Chapter 1 - THE LOCK ON THE OUTSIDE
The first thing I heard when I came home from deployment was my wife telling a neighbor that my mother had lost her mind.
The second was a muffled cry behind a locked bedroom door.
I stood on the porch of our brick ranch outside Fayetteville, North Carolina, still wearing my uniform, my duffel bag resting beside my boots. Vanessa wrapped both arms around me while Mrs. Carter and two other neighbors watched from their driveways.
“Ethan,” Vanessa whispered, loud enough for them to hear, “I didn’t want to worry you overseas.”
Mrs. Carter touched my sleeve. “Your poor wife has been handling everything alone. Your mother’s dementia got bad so quickly.”
Vanessa lowered her eyes.
“She falls. She screams. She accuses me of terrible things.” She displayed a row of bruises around her wrist. “Yesterday she attacked me.”
The marks were narrow and evenly spaced, shaped almost perfectly like fingertips.
“Mom did that?”
Vanessa nodded.
Then the cry came again.
“Ethan?”
My mother’s voice was weak, but there was nothing confused about it.
Vanessa’s arms tightened around me. “She gets agitated when she hears men.”
“Let me see her.”
A flash of panic crossed her face before she arranged it into exhaustion.
“Dr. Keller said isolation can reduce stimulation.”
“Who’s Dr. Keller?”
“A geriatric psychiatrist. He’s coming tomorrow morning. We may have to discuss permanent placement.”
I picked up my bag and walked inside.
The house smelled of lavender cleaner and something sour beneath it. Vanessa followed me down the hallway, listing incidents as if she had memorized them.
Mom had left the stove on. Mom had wandered into the street. Mom had smashed a mirror. Mom had tried to bite her.
The bedroom door had a new deadbolt on the outside.
“She locked herself in once,” Vanessa said. “I couldn’t risk it again.”
The explanation made no sense, but I let my face remain blank.
She handed me the key.
The curtains inside had been nailed to the window frame. My mother sat on the floor beside the bed in a stained nightgown, thinner than she had been eight months earlier. Purple bruises covered her upper arms. A healing cut ran through one eyebrow.
Her hearing aids were gone. So were her glasses.
But her eyes found mine immediately.
“Don’t believe her,” she whispered.
Vanessa stepped in behind me. “See? Paranoia.”
Mom flinched at the sound of her voice.
I knelt and kissed her forehead.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Vanessa told me everything.”
Horror spread across Mom’s face.
I squeezed her hand twice, the signal we had used when I was a boy and my father’s temper made words dangerous.
Trust me.
She lowered her eyes.
I stood and faced my wife.
“You must be exhausted.”
Vanessa’s shoulders relaxed. “You have no idea.”
I pulled her into a hug.
Over her shoulder, I noticed a black lens mounted above the door. It wasn’t pointed toward the hallway or window.
It was aimed directly at my mother’s bed.
I released Vanessa and gave her the tired smile she expected from a husband who had spent sixteen hours traveling home.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “we’ll get Mom exactly the help she needs.”
Vanessa smiled back.
“Thank God you understand.”
May you like
As she turned away, my mother caught my sleeve and pressed something into my palm.
A small white pill, damp from where she had hidden it beneath her tongue.
