She walked out of the hotel lobby, into the cold air. She looked down at the tablet in her hand, the screen reflecting the pale silver moonlight.
By eight the next morning, the silver moonlight was gone, replaced by the yellow glare of the overhead bulb in Evelyn’s small kitchen.
Mara sat opposite her mother, her fingers smudged with gray dust from the heavy cardboard storage box they had dragged down from the attic stairs.
Between them lay three manila folders, their metal prongs rusted to a dull orange that left dry flakes on the white oilcloth table.
The smell of damp garden soil still clung to Evelyn’s cardigan from her walk to the trash bins earlier that morning.
Mara crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her eyes scanning the handwritten log of Evelyn’s appointments from seventeen years ago.
“There is a gap here,” Mara said, pointing to a blank line between the August check-up and the September admission.
Evelyn rubbed her left ring finger where her wedding band used to sit, the skin there still pale and slightly indented after all these years.
“I was resting,” Evelyn said, her voice barely louder than the hum of the old refrigerator. “The doctor told me to stay off my feet for three weeks.”
“But look at the pharmacy page,” Mara said, pulling a loose sheet from the back of the second folder.
It was a slip of pink carbon paper, smaller than the other documents, dated September 12, 2006.
Evelyn leaned closer, her glasses sliding slightly down her nose as she stared at the faded ink.
The prescription was for a synthetic hormone, a high-dose compound Evelyn had never heard of, authorized by a signature she did not recognize.
“I never took this,” Evelyn said, her finger touching the rough edge of the paper. “Dr. Marsh told me he was only giving me iron supplements.”
“The signature isn’t Marsh’s,” Mara said, leaning over the table to trace the curved letters.
Evelyn stared at the name written in hasty, elegant cursive at the bottom of the slip.
The ink was purple, a strange choice for a medical clinic, and the capital letters were written with a sharp, aggressive slant.
