Wszedłem do łazienki i przyłapałem syna i jego żonę na przygotowywaniu miejsca na jedną z moich „przypadkowych potknięć”: podłoga była mokra, wszędzie walały się różne rzeczy, a nawet na kafelkach zostawili ślad. Udawałem, że nic nie wiem. Trzy tygodnie później zrealizowali swój plan.

I sighed, unlocked my old silver Lexus, and drove back through the familiar winding streets of my subdivision—brick-front houses, manicured lawns, porch flags fluttering under the warm Georgia night. It was 8:30 p.m. The sky was dark, but the air still held the day’s heat. I was expecting a dark, quiet house.

Instead, when I pulled into my driveway, I saw light spilling out of my bedroom window on the second floor.

I frowned. My son, Marcus, didn’t live with me. He and his wife, Chenise, had a starter home across town, closer to downtown Atlanta. No one was supposed to be in my house.

I cut the engine and sat still for a moment, listening to the crickets and distant hum of traffic on I-285, then grabbed my purse and walked to the front door. I used my key quietly, the way you do when you don’t know what you’re walking into.

The familiar scent of lemon cleaner and old books greeted me. The entryway lamp was off. Everything looked normal. But as I closed the door softly behind me, I heard something that made my skin tighten.

Voices. Upstairs. In my master bathroom.

I heard Marcus first, his voice low but clear, echoing slightly in the tile and porcelain.

“No, the angle’s not right,” he was saying. “If she falls, her head has to hit right here on the tub edge. That’s what causes the trauma.”

Then I heard Chenise. Calm. Almost bored.

“What about the pills?” she asked. “How many do we scatter?”

I froze in the foyer. Every instinct I’d honed over thirty-five years as a forensic pathologist suddenly sharpened.

“Enough to make it look like she was confused,” Marcus said. “Taking her medication, got dizzy. But not so many that it looks suspicious.”

My heart gave one hard thud.

I slipped off my shoes, left them by the door, and moved up the carpeted stairs as quietly as a shadow. At the top of the stairs, my bedroom door stood open. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, a strip of bright light cutting into the dim hallway.

I eased myself against the wall and found the one spot where, after years of living there, I knew the floorboard wouldn’t creak. From that angle I could look through the thin slice of opening without being seen.

What I saw on the other side of that door did not belong in my house.

The bathroom floor was wet. Not just a little damp—shiny, streaked, slippery. Water had been spread deliberately over the tiles.

Marcus, my only child, the boy I’d once watched play Little League in a too-big jersey, was on his hands and knees, dragging my bath rug into an odd, crooked angle like he was arranging a prop.

Chenise stood by the vanity with my prescription bottles in her hands—the ones I kept in the mirrored cabinet. My blood pressure medication. The small orange bottle of anti-anxiety pills my doctor had prescribed after my husband, Thomas, died two years earlier from a heart attack in an Atlanta hospital.

The caps were off. Pills were scattered across the wet floor: little pale dots and capsules, glinting in the light.

“Okay, so the scenario,” Chenise was saying, in a tone I’d heard her use when she talked about project plans at her job. “She comes home from church, or from Target, or wherever. She’s tired. She comes upstairs to take her evening meds.”

Marcus nodded, still manipulating the rug.

“She’s in the bathroom, maybe washing her face, taking her pills,” he said.

“The floor is wet,” Chenise continued, “because she was running a bath earlier, or mopping, or something spilled. Doesn’t matter—the floor is wet. Elderly woman, wet tile, multiple medications that can cause dizziness.” She paused. “She slips.”

Marcus picked up the narrative as if they’d rehearsed this a dozen times.

“Falls backward,” he said. “Head hits the edge of the tub.”

He reached out and placed his hand on a specific spot on the porcelain edge.

“Right here,” he said. “Blunt force trauma.”

“Pills scattered everywhere because she was holding the bottles when she fell,” Chenise added. “They’ll rule it accidental death. Elderly widow living alone. Tragic accident. No investigation, no autopsy beyond the basics, no questions.”

The world went quiet around me. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

My son and his wife weren’t talking about some stranger. They were talking about me.

Marcus stood up slowly, surveying the room like a director checking a stage.

“What about the cameras?” he asked. “Mom has security cameras.”

“I’ll disable them that morning,” Chenise said. “I know the code. She gave it to me when we installed them. I’ll make it look like a glitch in the system. Offline for a few hours.”

Marcus ran a hand over his face.

“When do we do it?”