Then the pharmacy called.

I almost didn’t pick up. It was a number I didn’t know. The lady on the phone was nice but careful, the way people are careful when they’re about to tell you something they’re not sure they should.

“I’m calling about Raymond’s prescription,” she said. “His Ativan was refilled twelve days early. That’s the third time in four months.”

I said something dumb like, “He only takes it once a day.”

She paused. “At this rate, he’s going through double. Either someone’s taking them, or someone’s giving him extra.”

I sat down on my kitchen floor. Just sat right down. I had this stupid thought, this is the part I keep coming back to, where I thought maybe Dad was sneaking them himself. Maybe the confusion was making him take too many. That’s where my brain went first. Even then I was still building the story where my dad was the broken one.

But something wouldn’t sit right. So I drove over there.

Sandra wasn’t home. Bingo night, she’d told me once, every Thursday. I let myself in with my old key and went straight for his pill organizer on the counter, the same one I’d seen a hundred times. And there it was. Monday, three pills. Tuesday, two. Wednesday, three. The week was full of pills he was supposed to have already swallowed.

If he wasn’t taking the ones in front of him, then where were all the early refills going?

I stood there a long time. I don’t even know how long. Then I did something I’m not proud of either. I opened Sandra’s nightstand. I don’t know what I was looking for. I just had this itch. And in the back, behind a pack of tissues and a romance paperback, there was a pill bottle with her name on it.

Little blue ones. I didn’t know what they were. I wrote down the name on the back of a grocery receipt and put it back exactly how I found it.

I called Dad’s doctor the next morning. Read him the name off the receipt. He went very quiet.