They Never Loved Me. Now I Don't Remember Them. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Pearl's Porch

Lydia's aunt Pearl feeds her and Devin and says Irene phoned her before Lydia had left the dinner, to warn her Lydia might wander. Irene's SUV pulls into the drive with Britta and a county deputy.

I slept for three hours on a cot in the ER break room with Devin's jacket over me.

When I woke up, my phone was charging on the shelf, and the first thing I did was read the notepad.

Devin. Nurse. Grey car. He asked if I was okay.

His name came back the second time, and a little faster than before.

Lower down, in my own writing, I had put the pharmacist's answer: No pharmacy dispensed this.

I took the brown bottle out of my coat and turned it over twice.

My mother had counted these into my palm and called them medicine.

If someone had filled it, someone had to know who, and I meant to ask Pearl.

My phone had forty-one missed calls.

Twenty-eight were from my mother, and eleven were from Britta.

Two were from my father, and neither had a message.

I scrolled until I found Aunt Pearl, and her street was right there under her name.

She picked up before it finished ringing once.

"Lydia," she said. "Where are you?"

"A hospital in Lorain. I'm fine. I'm okay, I just lost your address."

"I know what happened," Pearl said. "Don't move. No, come to me. I'll put the kettle on."

Devin drove me there after his shift, with the early light coming across the lake and a coffee in each cup holder.

He had changed out of his scrubs into a grey sweatshirt, and he looked as tired as I felt.

"You don't have to stay," I said, when we turned onto her road. "You've done enough."

"I'd like to see you get through the door," he said.

The yellow door opened before we reached the porch.

My aunt Pearl stood on the mat in her green cardigan with her reading glasses on a cord, and she looked me over from head to foot.

"You're thin," she said. "You're wet. Come here."

She hugged me hard enough that my ribs creaked.

Then she looked past me at Devin, who stood on the bottom step with his hands in his pockets.

"And who are you?"

"Devin Gorton," he said. "I found her on Lake Road."

"He's a nurse," I said. "He's on my notepad."

"Is he." Pearl studied him. "Married?"

"No, ma'am."

"Eat something, then," she said. "Both of you. Sit."

Her kitchen smelled of toast and coffee.

She put scrambled eggs in front of Devin first, and he said thank you three times.

When we were all sitting, Pearl folded her hands on the table.

"Someone sent me a video this morning," she said. "A girl at your party. She posted it with a heart on it."

My stomach turned over.

"I watched you sign it," Pearl said. "I watched your mother smile the whole time, and I watched my brother stare at his glass."

"It's Grandma Ruth's house," I said. "I gave it away."

"You did not give it away," Pearl said. "It was taken."

I looked down at my plate.

"Dad didn't say anything," I said. "He just sat there."

"Gordon never says a word when Irene is in the room." She buttered her toast with hard, quick strokes. "Lydia, listen. Last night at twenty to nine, your mother called me."

"I know she called you. She called everyone."

"No. This was before you left the house." Pearl put the knife down. "She called to tell me you'd been unwell lately. She said you might wander off and that I was not to give you anything if you came to me."

I stared at her.

"At twenty to nine, I was at the dinner table," I said. "I hadn't left yet."

"She told me you would turn up here."

"She didn't know I'd leave."

"That's what I'm saying," Pearl said.

Devin had stopped eating.

He was looking at me, and then at the brown bottle I had set beside my plate.

"She said not to give you anything," he said slowly. "But she'd given you something herself."

"Two a day," I said. "Since the diagnosis."

"Since the diagnosis?" Pearl asked.

"The doctor told me on my birthday, in the afternoon. Mom picked them up the same hour."

Pearl pushed her glasses up her nose.

"What doctor?" she asked.

"Our family doctor. He's been Mom's friend for years."

"Of course he has," said Pearl.

She stood up and went to the window.

I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, and then I heard tires on her gravel drive.

A car door closed, and then another.

Pearl did not turn around.

"That'll be your mother," she said. "And she didn't come alone."

I went to the window beside her.

My mother's white SUV was parked across the end of the driveway.

Britta was getting out of the passenger side in a pink coat, and a county deputy was walking up the lawn with a clipboard.

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