Chapter 3 - The Wrong Pill
Nicholas woke twenty minutes later furious that Hannah had called the on-call physician.
"I was tired," he snapped.
"You didn't know what day it was."
"That happens when people wake you at two in the morning."
"You called me Rebecca."
His expression shut down.
Hannah held up the tablet with gloved fingers.
"And this was in your bed."
Nicholas stared at it.
"Not mine."
"That's what I thought."
Claire entered before he could say more, wrapped in a silk robe and irritation.
"What happened?"
"A temporary episode of confusion," Hannah said.
"Again?"
Hannah looked at her.
"Again?"
Claire recovered too quickly.
"The last nurse mentioned something similar. Nicholas forgets things when he's overmedicated."
"I'm not overmedicating him."
"I'm sure you don't mean to."
The sentence sounded polite. The smile did not.
The next morning Hannah photographed every prescription bottle and checked each tablet against the dispensing pharmacy records. One pain medication had changed color since the week before.
The label had not.
She called the pharmacy.
"That manufacturer hasn't changed," the pharmacist told her. "Same tablet, same imprint, same color."
Hannah's stomach tightened.
She opened the bottle again.
The imprint was wrong.
Nicholas watched from across the room.
"You're making that face again."
"What face?"
"The one people make when they're deciding whether to lie to me."
Hannah set the bottle on the table.
"Who handles your medication besides me?"
"No one."
"Think carefully."
His jaw tightened.
"Claire gives me vitamins sometimes."
"From what container?"
"A little silver case."
"How often?"
"Why?"
"Because one of your prescription bottles contains pills that don't belong in it."
The silence between them changed.
Nicholas glanced toward the door.
"You think Claire is switching my medication?"
"I think somebody is."
He laughed once, without humor.
"You don't know Claire."
"That's true."
"She stayed after the accident. Everybody else looked at the chair and started talking to me like I was already dead."
Hannah leaned against the table.
"Staying in a house doesn't prove what somebody does inside it."
His eyes hardened.
"Be careful."
"I'm being careful. That's why I'm asking."
That evening Claire hosted a charity committee dinner. She stood behind Nicholas for every photograph, one hand resting gently on his shoulder.
When the last guest left, she walked away without touching him.
At 11:40, Hannah passed the upstairs sitting room and heard glass click against glass.
She looked through the half-open door.
Claire stood beside the medication cabinet.
In one hand was Nicholas's prescription bottle.
In the other was the small silver case.
Claire poured something from one into the other.
Then she turned her head.
Hannah stepped back just before Claire looked toward the doorway.
A second later, the door opened.
"Hannah?" Claire called softly.
Hannah looked down.
May you like
Her shadow stretched across the hall floor.
And Claire was staring directly at it.
