A small flash drive and a folded sheet of notebook paper fell onto the white sink. The note was covered in Laura’s hurried handwriting. In it, her sister begged forgiveness and wrote that she had waited far too long to tell the truth. Laura said that polished, respectable Greg was not the loving husband Natalie believed him to be. He was a monster.
The lines shook with guilt. Laura urged Natalie to watch whatever was on the flash drive. Natalie read the note again and again until the words blurred together. Then, moving almost mechanically, she took out an old laptop from the hall closet and plugged in the drive.
Greg had long since upgraded to sleek new devices, and this battered old computer had been forgotten on a shelf. The scratched-up screen flickered to life and showed a homemade video: Laura, alive, sitting at her tiny kitchen table. Behind her were the green curtains Natalie remembered and the old kettle on the stove.
Laura’s face was swollen from crying. Her eyes were red, and her fingers kept shredding a paper napkin. Natalie reached out and touched the cold screen without thinking, as if she could somehow reach her sister through it. Through static and poor audio, Laura began to speak. Six months earlier, Greg had come to her apartment for what he called a serious talk.
Natalie had been working an overnight shift at the hospital that evening, and Laura had let her brother-in-law in without a second thought. Once inside, he started complaining about how distant Natalie had become, how much time she spent at work, how lonely he felt in their marriage. Looking straight into the camera, Laura broke down and said she would never forgive herself for what happened next.
She admitted that after that night, she had spent three miserable months unable to look Natalie in the eye. She reminded her sister about the “seasonal allergies” she had claimed to have—those had really been from crying night after night. Finally, crushed by guilt, Laura had called Greg and demanded that he tell Natalie the truth.
If he didn’t, she said, she would. Greg had gone silent for a long moment. Then, in a cold voice, he told her to forget that idea and hung up. Alone in her apartment, Laura said she felt real fear for the first time. She recorded the video quickly and gave the flash drive to a coworker she trusted.
Until the end, she had hoped she was overreacting. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in danger. The video ended as abruptly as it began. The file date was two days before her fatal fall down the stairs. In a state of shock, Natalie closed the laptop, stood up on unsteady legs, and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror.
Under the harsh light, her face looked drained of color, and her lips had gone tight and pale. Water was still running in the sink; in her shock, she had forgotten to turn it off. Natalie sat on the edge of the tub for nearly half an hour, staring into space, unable to cry anymore…
