PART 3
Gwen leaned against the wall as if her legs no longer responded. Liam took a step forward.
“I asked you a question,” Liam demanded.
She opened her mouth, but only a sob came out. “Liam, I didn’t know it was going to go this far.”
Those words were enough to destroy what little he still wanted to believe. “What didn’t you know?” he asked. “That my wife was sick? That someone was poisoning her? That you humiliated her until she felt alone in her own home?”
Gwen covered her face. “I just wanted to help you.”
Liam let out a dry, joyless laugh. “Help me?”
“I saw how you worked, how tired you were when you arrived, and how she made secret transfers,” Gwen cried. “Paige told me that Nora was dangerous, and that she had already destroyed a family before. She told me there was a way to scare her, to weaken her a little so that she would confess.”
Liam felt nauseous. “Weaken her?”
Gwen cried loudly. “She swore to me it wasn’t fatal. She said it would only make her dizzy and tired, and that’s how you’d open your eyes. I didn’t know about the sedative. I didn’t know Nora was going to try…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. Liam thought of Nora locked on the balcony, hugging her shoulders against the cold, believing her husband saw her as a thief.
He thought of the crumpled note she clutched in her hand. He had read it in the hospital.
“Forgive me. My mom needs surgery. I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m not a bad wife. I just didn’t know how to tell you I’m scared.”
Liam slumped down in a chair. “The money was for her mother,” he said, his voice breaking. “Mrs. Hazel has a tumor. Nora was saving up for the operation because she didn’t want to burden me with any more problems. And you pointed her out like she was a thief.”
Gwen lifted her face, her eyes swollen. “I did not know.”
“Because you never asked,” Liam replied. “Just like me.”
The silence was worse than any scream. Owen arrived shortly after with two officers, and Gwen was taken in for questioning. She was not handcuffed, but she had the look of someone who had just understood that a poorly chosen word can turn into tragedy.
That same afternoon, the police arrested Paige Brewer at the factory where she worked. In her apartment, they found a hidden jar, deleted messages, and a notebook with dates.
The dates coincided with the times Gwen had brought those remedies to Liam’s apartment. But that wasn’t the hardest part.
The hardest part was what Paige confessed. Three years earlier, Nora worked at a packing plant in Lansing.
There was an accident with an old machine that the company refused to repair. A worker was trapped. His name was Aaron Brewer. He was Paige’s older brother.
Nora tried to help him. She squeezed through the metal, cut her arm, and screamed for them to turn off the machine.
By the time the paramedics arrived, it was too late. The company blamed human error to avoid paying what it owed.
Aaron’s family looked for someone to hate, and Paige chose Nora. For three years she believed that Nora had caused her brother’s death.
For three years she nurtured a rage she didn’t know where to put. When Gwen told her about her suspicions regarding the transfers, Paige found the perfect opportunity.
“That woman already killed once,” Paige told Gwen. “Now she’s killing your brother.”
Gwen, blinded by fear and a twisted love, believed her. Paige patiently planned everything.
She approached Gwen with advice, gave her mixed herbs, and invented stories about women who cheated on their husbands. She taught her to look at Nora’s every gesture as if it were proof of guilt.
The night of the balcony incident, Paige entered the building with the key Gwen had hidden just in case. She went upstairs after Liam had already locked Nora in.
She wanted to see her suffer, to force her to confess something she had never done. But she found Nora almost fainted.
Nora, desperate, had taken sedatives. She didn’t exactly want to die, she wanted to sleep, to escape the pain for a while, to stop hearing her husband’s voice in her head calling her a liar.
Paige got scared. She tried to move her, but Nora fell against the railing, which is why the mark was there.
That’s why there was water on the floor, because Paige had spilled a glass when she came in and had walked to the balcony. That’s why the cigarette butt appeared behind the flowerpot, because Paige smoked while she decided whether to call emergency services or run away.
In the end, she fled. A neighbor who was out buying bread saw Nora downstairs and called an ambulance, and that call saved her life.
When Liam heard everything, he felt no relief. He felt ashamed.
Yes, Paige had poisoned Nora. Yes, Gwen had been an accomplice out of ignorance, out of pride, out of that cruel need to be right.
But he had closed the door. He had been the husband who preferred to suspect rather than ask.
The husband who let his sister humiliate his wife at their own dinner table. The husband who saw tears and mistook them for guilt.
On the third day, Nora woke up completely. Liam entered the hospital room with trembling hands.
He had bought flowers, but seeing her pale face, he understood the absurdity of the gesture. No bouquet could hide what had happened.
Nora was lying down, looking out the window. She had deep dark circles under her eyes and a bandage on her wrist where they had inserted the IV.
“Nora,” he whispered.
She didn’t turn around immediately. When she finally looked at him, Liam felt something break inside him.
There was no hatred in her eyes, which would have been easier to bear. There was weariness, an enormous weariness, as if she no longer had the strength even to complain.
“I know everything,” he said. “About your mother. About Paige. About her brother.”
Nora closed her eyes. “I tried to save him.”
“I know,” Liam replied.
“Nobody believed me,” she said softly.
Liam lowered his head. “Me neither.”
She took a deep breath, and a tear rolled down her temple. “That was the most painful part.”
Liam sat down next to the bed, but didn’t try to touch her. “I’m not here to ask for your forgiveness today,” he said. “I have no right. I’ve come to tell you that I’m going to confess everything, what Paige did, what Gwen did, and what I did. Because even if the law doesn’t punish me like them, I know I failed you too.”
Nora looked at him in silence. “My mom needs the surgery,” she said after a while.
“It’s already paid for,” Liam replied. “I spoke with the hospital in Detroit. Not to buy your forgiveness, just because it was what I should have done from the beginning, which was to be with you.”
Nora covered her mouth with her hand and she cried silently. Liam also cried.
They didn’t hug. There was no soap opera-style reconciliation.
They were just two broken people, sitting in a white room, understanding that some wounds don’t heal with a simple apology.
The following days were a series of statements, medical visits, and awkward silences. Paige was charged with assault and attempted poisoning…………………………..
