Chapter 10 - The Bottle
For a moment, I couldn’t understand the words.
“What medication?”
Peter answered carefully. “Her blood pressure pills.”
Lauren shouted, “That is not what happened.”
Peter looked at her. “You switched the bottles.”
“I replaced one prescription with the generic brand.”
“Without telling her doctor.”
“It was the same medication.”
Peter shook his head. “Different dosage.”
My knees felt weak.
Mom had been dizzy for weeks.
She had nearly fallen in the kitchen twice.
Lauren had been the one telling me, gently, that maybe Mom shouldn’t live independently anymore.
I saw the entire pattern at once.
“You were building a case,” I said.
Lauren’s face changed again.
“You wanted me to think she couldn’t manage her own life.”
“I wanted you to stop letting her control ours.”
“So you changed her medication?”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“She fell today.”
“That was an accident.”
“You shoved her.”
“She grabbed my dress.”
“She was walking with a cane.”
Lauren began crying then, but it didn’t move me the way it used to.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Your family has power over everything. Money. Houses. lawyers. Reputation. I was always going to be the outsider.”
“So you decided to steal your way in?”
She slapped me.
Not hard.
The shock came from the fact that she did it at all.
Peter stepped back.
I didn’t move.
Lauren stared at her own hand like she had surprised herself.
Then Dad appeared in the doorway.
He had heard enough.
“Police are on the way,” he said.
Lauren’s tears stopped immediately.
Vivian’s voice sounded from the hall.
“Police?”
Dad nodded.
“For fraud, identity theft, financial exploitation, and whatever the district attorney decides after he hears about Eleanor’s medication.”
Vivian turned to run.
Aaron blocked the hallway.
Lauren reached for the second phone.
I pulled it away.
Then a new message appeared on the screen.
May you like
Unknown Number:
You promised the papers would be signed today. Where is my money?
