The afternoon sun was hot, baking the asphalt as I pulled into her gravel driveway. The yellow brick house looked peaceful. Her tomato plants were tied to wooden stakes in the front yard, their red fruit heavy and ripe in the late summer heat.

I walked inside without knocking. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and stale toast. Mother was sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at her blue weekly pill organizer. It was a cheap plastic thing, the letters for the days of the week partially rubbed off from years of use.

“Eva, sweetie,” she whispered, her eyes cloudy and confused. “I can’t seem to find my sewing shears. I know I put them in the drawer, but the drawer is empty.”

“We’ll find them, Mom,” I said, my voice cracking.

I took the blue plastic organizer from the table. I walked over to the kitchen cabinet where her spare prescription bottles were kept. I pulled down the current 90-day bottle of her Donepezil.

I poured the tiny white tablets onto the Formica counter. My fingers were cold as I counted them out, one by one.

There were 47 pills missing that shouldn’t have been. The bottle was nearly empty, weeks ahead of schedule. She was taking three times her prescribed amount. No wonder she had been so confused lately. No wonder she had forgotten my daughter’s name last Sunday.

I put the empty bottle down very carefully on the counter. The plastic made a sharp, hollow sound against the laminate.

I called Mother’s neurologist, Dr. Vance. I had to wait on hold for ten minutes, listening to elevator music that made my head throb. When he finally came on the line, I didn’t even say hello.

“Dr. Vance, did you triple my mother’s dementia medication?” I demanded.

“Absolutely not, Eva,” he said, sounding genuinely startled. “We discussed this at her last appointment.

A higher dose would cause severe confusion and physical side effects. Her liver couldn’t handle it. Why do you ask?”

“The Canton pharmacy received an authorization three months ago,” I said, my chest tightening. “They’ve been filling a fifteen-milligram prescription.”

There was a long silence on the other end. I could hear Dr. Vance typing rapidly on his computer keyboard.

“This is highly irregular,” he muttered. “I am looking at her electronic record. There is no order from my office. But there is a manual log entry. A phone-in authorization was received by the pharmacy on May 14th.”

“Who called it in?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. My hand gripped the edge of the Formica counter until my knuckles turned white.