Chapter 3 - WHAT EMMA CALLED A MINT
By morning, Emma’s heart rate had improved.
Mine seemed determined to make up the difference.
Renee arrived before sunrise wearing jeans, a raincoat, and the expression she reserved for situations too serious for politeness. She hugged Emma, signed the hospital supervision agreement, then pulled Michael and me into the family waiting area.
“What did your mother do?” she asked him.
“We don’t know that she did anything.”
Renee stared at him.
“You hid a divorce consultation, a custody file, missing medication, and months of school reports. Which part are we supposed to treat as normal?”
Michael looked toward me as though I might defend him.
I didn’t.
Child Protective Services arranged for Emma to stay temporarily at Renee’s home after discharge. I could be with her as long as Renee was present. Michael would require separate approval because the medication belonged to him and had been stored in his office.
The arrangement was reasonable.
It still felt like punishment.
At noon, while Renee helped Emma choose a movie, I sat beside the bed and asked about the days she had felt sick at school.
Emma picked at the edge of the blanket.
“Grandma said I get nervous because you’re always rushing.”
“What did she do when you felt nervous?”
“She gave me something.”
My body went rigid.
“What kind of thing?”
“A mint.”
“From a wrapper?”
She shook her head. “From her little blue box.”
“What did it look like?”
“White. She broke it sometimes.”
I kept my voice steady by force.
“Did she tell you what it was?”
“She said it helped people calm down.”
“How often did she give it to you?”
Emma shrugged, ashamed now.
“Before tests. Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep at her house.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Grandma said you’d get mad because nurses think they know everything.”
I turned away long enough to swallow the sound rising in my throat.
Emma touched my sleeve.
“I’m sorry.”
I faced her immediately.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.”
“Is Grandma going to jail?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Dad mad at her?”
I looked through the glass. Michael stood in the corridor with Detective Ortiz, one hand pressed against the back of his neck.
“He should be.”
After Emma fell asleep, Detective Ortiz asked whether I would accompany her to our house. I couldn’t enter until officers completed their initial search, but I could identify personal belongings and explain the layout.
Our Wedgwood home looked unchanged.
Pink petals stuck to the wet front steps. Emma’s bicycle leaned against the garage. A cereal bowl remained in the sink from the morning she collapsed.
Inside Michael’s office, the custody file sat in a black accordion folder beneath his desk.
It contained my schedules, school emails, photographs of unfinished laundry, notes about takeout dinners, and a list of dates when Diane had collected Emma from school.
Someone had highlighted each nurse visit in yellow.
Detective Ortiz found Michael’s prescription bottle in the top drawer.
The pharmacy label showed ninety tablets.
Eight remained.
Michael had refilled the prescription only seventeen days earlier.
“Does he take it daily?” she asked.
“Once at night.”
There should have been more than seventy pills left.
In the ceramic bowl on the bookshelf sat the key.
Beside it lay a receipt from a pharmacy in Ballard.
The receipt was for an early refill from January.
I remembered Michael telling me he was staying late at work that evening.
Detective Ortiz photographed it.
“Did your husband ever mention losing medication more than once?”
“No.”
She studied my face.
“You should prepare yourself for the possibility that he knew more than he has admitted.”
In Emma’s bedroom, I found a folded sheet of paper inside her math workbook.
It was a chart written in Diane’s precise handwriting.
Headache — Monday.
Too tired to finish dinner — Thursday.
Dizzy after recess — Tuesday.
At the bottom, Diane had written:
Michael needs stronger proof before mediation.
The dates matched Emma’s school nurse visits.
I stood beneath the paper butterflies Emma and I had taped to the ceiling years earlier, holding evidence that my daughter’s suffering had been converted into strategy.
That evening, Michael called Renee’s house.
I answered before the second ring.
“Did you know your mother was giving Emma pills?”
“No.”
“Did you know your prescription was disappearing?”
“I told you I noticed it once.”
“It happened more than once.”
He breathed into the phone without speaking.
I closed my eyes.
“You got an early refill in January.”
“My mother said she knocked the bottle into the sink.”
“And you believed her?”
“She’d been helping me organize the office.”
“You let the person collecting evidence against me handle your medication?”
“I didn’t know she was giving it to Emma.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Another pause.
Then Michael said, “I knew she was trying to make the custody case stronger.”
The honesty arrived far too late.
I lowered the phone.
Renee watched me from the kitchen doorway.
“What are you going to do?”
May you like
I looked toward the living room, where Emma slept beneath one of Renee’s old college blankets.
“I’m going to find out exactly how far he let his mother go.”
