Chapter 4: Sign Here

The older officer let Poppy stay with me that night.

"I'm writing it up as a safe home," he said at the door. "A judge reviews the order Monday. Don't leave the county."

Dalton watched the patrol car leave with his hands in his pockets and said nothing.

Camille hugged me before she got into his car.

"Call me when you're ready to talk," she said into my hair.

I did not call.

I walked Poppy to her classroom at eight, because the officer had called her safe and I would not let her miss one more day of her own life.

At nine I stood at the counter of the pharmacy on Harbor Street with Ansel at my back.

Eight people waited in line behind us.

"I need to see every prescription filled in my name since March," I said.

The pharmacist was a gray-haired woman with a pen behind her ear.

She tapped her screen and her face changed.

"Mrs. Reeve. I haven't seen you in months."

"That's what I thought," I said.

She printed a long strip of paper and laid it on the counter between us.

Thirty weeks of the same entry, every Friday, in the same dosage.

The signature box held a looping *J. Reeve* each time.

"Is that your handwriting?" the pharmacist asked.

"Give me a pen."

I signed my name on the back of the receipt.

It was a tight, upright signature, and it looked nothing like the loops.

The woman held the two side by side.

"Oh no," she said quietly.

The man in line behind me stopped checking his phone.

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