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.
