Part 5
Saturday morning arrived with a thick, humid heat that pressed against the windows of Lorraine’s house. A specialized medical transport van sat idling in the driveway, its hydraulic lift humming as the driver prepared to load Peter’s wheelchair.
Standing on the front porch, Lorraine adjusted the strap of her oversized leather weekender bag and pointed a manicured finger at Natalie.
“While we are gone,” Lorraine instructed, her tone clipped and authoritative, “I expect the downstairs floors to be thoroughly mopped. And stay out of my bedroom. There is no reason for you to be in there.”
“How am I supposed to vacuum the hallway if I can’t plug anything in?” Natalie asked mildly, keeping her face perfectly blank.
“Figure it out,” Lorraine dismissed her with a wave of her hand. “I know how clumsy you are. You don’t know how to handle nice things. I don’t need you breaking my crystal.”
Natalie simply nodded, pressing her lips together to keep from saying what she actually thought. She wouldn’t insult her own upbringing by stooping to Lorraine’s level. Her grandmother, Nana Maria, had raised her better than that.
Natalie’s parents had been field geologists. They were always traveling, leaving her with her grandmother for months at a time. When Natalie was seven, they had flown back for a colleague’s wedding in upstate New York. On the drive back to their hotel, a sudden torrential downpour had caused their taxi to hydroplane, sending the car skidding off a slick bridge into the deep river below. By some cruel twist of physics, the driver had managed to smash his window and swim to the bank. Her parents had not.
From that day on, Maria had raised Natalie with a quiet, fierce devotion. She taught Natalie resilience, compassion, and the importance of taking care of the people you loved. It was that exact ingrained loyalty that had kept Natalie tethered to Peter for the past six months. She had truly believed it was her duty to care for the husband she had inadvertently harmed. But understanding your duty was one thing; allowing yourself to be used as a doormat was another. Her grandmother had raised a kind woman, not a victim. Today, Natalie was going to prove it.
Down in the driveway, Mike finished helping Peter maneuver his chair onto the metal platform of the transport lift. Peter looked visibly annoyed, his jaw tight behind his dark sunglasses. He had absolutely no intention of spending his weekend doing hydrotherapy with his mother at the Oakwood Retreat.
For weeks, Peter had been secretly orchestrating a very different weekend. Allison, his ex-girlfriend, had become a permanent fixture in his life again. What had started as Allison dropping by to offer “sympathy” had quickly reignited into a full-blown affair. Allison was polished, demanding, and utterly convinced that Peter was the tragic victim of a careless wife. Lately, she had been pressuring him to finalize a divorce, tired of sneaking around.
Peter, however, was in no rush. Allison was exciting, but Natalie was a functional ATM who cooked, cleaned, and paid the mortgage. If he left Natalie now, he would have to start paying his own bills, which meant he would have to admit he was physically capable of working. Peter liked his life exactly as it was: comfortable, funded, and free of responsibility. He planned to fake a migraine as soon as they reached the retreat, leave his mother at the spa, and take an Uber straight to Allison’s apartment in the city.
Without a word to Natalie, Mike slapped the side of the van twice, shoved his hands into his pockets, and started walking down the sidewalk, heading toward the main avenue. Natalie watched the van pull away, the taillights blinking as it turned the corner. The house was finally empty.
She immediately pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed Stacy.
“They’re gone,” Natalie said, her voice dropping into a breathless rush.
“Did Mike leave?” Stacy asked over the Bluetooth connection in her car.
“He just walked off down the block. He usually takes the bus to his security shift on Saturdays.”
“Alright, Chris and I are ten minutes out,” Stacy said. “Don’t do anything until we get there.”
“Okay,” Natalie said, hanging up.
She stood in the quiet hallway for exactly ten seconds before her patience evaporated. She couldn’t just stand there and wait. What if Lorraine had realized she forgot something and ordered the van to turn around?
To give herself a plausible excuse just in case, Natalie dragged the heavy upright Dyson vacuum from the hall closet. She rolled it to the door of Lorraine’s bedroom, turned the brass knob, and pushed it open.
The room smelled overwhelmingly of heavy lavender perfume and old paper. The curtains were drawn tightly, casting everything in a gloomy, sepia-toned shadow. Natalie took a shallow breath, walked straight to the large oak dresser, and began carefully opening the drawers, feeling beneath the stacks of neatly folded sweaters. Nothing. She moved to the bedside table. Nothing.
“What are you doing?”
The voice behind her was low and dangerously calm.
Natalie flinched violently, her shoulder knocking against the heavy wooden nightstand. She spun around.
Mike was standing in the doorway. He hadn’t gone to the bus stop. He had circled back.
“I was… I was getting ready to vacuum,” Natalie stammered, her heart suddenly hammering against her ribs. She took a step back, her hand instinctively gripping the plastic handle of the Dyson.
“My mother explicitly told you not to come in here,” Mike said. He didn’t raise his voice, but he stepped over the threshold, closing the bedroom door behind him with a soft, definitive click.
Natalie’s throat tightened. The air in the room suddenly felt too thick to breathe. “I forgot,” she lied quickly, trying to project a confidence she didn’t feel. “I’ll just start in the living room.”
She tried to walk past him, pushing the vacuum forward as a makeshift shield, but Mike smoothly stepped into her path, blocking her exit.
“Not so fast,” Mike said. His eyes raked over her, a dark, unsettling amusement playing on his face. “You don’t own this place anymore, Natalie. You’re only here because my brother lets you stay. And you’ve been acting awfully brave lately.”
“Get out of my way, Mike,” Natalie demanded, raising her chin. She tightened her grip on the vacuum handle, her knuckles turning white.
“Why are you so eager to run back to him?” Mike laughed, a dry, ugly sound. “You really think he needs you? You think you’re his savior?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Move.”
“I’m talking about the fact that you’re a fool,” Mike said, taking a slow step toward her. Natalie was forced to take a step back, her calves hitting the edge of Lorraine’s mattress. “My brother hasn’t needed that chair in months. He’s been walking fine since March. You’re just paying his bills while he plays you for an absolute idiot.”
The words hit Natalie like a bucket of ice water. Since March. He had been walking since March. While she was working double shifts and crying from exhaustion in her car, Peter had been walking.
“Where are his medical files?” Natalie demanded, her fear suddenly overridden by a blinding, white-hot surge of anger. “The ones Lorraine is hiding.”
“They’re in this room,” Mike smiled, his gaze dropping to her collarbone. “But you’re not going to see them. You know, since my brother’s busy hooking up with Allison again, maybe you and I should come to our own arrangement.”
He lunged forward, his large hand wrapping painfully around her upper arm.
Natalie shrieked. She shoved the heavy vacuum directly into his shins. Mike cursed, stumbling backward as the plastic casing cracked against his bone. Natalie didn’t hesitate. She scrambled backward over the mattress, putting the large bed between them.
“Help!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, grabbing a heavy brass lamp from the nightstand. “Somebody help me!”
“Shut up!” Mike snarled, recovering his balance. He planted his hands on the mattress, preparing to vault over it. “Nobody can hear you!”
The bedroom door flew open with such force that the doorknob punched a hole into the drywall.
Stacy stood in the doorway, her feet planted wide, her arm fully extended. In her hand was a small, black canister of military-grade pepper spray, aimed directly at Mike’s face.
“Take one more step toward her, and you’ll be coughing up your own lungs for a week,” Stacy said, her voice shaking with adrenaline but completely devoid of hesitation.
Mike froze, his eyes darting to the canister. “Hey, crazy lady, put that down. We were just talking.”
“You lying piece of garbage,” Natalie yelled from the far side of the bed, her chest heaving. “He wouldn’t let me out!”
A massive shadow fell over Stacy’s shoulder. Chris stepped into the room. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. At six-foot-three, with the broad shoulders of a former college linebacker, Chris simply filled the space, his jaw locked tight.
Mike swallowed hard, taking a very slow step backward away from the bed. “This is private property,” he muttered, though the bravado had completely vanished from his voice. “I’ll call the cops.”
“Call them,” Chris said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. He stepped further into the room, forcing Mike to back up until his shoulders hit the closet door. “I’d love to explain to the police why I found you cornering my wife’s best friend in a locked bedroom.”
Mike looked at the floor, raising his hands in surrender. “Look, man. I didn’t do anything.”
“Natalie,” Stacy said, keeping the canister aimed at Mike. “How much time do you need to pack your things?”
“Twenty minutes,” Natalie said, climbing off the bed. Her legs felt like jelly, but she moved quickly, grabbing her purse from the floor.
“Go,” Chris told her. “I’ll keep him company.”
Natalie ran out of the room, Stacy right behind her. They dragged Natalie’s two large suitcases from the guest closet and began frantically throwing clothes, shoes, and toiletries into them, not bothering to fold anything. In less than fifteen minutes, the bags were zipped.
They rolled the suitcases back to the hallway, where Chris was still standing guard over a very quiet, very pale Mike.
“We got everything,” Stacy announced.
“No, we didn’t,” Natalie said, stopping in the doorway of Lorraine’s room. She looked directly at Mike. “You said there were files in here. Proof that Peter is walking.”
Mike stared at the floor, refusing to answer.
Chris took one single, heavy step forward.
“Okay, okay!” Mike flinched, pointing a shaking finger toward a heavy upholstered armchair in the corner of the room. “Underneath. Taped to the bottom.”
Chris knelt down, running his hand under the fabric skirt of the armchair. A loud tearing sound filled the room as he ripped away a thick layer of duct tape. He stood up, holding a heavy, oversized manila envelope. He flipped it open, glancing at the stack of medical records and legal documents inside, before handing it to Natalie.
“Is this it?” Chris asked.
“Yes,” Natalie said, pressing the heavy envelope to her chest. Her hands were shaking. They hadn’t found Evan’s dashcam, but this was the proof she needed to obliterate Peter’s lies in court. “Let’s go.”
Chris grabbed the two heavy suitcases effortlessly, and the three of them walked out the front door, leaving it wide open behind them.
The bright summer sun hit Natalie’s face, and for the first time in half a year, the air actually felt breathable. She had her freedom. She had the documents.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” Stacy exhaled as they reached the edge of the driveway, her hand trembling as she finally dropped the pepper spray back into her purse. “Are you okay, Nat?”
“I am now,” Natalie said, pulling Stacy into a tight, fierce hug. “Thank you. Both of you. You literally saved my life today.”
“Anytime,” Chris said, loading the suitcases into the trunk of his SUV. “Now let’s get you out of here before that idiot inside decides to get brave again.”
“Natalie?”
The unexpected voice made all three of them turn around.
Standing on the sidewalk, wearing a tailored linen dress and oversized designer sunglasses, was a tall, strikingly polished woman. Natalie had never met her in person, but she recognized her instantly from the photos Lorraine kept in the living room.
It was Allison.
Allison took off her sunglasses, her perfectly manicured fingers trembling slightly. “Natalie,” she repeated, her voice tight with an emotion Natalie couldn’t quite identify. “We need to talk.”