Chapter 2
What happened next should have clarified everything.
Instead, it made the whole thing worse.
Kristina was the first to speak.
“My God,” she breathed, pressing one manicured hand to her chest as if she were the victim of the surprise. “How on earth—”
Edgar moved forward at last, but not toward me.
Toward the bed.
Toward the snakes.
He grabbed the fireplace tool from beside the decorative hearth and stood just far enough away to seem brave without actually being useful.
“Nora, stay back,” he said.
I was already plastered to the wall.
One of the snakes slid across the duvet in a lazy, sinister curve. The other kept rattling. Edgar swore under his breath.
“How did they get in here?” I asked.
Neither of them answered.
Kristina stepped just inside the room, gaze flicking from the snakes to the window to me. Not once did she look surprised in the way a normal person would be surprised. She looked annoyed. Calculating. As if something had gone wrong in a plan she hadn’t expected to see interrupted.
“We need animal control,” I said.
“Yes, of course,” Kristina said quickly. “Edgar, call downstairs.”
But Edgar didn’t move for his phone. He stared at the bed with a strange tightness in his face.
Then the housekeeper, Alma, appeared in the hallway behind them, drawn by my scream. Alma took one look inside the bedroom and gasped.
“Señora—”
Kristina turned so fast it startled me. “Stay out.”
That was the moment I knew this was not an accident.
Not because of the snakes.
Because Kristina had reacted more strongly to Alma than to the possibility that I could have been bitten.
Edgar finally got the reptiles contained with help from a local wildlife removal service, which arrived twenty-eight minutes later. I know the exact time because I spent those twenty-eight minutes sitting on the floor of the upstairs bathroom wrapped in a towel while my hands shook uncontrollably and my husband avoided touching me.
Kristina remained calm enough to make tea.
Tea.
As if I had discovered dust under the bed instead of venomous snakes.
By early evening, my headache had worsened into nausea, and Edgar insisted on taking me to the ER “just in case the stress triggered something.”
The physician on duty checked my blood pressure, examined the bruised spot on my hip where I had hit the nightstand, and asked careful questions about the incident.
Kristina had not come.
I was grateful.
Edgar answered too many of the doctor’s questions for me.
“Yes, she’s been under a lot of pressure lately.”
“Yes, she does get migraines.”
“Yes, she’s very sensitive to stress.”
I turned and looked at him.
Very sensitive to stress.
That was how he wanted the afternoon described.
As if the real issue were my nerves.
The doctor ordered fluids because I was dehydrated and something for the nausea. Then she paused over my chart.
“When was your last cycle?” she asked.
I blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”
“Your last period.”
I gave her the date, or what I thought was the date. Hormones had made everything irregular.
She studied me a moment longer.
“I’d like to run one more test.”
Twenty minutes later, she closed the curtain behind Edgar, who had stepped out to take a call, and sat beside my hospital bed.
“Nora,” she said gently, “you’re pregnant.”
The room went silent.
I stared at her.
“That’s not possible.”
“It is,” she said. “Very early, but yes.”
The word pregnant felt unreal in my body. I had spent so much time preparing for disappointment that hope arrived like a foreign language.
Then the doctor added, “Your stress levels are concerning. I’d like you to rest and follow up quickly.”
Rest.
The word almost made me laugh.
There were two rattlesnakes in my bed less than four hours ago.
Outside the curtain, I heard Edgar’s footsteps coming back.
May you like
And in that instant, I made the first decision that probably saved my life.
I didn’t tell him.
