Connor and Roy had been talking, but quietly, so I couldn’t hear what about. Roy stopped when he saw me and reached his hand out for the pills.
“I forgot water,” I said.
“I don’t need water.”
“How can you take a pill without water?”
“I do it all the time,” he said. “Learned it over there.”
I watched him shake two of the tablets from the bottle into his palm. I almost said something. Because I had read the label coming up the stairs, and it very clearly said to “take one every four hours as needed.” But I didn’t say anything. Because it was Roy. Who was I to tell Roy what to do?
He popped them into his mouth and chewed them.
“You chew those up?” I asked.
“They hit you faster that way.”
“Don’t they taste awful?”
“Pretty damn bad, yeah.”
I walked into his bathroom to get him a cup of water to wash away the taste. Roy had his own bathroom off his bedroom. I had to use one down the hall. The perks of being older, I suppose.
“Thanks,” he said when I handed it to him.
And I noticed again how much he was sweating.
“You want me to open a window or something?”
“No!” he said, all sharp and sudden. “I’m freezing.”
That was when I started worrying he might be sick. I sat on the edge of his bed, as close to him as I could, and watched him. He did seem to be shivering some. I wanted to reach out and put a hand to his forehead the way our mom would do if she thought we had a fever, but I could never bring myself to do it.
So I just stared at him, and listened to him talking to Connor about more or less nothing. Connor’s school, and his family. I couldn’t help noticing that Connor was painting a rosy picture of his life while Roy was gone. Then again, what did it really matter? It was just small talk and we all three knew it.
After a time I saw Roy’s shivering start to ease, so I figured the sweating and shaking was more about pain and maybe not an actual illness. I felt my shoulders loosen up, and I was shocked by how tightly I’d been holding every muscle in my body. I made a conscious effort to let everything soften up.
A few minutes later, as Roy asked questions of Connor, he began to slur his words. And yet he reached for the pill bottle again. I’d left it on his bedside table, not realizing that might have been a mistake. Once he was under the effect of the drug, he might not understand that he was taking too much. Maybe that had been the method behind my mom’s madness in keeping them downstairs.
I grabbed it up before he could get to it.
“I think you should wait,” I said.
I stood and carried the pill bottle into his bathroom, where I stashed it in his medicine cabinet. When I got back out, Connor was talking to Roy, but Roy was clearly nodding off.
I stood and watched, and Connor paused to see if his words were getting through. When it seemed we had lost Roy, he got up off the end of the bed.
“I should go,” he said.
We walked to Roy’s bedroom door together.
“No, stay,” I said. “Stay and talk to me. We haven’t talked for a long time.”
“Nah. Maybe later. I haven’t been to Zoe’s yet.”
We stepped out into the hall together. I confess I was feeling stung. Partly because talking to me seemed to be no priority for him. Partly because I’d never called Zoe Dinsmore by her first name. Not once. It’s hard to admit, but it made me a little jealous. Suddenly Connor was closer to the lady than I had ever been.
I walked him to the door. And, as I did, I expressed none of what I was feeling. You know, the usual. The way we always did things.
“Maybe I’ll come by later,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. I wasn’t expecting him, based on the way he said it.
“Right. Whatever.”
Which was the closest I was going to come to saying I was upset.
I closed the door behind him and turned around to see my mother standing in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her hips. I could tell she was angry. About something. In that moment I couldn’t even have ventured a guess.
“Okay, where is it?” she asked.
“Where’s what?”
“Roy’s pain meds. I know he didn’t come down the stairs and get them himself.”
“He asked me for them and—”
“Never do that again!” she shouted. The first word, “Never,” was so sharp and loud it made me jump.
“He said he needed them.”
“It was too soon! You can’t put them where he can get to them. Promise me you’ll never do that again. Where are they?”
“In the medicine cabinet in his bathroom.”
She clucked her tongue at me as she climbed the stairs. I couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t waited and forced that promise out of me. What would I do if he asked me straight out for them again?
I decided my only real hope would be to lie and say Mom had hidden them but even I didn’t know where. Or maybe I’d get lucky, and by then it would be the truth.
“I’m worried he might be sick,” I said to her retreating back.
“He’s not sick,” she said, and kept climbing.
I just stood there in the hall for a moment or two.
Then, as I was walking up the stairs, I passed her coming down. She didn’t say a word to me.
As I closed the door to my room, I heard the kitchen door slam, and her car start in the driveway. She never bothered to tell me where she was going. She didn’t even call out the word “Bye.”
Roy’s second visitor arrived by cab about three hours later. I was looking out my bedroom window, and
