Chapter 2 - Six Days EarlierBefore the fall, I thought my biggest problem with Evelyn Mercer was that she disliked me.
Not the pillow pressed over my face.
Not the sharp ache inside both of my broken arms.
Tomato soup.
It was ridiculous what the brain chose to hold on to when it thought you might die.
My mother-in-law had brought the soup twenty minutes earlier in a white ceramic bowl decorated with tiny blue flowers.
“Homemade,” she had said.
I hadn't touched it.
Now it sat cooling on the nightstand while Evelyn Mercer leaned over me and pushed a pillow harder against my mouth and nose.
Both of my forearms were trapped inside fiberglass casts from wrist to elbow.
I couldn't shove her away.
Couldn't scratch her.
Couldn't even properly reach the call button my husband had placed beside the bed before leaving for work.
Evelyn's breath brushed my ear.
“You should have left things alone, Rachel.”
My lungs burned.
I kicked beneath the blanket.
She pushed harder.
Then she whispered the sentence that changed everything.
“I loosened one bolt. No one will question a second fall.”
For six days, everyone had called what happened to me an accident.
The back stair railing had torn away when I grabbed it.
I had fallen twelve feet onto the concrete patio below.
Both arms fractured.
Three cracked ribs.
A concussion.
Doctors said I was lucky I hadn't broken my neck.
Evelyn had cried in the emergency room.
She'd held my husband's hand.
She'd brought flowers.
She'd told anyone willing to listen that the old railing had always worried her.
And now she was suffocating me while calmly admitting she had caused it.
My vision began narrowing.
Black spots danced along the ceiling.
Then my fingers brushed something hard beside the mattress.
My crutch.
I hooked two fingers around the aluminum shaft.
Pulled.
It slipped.
Evelyn didn't notice.
I tried again.
The crutch moved three inches.
Then six.
With everything I had left, I dragged it off the side of the bed.
It hit the hardwood floor with a metallic crash.
Evelyn froze.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
“Rachel?”
Denise.
My neighbor.
Evelyn ripped the pillow away.
Air flooded my lungs so violently I choked.
The bedroom door swung open.
Denise Harper stopped in the doorway.
She was still wearing the navy scrubs from her shift at the dental clinic next door.
Her eyes went from me—
to Evelyn—
to the pillow in Evelyn's hands.
Nobody spoke.
Then Denise noticed something I hadn't.
A streak of bright blue paint smeared across Evelyn's left sleeve.
Denise's expression changed.
She stepped between us.
“Put the pillow down.”
Evelyn blinked.
“What?”
“Put it down.”
“Rachel was panicking.”
Evelyn lowered the pillow slowly.
“The medication makes her confused. She couldn't breathe properly, so I was trying to calm her.”
Denise looked at me.
My face must have answered for me.
“She tried to kill me,” I whispered.
Evelyn gave a short, wounded laugh.
“Oh, Rachel.”
“Don't.”
Denise's voice had become cold.
She backed toward the hallway while keeping her eyes on Evelyn.
Then she pulled out her phone.
Evelyn finally lost her composure.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling 911.”
“For what?”
“Attempted murder sounds like a good place to start.”
Evelyn moved toward her.
Denise raised one hand.
“Don't.”
She wasn't big.
Barely five-four.
But there was something in her face that made Evelyn stop.
Then Denise pointed at Evelyn's sleeve.
“And I'd keep that sweater on if I were you.”
Evelyn looked down.
Her face drained of color.
The paint wasn't just blue.
It was the exact ugly cobalt blue my husband, Daniel, and I had used on the back stair railing two summers earlier.
The railing Evelyn swore she had never touched.
Sirens began somewhere in the distance.
Evelyn stared at the blue smear.
Then at me.
And for the first time since I had married her son eleven years earlier, I saw fear in her eyes.
Not anger.
Not contempt.
Fear.
She turned toward the door.
Denise blocked her.
“You're staying.”
Evelyn's lips tightened.
“You have no idea what you're involving yourself in.”
Denise glanced at me.
“No,” she said.
“But I think Rachel does.”
I did.
Because suddenly I remembered something from the morning of my fall.
Something I hadn't told anyone.
Ten minutes before the railing broke, I had seen Evelyn's car parked two streets away.
And when I had confronted her about it later from my hospital bed, she had smiled and told me I must have imagined it.
At the time, I blamed the concussion.
Now I knew better.
And if Evelyn had sabotaged that railing—
May you like
then she hadn't come to my house that afternoon just to finish what she'd started.
She had come because there was something she was terrified I might remember.
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