the bottle of pills.
“Your mother would have helped me,” she said.
I stared at her. Gram’s eyes had lost their shine. Her skin was gray and loose. Her once coiffed hair hung in strings around her face. She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t use the bathroom by herself, and she couldn’t eat without help. She couldn’t feel anything but pain.
My mother was a good daughter. She would have been crushed to see Gram this way.
Mom would have twisted the cap and handed Grandma the bottle.
“Tish, don’t leave me like this,” she pleaded.
The cap turned beneath the pressure of my palm. “Here, Gram.”
I set the open bottle in her loose grip.
She fumbled for the drugs. “Put a couple on my tongue, Tishy. Help me.”
My fingers longed to obey. “Gram. Don’t ask me to do that.”
A pill fell out of the bottle and onto her chest. She scratched at her cotton gown with a nail until she could grip the pill between two fingers. She struggled to lift her hand. She set the pill on her tongue.
“Nnnn.” Grandma pointed to her water glass.
I hesitated. One extra pill wouldn’t hurt. I helped hold up her head. She took a sip.
She groped in the bottle for more pills.
“Stop, Gram. One’s enough.”
“Your mother wouldn’t make me work like this. She’d help me.” She shook out three pills at once and managed to get them into her mouth.
My heart wrenched.
Her finger angled toward the water glass. “Nnnn.”
I helped her take a drink. A line of water drizzled down the side of her mouth. I wiped it with a corner of the sheet.
“I’m tired, Tish. Help me with the rest.”
“Grandma.” Tears poured down my cheeks.
“Think of yourself now. Go back to school. Get married. Have children.” Her eyes watered. “Help me finish it.”
My vision became hazy. The prescription bottle in my hand was all I saw.
I tapped out two tablets and set them on my grandmother’s tongue. I held the water glass to her lips as she swallowed the pills down.
A peaceful look came over her face.
I felt a flash of relief, followed immediately by dread.
What had I done?
A minute passed. Grandma’s look of serenity was replaced by one of agony. Her body thrashed as she gasped for air.
“Grandma!” I shook her, screaming her name over and over.
What had I done?
White foam dribbled out the side of her mouth. “Gram. Don’t die, Gram. I’ll get help.”
I ran to the phone on the kitchen wall. I punched in 9-1-1.
The operator answered.
“Hurry. My grandmother is dying. She took the whole bottle of pills.” My stomach heaved as I listened to Grandma wretch in the next room. “Please hurry. I wanted to stop her. Oh, Lord, I gave them to her. I helped her. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I sobbed into the phone.
The operator said something about staying on the line.
I peeked around the doorframe and watched Grandma. Her legs quivered and her head lolled from side to side.
I covered my mouth in horror. “Grandma, don’t die,” I whispered. “Please don’t die.”
The paramedics arrived and hovered around her for ten minutes or so. I heard the words “massive cardiac arrest.”
They moved her to a stretcher. One man looked up at me from his place at Grandma’s side. He shook his head, then pulled the sheet over Gram’s face.
A sound like a wounded animal formed in my throat and filled the house as the medics carried her body past me and out to a waiting ambulance.
But nothing could change what I’d done. I’d thought I was saving my life, getting out from under a burden. But all I’d done was put my life on hold while I paid the price for my impatience. I recalled the looks of disgust on the faces of the jurors as the prosecution played a segment of the 9-1-1 tape again and again. And no matter how many times and ways my attorney asked the question, I couldn’t deny that I’d set pills on her tongue and held the water glass to her lips.
Yes. I’d killed my grandmother.
The flashlight dimmed. I looked up at the adjacent window. Night had fallen while I’d been digging up the past. The walls of the cistern were barely visible in the fading light.
I squinted at the job in front of me. I’d made a hole in one section about half a cantaloupe in size.
I picked up my hammer and started chiseling at a loose piece.
Demonstrators marched outside the courthouse on the day of my sentencing. Posters on long sticks bobbed among the protesters as the cops led me up the marble steps. “Life for a Life,” screamed the death penalty proponents. “Grandma-Killer,” accused the right-to-lifers.
Maybe they’d been right. Maybe my life was worthless. What had it mattered that the judge had said, “Three years,” and slammed down his gavel? I’d given myself a life sentence anyway.
Would I ever have the courage to do what Dorothy had suggested? “Get it right with God. Then get on with life,” she’d said.
Brad went to church. I could ask him how to get it right with God. Because more than anything, I wanted to get on with my life.
I wanted to live for my grandmother’s sake, because she couldn’t anymore. Live for my mother’s sake, because she missed so much of life herself. And live for my own sake, because even if the dead couldn’t be brought back to life, I had to believe that the living could.
I gave the hammer a powerful swing. The head crashed against the chisel and tore up a chunk of concrete the size of a potato.
I moved the piece aside. A faint odor of rotten eggs and old tuna fish wafted from the hole I’d made. I jumped away from the smell, knowing in my gut what it must mean. I crawled for the flashlight, skirting the crevice. I shone the weak beam into the gap. Bile rose in my throat at the sight of raw, white knuckle bones protruding from the hole. Remains of flesh covered the far ends of three visible fingers. And on the third was a ring with a large center diamond surrounded by mini stones.
“Rebecca,” I whispered. An electric charge rushed through my body at the sound of her name.
45
My flashlight went out.
No matter. I’d found enough evidence to clear myself of Dietz’s murder. With a paper trail just two garages over and a dead body to boot, David would spend the rest of his life behind bars. He certainly couldn’t claim a mercy
