At 2:17 a.m., my husband came into our bedroom wearing latex gloves. I didn’t move. For weeks, I had felt strangely exhausted after chamomile tea Marcus made every night. So that evening, I poured it down the sink, climbed into bed, and pretended to be asleep. Then, at exactly 2:17 a.m., the bedroom door opened. Marcus slipped inside carrying a small black bag. He placed a camera beside the bed. Sweet dreams, Anna, he whispered. My heart nearly stopped.

Then he opened the bag. Inside were several tiny bottles, photographs, and a stack of handwritten notes. I recognized one of the photographs. It wasn’t me. It was another woman. And beneath her picture, Marcus had written three words: She lasted eleven days. Then he pulled out another photograph. This time, I recognized the face. Because I had met her before. And she had been dead for six months.

My mind raced back to last summer when Marcus had introduced me to Clara at a neighborhood gathering. She had seemed vibrant, healthy, and full of life, yet her obituary appeared in the local paper just a month later, attributed to a sudden heart failure. Now her face stared up from the darkness of our bedroom floor under the glow of the hallway light spilling through the cracked door. Marcus adjusted the small lens on the bedside table, making sure it angled directly toward my pillow.

I kept my breathing slow and even, forcing my eyes to stay half closed behind my heavy eyelids. My throat felt dry, and I realized with a sickening jolt how close I had come to drinking the warm liquid he brought me every single night without fail. For months, I had blamed my constant brain fog and lethargy on the stress of my mother’s passing and managing the bookstore downtown. Every evening around ten o’clock, Marcus would insist on brewing the special calming blend himself, standing over the stove until it steeped just right. He would hand me the mug with a gentle smile, watching me take the first sip before he went back down to his study.

As Marcus slipped out of the room as quietly as he had entered, I waited three full minutes before I dared to move a muscle. The silence in the house felt heavy and suffocating.

I slipped out from under the covers, my bare feet touching the cold hardwood floor. The small black bag sat zipped shut where he had left it near the foot of our dresser, but he had taken the tiny bottles and photographs with him down the hall. I crept toward the door, my hand trembling as I gripped the brass knob. I needed to see what else he was hiding before morning came and he realized I was still awake.

PART 2

I followed the faint sound of floorboards creaking down the hallway toward the guest study at the far end of the house. A sliver of amber light beamed from beneath the closed door. I pressed my ear against the wood and heard the low murmur of Marcus talking to someone on the phone.

You have to be careful, Marcus said, his voice tense and sharp in a way I had never heard in our twenty years of marriage.

She almost didn’t finish the cup tonight. If she starts asking questions about Clara, the whole timeline falls apart.

A pause followed, filled only by the muffled static of whoever was on the other end of the line. I gripped the doorframe to steady my knees. Clara had not died of natural causes. Marcus was involved, and whatever he was giving me in the tea was meant to weaken me the exact same way. I backed away slowly, descending the stairs into the kitchen where I had dumped the chamomile blend hours earlier. The sink drain was still wet. I pulled open the lower cabinets where Marcus kept his private supplies, the boxes of supplements, the unmarked vials, and the old lockbox he claimed held only tax papers from his accounting firm.

The lockbox sat on the bottom shelf, gathering dust. I took a heavy kitchen spoon and jammed the handle beneath the metal latch, twisting until the lock snapped with a dull pop. Inside lay a ledger filled with neat columns of dates, names, and amounts of money alongside medical bills for Clara and two other women I did not recognize. Folded beneath the ledger was a life insurance policy naming Marcus as the primary beneficiary for half a million dollars, signed just six months before Clara passed away.

Marcus’s footsteps echoed on the stairs above. I dropped the lid, grabbed my phone from the kitchen counter, and slipped out the back door into the cool night air just as the kitchen light clicked on.

PART 3

I sat in my car parked two blocks away under the dim glow of a municipal streetlamp, my fingers shaking as I dialed the sheriff’s department. The dispatcher answered on the second ring, and I gave her my address, telling her about the ledger in the kitchen and the photographs in our bedroom. By the time dawn broke over the tree line, two cruisers sat in our driveway with their blue lights turning silently against the gray morning sky.

Marcus stood on the porch in his bathrobe, his face pale as the officers led him down the steps in handcuffs. He did not look angry. He looked surprised, as if he simply could not understand how his careful plan had unraveled.

I stayed inside the kitchen while the investigators cataloged the contents of the lockbox and bagged the tea residue from the sink drain. One of the deputies brought out the small black bag from the guest study, placing it on the kitchen table beside my mother’s old porcelain teapot. Inside were the chemical reports Marcus had printed out, detailing the exact dosage of sedatives required to mimic chronic fatigue and cardiac arrest over a period of weeks. Clara’s death had not been an accident, and neither would mine have been if I had taken that final cup.

ENDING

The house was empty by evening, save for the hum of the refrigerator and the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall. I walked into the kitchen, picked up the ceramic mug Marcus had left out the night before, and carried it straight to the trash can. I dropped it inside, watching the pieces settle at the bottom. Then I walked to the sink, turned on the faucet, and let the cold water run until it cleared.