The Phoenix's Rebirth for Revenge novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Pill Box

In Gran's bedroom Coralie finds the wrong tablets in the pill box, Sabine shows her real face and pours the tea down the sink, and a stranger in the doorway tells Coralie to hide the other half better.

I stared at her.

Gran didn't let go of my wrist.

"Upstairs," she said, out loud this time. "Coralie's going to take my blood pressure, since she's so worried. The rest of you, eat the cake. It cost more than my first car."

My father opened his mouth.

"Lenora," Gran said to my mother, without looking at her. "Cut the cake."

My mother smiled her charity-luncheon smile and picked up the knife.

Gran's bedroom was on the second floor, at the front of the house, with the window over Mount Vernon Street.

She sat on the edge of the bed and hooked her cane on the bedpost.

I put the water bottle on her dresser, where I could see it.

"Now," she said. "Tell me I'm not a mad old woman."

"How long have you felt sick?"

"Since about Easter. I thought it was the fish."

"Nausea?"

"Every night."

"Do the lights look strange?"

She was quiet for a second.

"Yellow," she said. "Little yellow rings around the lamps. I thought it was my cataracts."

I took her wrist and counted.

Forty-eight.

It should have been seventy.

I kept my voice steady.

"Where's your pill box?"

She pointed her chin at the nightstand.

It was the plastic weekly one I'd bought her, with the days in big letters.

I'd filled it myself last Sunday.

I opened Saturday.

Two small white tablets, her digoxin and her blood thinner.

I opened Sunday.

Three tablets.

The third one was a little larger and a little rounder than the others.

I opened every day after that.

Every one had an extra.

"That's not mine," I said. "I didn't put those in."

"I know you didn't, sweetheart. You count like a bank teller."

I tipped the whole box into a tissue and folded it up.

Then I went into her little bathroom and found the honey jar Sabine always carried up with the tea.

It sat on the shelf beside the toothbrush cup.

I wrapped it in a hand towel.

"You're throwing out my honey," Gran said.

"I'm throwing out everything she's ever touched in this room."

"Then you'll have to throw out the curtains. She picked them."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, more a sob.

Gran looked at me for a long moment.

"You knew," she said. "Downstairs. Before I said a word, you knew."

I couldn't tell her how.

I couldn't tell her I'd buried her once already, in the rain, with my mother crying under an umbrella beside the grave.

"I just know Sabine," I said.

The door opened without a knock.

Sabine came in with a plate of cake.

"Gran, I brought you a corner piece."

Her eyes were still pink.

She set the plate on the dresser, right beside my water bottle.

"Can I have a minute with my sister?" she asked Gran sweetly. "I want to make up."

"No," said Gran.

"It's all right," I said.

I wanted to see it.

I'd spent ten years trying to remember her face when nobody else was looking.

Gran picked up her cane and went into the bathroom, grumbling, and shut the door most of the way.

Sabine stopped smiling.

It was like watching someone take off a coat.

"That was cute," she said quietly. "Downstairs."

"Was it?"

"Everyone saw you scream at Gran on her birthday. Everyone saw you make me cry." She tilted her head. "When she dies, Coralie, who do you think they'll look at?"

"She isn't going to die."

"She's eighty. Her heart's bad. You fill her pills." Sabine's voice was almost kind. "You're the only nurse in this family."

She picked up my water bottle.

I didn't move.

She unscrewed the lid, walked into Gran's bathroom past Gran, and poured it down the sink.

"Oops," she said.

Gran stared at her from beside the tub.

Sabine kissed her cheek on the way out.

"Happy birthday, Gran. Don't let Coralie scare you."

The door clicked shut behind her.

Gran's hand was trembling on her cane.

"Sweetheart," she said. "That was all of it."

"No," I said.

I reached into the pocket of my dress and pulled out an empty amber vial from Gran's old prescriptions.

I'd filled it from the bottle on the landing, while Gran climbed the last stairs ahead of me.

Half the tea.

Sealed.

Gran let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

Then somebody in the hall cleared his throat.

A man was standing in the half-open doorway, tall, in a dark suit, with his tie loosened and a glass of untouched champagne in his hand.

I'd seen him across the dining room, at the end of the table beside my father.

Dark hair, dark-blue eyes, a nose that had been broken once.

He looked at the vial in my hand, and then at me.

"I'd keep the other half," he said, "somewhere she can't reach."

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