Chapter 1 - The Money They Chose to Spend
Alden shoved the car keys across the Sunday dinner table hard enough to knock the folded pharmacy notice into Elise’s hand.
“We spent that money on Calla’s tires,” he said. “It was an emergency.”
Elise pinned the keys beneath two fingers before they slid into the gravy boat.
“My prescription was the emergency.”
Across from her, her father began cutting his roast chicken into smaller pieces, though he had stopped eating several minutes earlier. Sunday sunlight slipped through the blinds of the Connecticut dining room, striping the tablecloth, the mashed potatoes and the empty amber bottle beside Elise’s plate.
Maris leaned forward in her cream cardigan.
“Calla’s front tires were bald. One of them had a bubble in the sidewall.”
“And my doctor said I couldn’t miss another dose.”
“You had pills left,” Maris replied.
Elise looked at the empty bottle.
“No, I didn’t.”
Behind Maris, Calla stood near the doorway with her phone pressed against her olive blouse. She had been restless since Elise arrived, volunteering to refill water glasses nobody had emptied and checking the driveway every few minutes.
On Friday morning, Elise had handed Calla her debit card and asked her to pick up the anticoagulant prescribed after Elise’s pulmonary embolism. The pharmacy was ten minutes from Calla’s tire shop appointment. Elise had still been restricted from driving after collapsing at work six weeks earlier.
Calla returned the car that afternoon but not the medication.
She said the pharmacy had been backed up.
On Saturday, she claimed the prescription was not ready.
Now the charge on Elise’s banking app showed $438.26 at Hartford Tire and Brake.
Alden glanced at the folded notice.
His expression changed so quickly that Elise almost missed it.
She laid her left hand over the paper.
“Then I guess you didn’t read the pharmacist’s warning.”
Maris frowned. “Warning?”
Calla looked at her mother.
Maris’s hand, which had been resting on the back of her chair, lowered to her lap.
Elise noticed.
The pharmacist had called her that morning after the prescription was returned to stock. She had not merely warned that missing doses was “not ideal.” She had documented a conversation with the person who came to collect the medication on Friday.
Elise pushed the folded notice across the keys toward Alden.
“The pharmacist wrote down the exact time she explained the risk.”
Calla’s phone slipped slightly in her hand.
“She told the person standing at the counter that stopping this medication could cause another clot,” Elise continued. “She offered a three-day emergency supply for twelve dollars.”
Alden turned toward Calla.
Maris spoke first.
“Calla probably didn’t understand.”
“The pharmacist says Calla called someone from the counter and repeated the warning word for word.”
Calla’s eyes filled, but she did not look at Elise.
She looked at Maris again.
May you like
That was when Elise understood the question was no longer whether her family had spent her prescription money.
It was who had told Calla to leave the medication behind.
