My limp hand rested across his chest.
I had never seen him before.
There were more photographs beneath it.
Different dates.
Different clothing.
Different staged positions.
In every image, I was unconscious.
Beside the photographs was a typed statement claiming that I had accepted payments from Roger’s company in exchange for altering audit findings.
A blank signature line waited at the bottom.
Brian had planned to use my inked finger to create a print beside my name.
One investigator photographed every page before touching anything.
The other turned to me.
“Are you able to stand?”
I nodded, although my legs felt unsteady.
This time the weakness came from fear, not from whatever had been hidden in my soup.
Martha moved toward me, but I stepped away.
Her face crumpled.
“Hannah, I am sorry.”
I could not answer her.
She had served the meals.
She had watched her son carry me upstairs.
Month after month, she had cleared the table while I lay unconscious behind a locked door.
An apology could not erase that.
Martha seemed to understand.
She stopped several feet away and placed a second folder on the bed.
It was thicker than Victor’s.
Inside were pharmacy receipts, printed messages, photographs from every monthly lunch, and a handwritten chart.
Dates ran down the left side.
Measurements and times filled the right.
My name appeared at the top.
April: half dose.
May: half dose plus liquid.
June: increase if alert.
Beside the final entry, someone had written, “Use more.
Suspicious.”
The handwriting matched notes I had seen Frank leave on birthday cards and Christmas gifts.
Frank stared at Martha.
“You kept that?”
Her voice was almost too quiet to hear.
“I kept all of it.”
The investigator asked where she had found the materials.
Martha pointed toward the hallway.
“There is a locked cabinet in Frank’s office.
The key is on his ring.
There are bottles inside, more photographs, copies of Hannah’s work files, and records of payments to Roger and Victor.”
Frank began shouting that she was confused.
He said she had been depressed.
He claimed she misunderstood ordinary medication and innocent family photographs.
Then Victor laughed once, sharply.
“There was nothing innocent about it.”
The room fell silent.
Victor looked at the investigators and began talking.
He said Roger had brought him into the scheme two months earlier.
Frank needed someone willing to appear in photographs with an unconscious woman.
The images would be used to convince Brian’s divorce attorney that I had been having affairs and behaving recklessly.
