Chapter 5

I thought she would scream. I thought she would grab the papers.

She didn't. She walked to the desk, took the folder out of my hands, and set it back in the tote, and she said, "You're not well, Wren."

"I'm not well."

"You're not." She zipped the tote. "You're confused. You're imagining things. You need to be somewhere they can help you."

"You wrote my name."

"I'm not going to argue with you." She was already at the door. "Cole!"

He came down from the house in under a minute. He had mud on his knees. He came in and looked at me, and then at his mother, and Dru said, "She's been through the office. She's been through my bag."

"I didn't-"

"She needs to go," Dru said. "Dr. Feldman's expecting her at the clinic at six. I have the order."

Cole's jaw worked. "The order."

"I have the order, Cole."

He looked at me then, and I couldn't read it, and I think that's the part I'll never get over-that in that moment my husband looked at me and didn't know what he wanted.

"Where's the camera card," he said.

"I don't have it."

"Where's the card, Wren."

"I don't have it."

He went through my coat. He went through my pockets, my gloves, the waistband of my pants. He was thorough and not gentle and I stood there and let him, because I had nothing in my pockets except the pill organizer I'd taken off the kitchen counter three hours ago, and I had to get it out of my coat before he found it, so I let my hand close around it in my pocket and I stood very still and when he pulled his hands back I said, "It's in the office somewhere. I don't know. I don't know where I put it."

Cole looked at Dru. Dru looked at the clock.

"Lock the door," she said. "We'll sort it out after the doctor."

He locked the door. The office door had a deadbolt, a real one, because we kept the deposit bag in there.

Through the window I watched them walk up to the house. I watched Dru go inside and come back out with the folder and her tote and a coat over her arm. I watched her look at the office window, and I stepped back into the dark.

The pill organizer was in my hand. Seven days. Thursday and Saturday compartments empty, because Thursday and Saturday were Dru's breakfast days.

I put it in the bottom drawer of the desk, under the deposit slips, and I sat down in the office chair and put my hands on my belly and looked at the deadbolt for a long time.

Six o'clock. Dr. Feldman at six.

And the cane was in Mamie's room, and Mamie was in her chair by the stove, and I was locked in the office with a deadbolt and a window too small for me to climb through, not at nine months.

But the window did open. And I knew the shed roof was six feet to the left.

I'd done the roof repair estimate myself in October.