They Sold Me, Then My Dead Mother Came to Take Me Home novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Porch

Janet was waiting in the Makinen kitchen with every light on.

Jonas carried me in from the truck without being asked a second time, and I did not stop him.

He set me in a chair at the long pine table and stepped back to the wall.

"My toes moved," I said.

Janet took off her glasses.

"Which ones?"

"The left foot. In the truck. They curled in my shoe."

Janet went down on her knees in front of me with a speed no sixty-three-year-old should have had.

She slid off the shoe, took my foot in both hands and pressed her thumb into the arch.

"Tell me when you feel it."

"I feel it."

"Here?"

"Yes."

"And here?"

"Yes, Janet."

Her mouth shook, once, and she steadied it.

"Mara, I need to say something and you're not going to like it," she said.

"I haven't liked anything today."

"Those pills that come in the white box. The ones you've taken every night since the winter you fell."

My stomach went cold.

"The doctor ordered them. For the nerve pain."

"What doctor?" Janet said. "Name him."

I opened my mouth.

I could not name him.

I had never seen a doctor in that trailer.

A box came, and a note came, and in seven years I had never once asked who wrote it.

"No label," Janet said. "No pharmacy. I was a nurse for thirty-one years, honey, and I never saw a pill like that prescribed for nerve pain. I saw it once, in a locked cabinet, for people we wanted to keep very still."

"Still," I said.

"Two months ago I took one to a friend at the pharmacy in town. He told me what it was. It's a heavy sedative, and it goes into the nerves. A person who takes it for seven years..."

← Chapter 6 · All chapters · Chapter 8 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend