Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4: THE SECRET BENEATH THE BLUE ROOF
That night, I stayed at the hospital to take care of my mother.
She looked so incredibly exhausted. Her skin was wrinkled, her eyes sunken. It seemed as though decades had passed in just three short days.
I pulled a chair close to the bed and held her frail hand. We sat in silence for a long time, the only sound being the steady beep of the heart monitor.
Finally, my mother let out a long, heavy sigh. "I didn't tell you... because I was afraid."
My heart sank: "Afraid of what, Mom? I'm here, who could possibly hurt you now?"
"I was afraid... of losing you."
I frowned, not understanding. Tears began to well up in the deep creases around her eyes.
"Marissa threatened me. She said that if I ever told you anything about her attitude, she would make up lies. She said she'd make you believe I was hallucinating from the medication. She said she would divorce you, take everything, and make sure you never looked at me again."
Those words hit me like a sledgehammer.
"How long has she been threatening you?"
My mother looked away, avoiding my eyes: "For a few months. Since before I was hospitalized."
I felt my stomach churn with nausea. "But why? Why would she do that?"
She hesitated, then spoke with a trembling voice, revealing the first piece of this horrifying puzzle: "Because she wanted my house."
The house. Suddenly, everything revolved around the house.
It was the small, blue-painted house in the suburbs where I was born and raised. The place where my father had built every wooden shelf by hand before he passed away. The house that my mother still owned outright, with no mortgage. Thanks to the real estate boom in recent years, the area had become prime property, and the house was now valued at nearly a million dollars.
I had never cared about its financial value. To me, it was just memories.
But it seemed Marissa saw it as a gold mine.
"Six months ago," my mother recounted slowly, "Marissa started asking me strange questions. About my will. About inheritance. About transferring real estate to relatives. At first, I thought she was just being cautious. But then, she brought papers... complex legal documents I didn't understand. She told me to sign them, saying it was to save you from taxes later on."
"You didn't sign them," I said, my voice choking.
"That's right. I refused. And she went crazy," my mother whispered, terror evident in her eyes. "She threw things when you weren't home. There were days I locked myself in my bedroom, terrified to be alone with her."
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I squeezed my eyes shut. Suddenly, every past memory appeared through a completely different lens. Every unprovoked argument. Every complaint Marissa had made about how we needed a bigger house. Her malicious, passive-aggressive comments about how the elderly should go to nursing homes to "enjoy life."
It all fit together into a ruthless, terrifying picture.
