I sat down on the plastic waiting room chair, the green cardigan heavy in my lap. I stared at the name David Vance. The name was familiar. I went back through my memory, back through the years of my mother’s disastrous second marriage to a man named Arthur.

Arthur had been a pharmacy technician in the nineties before he was fired for theft. He had been estranged from my mother for nearly nine years, but they had never officially divorced because Arthur refused to sign the paperwork, hoping to keep his name on the deed to her yellow house. And Arthur’s closest friend, his old high school buddy who used to come over to watch football in our garage, was a disgraced former physician named David Vance.

I realized then that Arthur still had a key to my mother’s house. He knew she was in the hospital. He knew the floor plan of Mercy General from his old delivery days. He had obtained his old friend’s dormant login credentials and used them to access the hospital’s internal system from a public terminal, placing a lethal order for an empty room next to my mother’s, knowing the confusion of the night shift would do the rest.

I did not scream. I did not make a scene. I walked out to my car, my jaw locked so tight my teeth ached. I dialed the sheriff’s department from my mobile phone. I told the dispatcher that a man was currently attempting to burglarize my mother’s residence at 1424 Maple Street. I knew Arthur would be there. With my mother in the ICU, he would assume the house was completely empty, and he would be looking for her metal personal lockbox where she kept the property deed and her savings bonds.

I drove to my mother’s house, my heart thumping against my ribs.

When I pulled onto the street, I saw Arthur’s rusty brown Buick parked in her driveway. The kitchen light was on.

I got out of my car just as the sheriff’s cruiser pulled up, its blue and red lights reflecting off the wet pavement. Deputy Miller, a man I had known since high school, met me at the edge of the lawn. I handed him the manila envelope containing the medical records and the printout of the revoked license.

We walked up the wooden porch steps. Through the kitchen window, we could see Arthur. He was sitting at my mother’s Formica table, her small metal lockbox sitting in front of him. He was using a yellow-handled flathead screwdriver to pry at the lock, his face twisted in frustration. On the table next to him sat a small bottle of cheap whiskey and his car keys.

Deputy Miller knocked heavily on the door. Arthur jumped, his head snapping toward the window. When he saw the uniform, his expression went completely blank. He slowly put the screwdriver down and opened the door, trying to summon a polite smile.

“Clara,” Arthur said, his voice entirely calm and unbothered, as if we were meeting at a Sunday barbecue. “I was just checking on your mother’s pipes. With the cold weather, I thought I should make sure nothing froze.”