. “God, I am so sick of this apartment. I’m sick of takeout. I want a real dinner.”
“Well, maybe if you could actually collect disability, we wouldn’t be living off a music teacher’s salary,” Mike pointed out, a smirk audible in his voice.
“Shut up, Mike,” Peter growled. “You know damn well I can’t pass the medical review for SSDI. The doctors won’t sign off on the permanent status.”
Natalie’s brow furrowed. She had assumed Peter’s lack of disability checks was due to bureaucratic red tape—a lost file, a backlogged system. He had spent hours complaining about the broken government agencies. But if his own doctors wouldn’t sign the paperwork declaring him permanently disabled, that meant his medical chart told a very different story than the one he told her.
“I still don’t understand why I should have to dip into my retirement,” Lorraine grumbled. “I’ve been saving that pension for a Viking river cruise for three years. I’m not draining it to pay the electric bill just because your wife is throwing a tantrum.”
Natalie stepped back from the door, the heat of the shower suddenly suffocating. Her husband couldn’t pass a disability review because he was likely healing, if not already capable of working. Her mother-in-law was sitting on a pension fund specifically earmarked for a European vacation while Natalie worked double shifts to pay their grocery bills. And Mike was just happily coasting on her dime.
She turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around her dry hair to complete the illusion, and pulled on her pajamas. When she walked out of the bathroom and down the hall, she didn’t even look toward the kitchen. She went straight to the guest room she shared with Peter, shut the door, and lay in the dark, her mind racing. The memory card was in Lorraine’s bedroom. She just needed the house empty to find it.
The next morning, Natalie skipped breakfast entirely. She left the house before anyone else was awake, picking up two large coffees from a drive-thru on her way to the arts center. She headed straight for Practice Room 2, where her closest friend, Stacy, taught violin.
They had known each other for thirteen years. Back in their early twenties, Stacy had fallen in with a destructive crowd, her life spiraling fast into substance abuse and terrible decisions. Natalie had been the one to pull her out of it, showing up at awful apartments at two in the morning, dragging Stacy to meetings, and offering her own couch until Stacy got clean. Stacy was now married, a mother of a toddler, and fiercely loyal.
Stacy looked up from tightening a bow as Natalie walked in. She took one look at Natalie’s pale face and set the violin down in its velvet-lined case.
“Lock the door,” Stacy said, reaching for one of the coffee cups. “What happened?”
Natalie sank onto the small piano bench. Over the next twenty minutes, she poured out everything. She told Stacy about Evan ambushing her in the parking lot, the missing dashcam, the corrupt police officer, and the conversation she had eavesdropped on through the bathroom door.
Stacy listened without interrupting, taking slow sips of her coffee. When Natalie finally finished, the room was quiet.
“So the drive is in Lorraine’s room,” Stacy said, processing the information. “And Pete can’t get on SSDI because the doctors won’t sign off.” She narrowed her eyes. “Nat. Do you remember right before the crash, when Pete kept complaining about that logistics job? He hated his manager. He was threatening to quit every other week.”
“I remember,” Natalie said, rubbing her temples. “He’d had four different jobs in three years. We had a massive fight about it.”
“And then the accident happens,” Stacy said, leaning forward. “He quits officially a month later, claiming the company wasn’t accommodating his wheelchair. What if he’s physically cleared to work, but he realized playing the tragic, disabled husband means he never has to hold down a job again? He gets to sit on the couch, and you get to pay for his life.”
The bluntness of the theory stung, but it fit perfectly into the hollow space in Natalie’s chest.
“I need to get into Lorraine’s room,” Natalie said quietly. “But she rarely leaves the house. And if she does, Peter is there.”
A slow, calculating smile spread across Stacy’s face. “I think Chris can help with that.”
“Chris? Stacy, no. I can’t drag your husband into this.”
“You already did,” Stacy countered. “I told him about the financial strain last night before you even found out all this new stuff. You know Chris thinks you hung the moon. If it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t have a wife, and our daughter wouldn’t have a mother. He wants to help.”
Stacy reached into her oversized leather tote bag and pulled out a heavy cream-colored envelope, tossing it onto the lid of the piano.
“What is this?” Natalie asked, picking it up.
“Two weekend passes to the Oakwood Wellness Retreat up in the mountains,” Stacy said, her smile widening. “All expenses paid. Massages, hot springs, the works. It’s exactly the kind of pretentious, expensive garbage Lorraine loves, and it gets Pete out of the house. Chris bought them this morning.”
Natalie stared at the embossed logo on the envelope. Oakwood was notoriously expensive. “Stacy, I can’t pay him back for this anytime soon.”
“He doesn’t want you to pay him back,” Stacy said firmly, standing up. “He wants you free. You give those to them tonight. Tell them it’s a caregiver grant from the teacher’s union or something. They’re too greedy to turn down a free luxury trip.”
“Mike will still be home,” Natalie pointed out, anxiety threading through her voice.
“Mike works the swing shift on Saturdays,” Stacy reminded her. “He leaves at noon. As soon as he pulls out of that driveway, I’m coming over. We’ll tear Lorraine’s room apart together.”
That evening, the atmosphere in the house was thick with lingering tension from the night before. Peter was sullenly watching television, and Lorraine was aggressively chopping vegetables at the kitchen counter.
Natalie walked into the living room and tossed the cream-colored envelope onto Peter’s lap.
“What’s this?” he muttered, looking at it with suspicion.
“My union representative stopped by the center today,” Natalie said smoothly, keeping her expression pleasantly neutral. “They have a wellness fund for educators dealing with family medical crises. They awarded us a two-night stay at the Oakwood Retreat this weekend. It’s fully paid.”
Lorraine stopped chopping. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and walked briskly into the living room, snatching the envelope from Peter’s lap. She read the voucher, her eyes widening at the name of the resort.
“Oakwood?” Lorraine murmured, the hostility momentarily vanishing, replaced by naked avarice. “This is a five-star property. The hydrotherapy pools alone cost a fortune.”
“It’s for the patient and a primary caregiver,” Natalie lied effortlessly. “I told them I can’t take the time off this weekend because of my tutoring schedule. So, you two should go.”
Peter looked from the voucher to Natalie, his brow furrowed. “You’re giving this to us?”
“You’ve been trapped in the house, Pete,” she said, feeding his favorite complaint right back to him. “You need a change of scenery. Consider it a peace offering.”
Lorraine clutched the envelope tightly to her chest, as if she expected Natalie to suddenly snatch it back. “Well,” the older woman sniffed, trying to regain her usual haughty composure. “It’s about time your job provided some actual benefits.”
Natalie turned and walked back toward her bedroom, a small, cold smile touching her lips. They took the bait.