Chapter 2 - The Thing From the Hospital
I didn’t let Marlene touch the handbag again.
I called my brother, Ryan, who lived seven minutes away, and told him to come immediately.
Then I photographed the bag exactly as I had found it.
Marlene laughed bitterly.
“You’re treating your own mother like a criminal.”
“You threatened my baby.”
“I was trying to calm her down.”
“By telling her Nora would die?”
Her mouth tightened.
“I was angry.”
“That doesn’t explain Nora’s phone.”
For three days, my wife had been unconscious in St. Joseph’s Medical Center.
Doctors said she had collapsed after becoming severely disoriented at home.
I had found her at the bottom of our staircase.
No broken neck.
No major head trauma.
But something had been in her system that her doctors couldn’t initially explain.
Nora’s phone had disappeared the same night.
We assumed it had been lost during the ambulance chaos.
Apparently not.
Ryan arrived.
The moment he saw Lily clinging to my leg and our mother standing across the room, he stopped smiling.
“What happened?”
Marlene pointed at me.
“Your brother has lost his mind.”
I handed Ryan my phone.
He watched the thirty-second bedroom security clip.
I had installed the small indoor camera months earlier after a babysitter repeatedly left the nursery window open.
Ryan finished watching.
Then he looked at our mother.
“Jesus Christ, Mom.”
Marlene turned away.
I carefully removed the objects from the handbag while Ryan recorded.
Nora’s phone.
The envelope with Lily’s name.
A hospital visitor badge issued to Marlene the previous evening.
And beneath those—
a small silver medication case.
My stomach turned.
I recognized it immediately.
Nora kept one exactly like it in her purse.
Except hers had disappeared two weeks ago.
I opened it.
Empty.
Marlene moved suddenly.
“Don’t touch that.”
Ryan stepped between us.
“Why?”
“It’s mine.”
“No,” I said.
“Nora’s initials are engraved on the bottom.”
Marlene went silent.
Then Ryan noticed the envelope.
“What’s that?”
I opened it.
Inside were photocopies of documents relating to a trust created by Nora’s late father.
The beneficiary was Lily.
The trust was worth far more than I had realized.
And clipped to the back was a handwritten note.
Three words.
GET NORA SIGNATURE.
The handwriting looked exactly like my mother’s.
May you like
I slowly raised my eyes.
Marlene was already backing toward the door.
