I looked at Lily.
“What happens Monday?”
“I don’t know.”
“What evaluation?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Then she placed something else on my desk.
My medication organizer.
“There’s another thing.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“The tablets changed.”
“How would you know?”
“My mother takes one of the same prescriptions you do.”
She pointed.
“This one should be white.”
The tablet in my organizer was pale yellow.
“Maybe a different manufacturer.”
“Maybe.”
Her expression told me she did not believe it.
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting you don’t take anything Mrs. Hale gives you until a doctor you trust checks it.”
I should have been angry.
Instead, I opened the desk drawer and placed the pill organizer inside.
Then I said, “Lily, tomorrow morning I need you to do exactly one thing.”
“What?”
“Come to work as though this conversation never happened.”
She stared.
“You’re staying here with her?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Bennett—”
“I’ve spent most of my adult life dealing with people who moved money behind closed doors while smiling across conference tables.”
“This is different.”
“It is.”
I looked toward the dark window.
“This time I married one of them.”
The next morning I called Sophie.
She answered cautiously.
Our conversations had become less frequent after my marriage.
“Dad?”
“I need you.”
Silence.
Then, immediately, “Where?”
That almost broke me.
“Ravenswood.”
“I’m coming.”
“Bring Ethan.”
Another pause.
“Dad, he may not—”
“Tell him I said he was right.”
Forty minutes later, both my children walked into my study.
Ethan stopped three feet inside.
“What happened?”
I played Lily’s recording.
Sophie sat down before it finished.
Ethan did not move.
When Vanessa’s recorded voice said, “Legally, it won’t matter,” my son looked at me.
“You’re coming with us.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Dad.”
“I’m not staying under her control. But I’m also not confronting her until I know what she has done.”
Sophie asked about the pills.
I showed her.
She began crying.
“Dad, please.”
“I’m going to a clinic today.”
“Not her doctor.”
“Absolutely not.”
Ethan took the organizer.
“I’ll drive.”
That afternoon, an independent physician examined me.
Blood tests were taken. My prescriptions were reviewed. One of the pills in the organizer did not belong to me. It was a medication capable of causing marked drowsiness and confusion in some people, particularly older adults.
The doctor looked at me.
“Did you take this knowingly?”
“No.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
He recommended observation overnight.
I refused until Sophie threatened to personally tie me to the hospital bed.
