Had my mom poisoned Gram and Gran so she could sell their house?

It all started to add up. Gram and Gran dying so quickly in such a close amount of time for reasons limply described as “old age,” even though they were just in their late-70s (hardly ancient these days). My mom taking a lot of trips up to Vermont in the past couple of years for unclear reasons. My mom’s guilt drinking and coping. All those trips my mom took to the casino the last couple of years with my step-dad. Maybe they needed a quick way out of crippling debt?

“Rebecca?” the voice of my step-dad shocked me from behind.

I screamed and jumped. I whipped around to see my step-dad standing at the edge of the living room dressed in just white briefs and black body hair.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“Oh, uh, the tree was on. I went to turn it off, but got hurt.”

My step-dad walked away before I even finished. I knew I could count on his general disinterest in me to end the awkward situation.

“I gotta piss like a beer-drinking race horse,” I heard him mumble on his way down to the hallway.

I was in the clear again. I tucked the snow globe into the pocket of my pajama pants. I was going to have to do some more investigating.

Knowing sleep was not going to come back with my brain so rattled, I dove deep into shaking the snow globe every five minutes in hopes it would reveal a new scene and “hint” per-se. About 195 minutes into this, my body tapped out and I lost the battle with Dr. Sleep.

I wanted to puke when I woke up and saw I had slept in till 10 AM. My snoozing assuredly meant my mom and step-dad were already up and milling around. My mom would probably stick her red face in the door any minute to make sure I was up for no real reason.

That retching feeling was swiftly replaced by two, distinct, haunting feelings. A burning need to pee and a frenzied terror about realizing the snow globe was not in the room.

That urge to finally urinate drove me out into the heart of the house where I could hear my mom and step-dad talking about proper crust on a prime rib in the kitchen. I tried to tip-toe into the bathroom without them noticing, but was caught once I heard my mom’s raspy voice bellow from the kitchen.

“Look who’s finally up.”