Chapter 14 - What Did “Gone” Mean?
Police collected Natalie from the motel.
She gave a complete statement.
Lorraine denied threatening her.
She claimed Natalie was emotional and misunderstood.
But investigators were no longer treating anything Lorraine said casually.
Neither was I.
Megan obtained an emergency order preventing Lorraine from entering my home.
Andrew received notice that afternoon that I had filed for divorce.
He called thirty-one times.
I answered none.
Thomas Reed, my divorce attorney, instructed him to communicate through counsel.
Andrew ignored that instruction.
His messages moved through predictable stages.
Please let me explain.
I love you.
You are destroying everything.
My mother is sick because of you.
We can fix this.
Then finally.
You will regret making me your enemy.
I saved every message.
Thomas did too.
By the end of the week, the federal investigation expanded.
Andrew’s employer suspended him.
The commercial property lender opened a fraud inquiry.
The attempted inheritance transfer became additional evidence.
The forged life insurance application drew its own investigation.
But I kept returning to Natalie’s statement.
Andrew solved the Claire problem.
What had Lorraine meant?
Daniel searched Andrew’s browsing history from a laptop he had left at the apartment.
The results frightened me.
He had searched divorce property division.
Inheritance and marital assets.
Selling jointly titled home.
Life insurance contestability.
Accidental death coverage.
Medication interactions.
I stared at Daniel.
“What medication?”
“He searched combinations involving sedatives.”
My stomach tightened.
I rarely took medication.
Then I remembered something.
Two months earlier, I had become violently ill after dinner.
Vomiting.
Dizziness.
Confusion.
Andrew had insisted I was exhausted from work.
He gave me water.
He kept telling me to sleep.
I had barely remembered the following morning.
As a paramedic, I should have recognized the symptoms.
But I trusted my husband.
I called the clinic where I worked.
A colleague helped arrange toxicology testing using a stored blood sample from an occupational screening I had completed the same week.
The sample had been preserved for laboratory quality control.
The results came two days later.
A sedative was detected.
One I had never been prescribed.
My hands shook as I read the report.
Thomas immediately contacted police.
Andrew was questioned again.
He denied drugging me.
Lorraine denied knowing anything.
Then Daniel discovered a pharmacy purchase.
The medication had been prescribed to Lorraine after a dental procedure.
The prescription had been filled three days before I became sick.
Lorraine claimed the tablets had disappeared from her bathroom.
I sat in Thomas’s office listening to the explanation.
“Can they prove Andrew gave it to me?”
“Not yet.”
“What about Lorraine?”
“Not yet.”
I hated those words.
Not yet.
That evening, I returned home with a police escort to collect additional belongings.
The house felt different.
Every room contained memories I no longer trusted.
I stood in the kitchen where Andrew had prepared dinner the night I became sick.
Then I noticed the small security camera above the garage door.
I had forgotten about it.
Andrew installed cameras after several neighborhood burglaries.
Most stored footage only thirty days.
But the kitchen system had once been connected to a cloud backup because I used it to monitor my grandmother’s old dog.
I logged into the archived account.
Months of clips remained.
My heart pounded.
I searched the date I became ill.
The footage loaded.
Andrew stood at the kitchen counter.
Lorraine stood beside him.
I watched my husband crush something beneath the bottom of a glass.
Then Lorraine handed him my wine.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Lorraine said clearly enough for the microphone to capture.
“If she signs the papers tomorrow, we can finally move forward.”
Andrew poured the powder into my glass.
He whispered.
“She just needs to be calm.”
I stopped breathing.
This was not suspicion anymore.
May you like
This was evidence.
And they had both been involved.
