Chapter 4 - WHAT MIRIAM CALLED LOVE
Miriam requested permission to speak with me through our attorneys.
She said she wanted to explain the medication before “outsiders twisted it into something ugly.”
We met in a hospital conference room. My attorney sat beside me. Miriam’s lawyer remained near the door.
Miriam wore navy instead of pink and carried her Bible in both hands.
“I have buried friends who began with prescribed pills,” she said. “I was trying to protect you.”
“You gave them to Chase.”
Her fingers tightened around the leather cover.
“I didn’t know Garrick had allowed him to take so many.”
“Allowed?”
She looked toward her attorney.
The medication had never been stored in my locked box. Garrick kept most of it in his study and gave me one dose at a time. When Chase developed withdrawal symptoms, Garrick shared several tablets with him.
Several became dozens.
Miriam discovered the empty spaces in the bottle and panicked. Instead of calling my surgeon or confronting her sons, she flushed what remained so no one could count the pills and determine how many were missing.
Then she decided I could serve as the explanation.
“If anyone asked,” I said, “you were going to say I took them.”
“You were in terrible pain. People would’ve understood.”
“I would’ve been labeled an addict during cancer treatment.”
“I was protecting Chase from prison.”
The sentence came without hesitation.
Miriam had spent years calling addiction a moral failure when it belonged to other families. When it belonged to her son, it became an illness everyone else was required to absorb.
She also admitted calling my surgeon’s office while pretending to be me. She reported that I was confused, demanding extra medication, and refusing postoperative activity.
The nurse documented the call because the voice sounded older than mine.
Miriam wanted a letter stating that I might have impaired judgment while taking opioids. Garrick planned to use it if I challenged the loan documents.
“You didn’t believe I was an addict,” I said.
She lowered her eyes.
“No.”
“You needed other people to believe it.”
Her mouth trembled, but I felt no satisfaction.
She spoke about Chase’s first overdose at twenty-seven. Garrick found him unresponsive in a guest bathroom and revived him before paramedics arrived. Miriam had spent every day since then waiting for another phone call.
Fear had not made her compassionate.
It had made her willing to sacrifice the safest person in the room.
Before leaving, she pushed a folded note toward me.
Chase had written it after the police interviewed him.
Garrick said the pills were part of my salary for helping with the closing. I knew they were yours. I took them anyway.
Below that, Chase had added one line:
Ask Garrick where the first $600,000 really came from.
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The deposit had not been taken only from our joint account.
Part of it came from a cancer-support charity whose treasurer was Miriam.
