Chapter 4 - Buddy Had Interrupted One of Vanessa’s Drinks Before
I asked Lily about Buddy with her therapist present.
Not because a dog could tell us what was in her meals.
He couldn’t.
But Lily had noticed his behavior.
“Why did you say Buddy only acts like that when Vanessa puts something in your food?”
Lily thought for a moment.
“He always begs.”
“Okay.”
“But sometimes Vanessa makes me milk and he smells it and walks away.”
“How many times?”
“Maybe four.”
“Did you drink it?”
“Sometimes.”
“What happened afterward?”
“I got sleepy.”
Then she remembered one night Buddy had knocked a glass from Vanessa’s hand.
I remembered the argument.
Vanessa told me Buddy jumped at her and spilled Lily’s drink across the carpet.
She said the dog was becoming aggressive.
I believed her.
Lily now described it differently.
“Buddy stood in front of me. Vanessa tried to give me the cup. He bumped her.”
“Did you drink anything that night?”
“No.”
“Did you get dizzy?”
“No.”
That was a pattern, not proof.
Then our veterinarian gave me another piece.
Vanessa had called six weeks earlier asking whether Buddy’s repeated barking around Lily could indicate “dangerous resource guarding.”
The veterinarian recommended an in-person behavior evaluation.
Vanessa never brought Buddy.
Instead, she told me the vet thought he should be removed from Lily’s room.
That was false.
Then I remembered Vanessa repeatedly locking Buddy in the laundry room after dinner.
She said he shed too much.
Lily said it happened mostly when Vanessa prepared her bedtime drink.
Then we found a boarding reservation Vanessa had made for Buddy.
Four weeks.
Starting the same day she wanted Lily admitted to Pine Hollow.
Vanessa had planned to remove both of them from the house.
The child who resisted her.
And the dog that kept reacting around the meals she prepared.
Then our housekeeper, Maria, remembered an incident.
One afternoon she accidentally swapped two identical cups sitting on the kitchen counter.
Vanessa became unusually angry and immediately poured both drinks down the sink.
Maria remembered because Vanessa almost never wasted anything.
That night Lily had no episode.
No dizziness.
No confusion.
Then Maria said, “She started making Lily’s drinks after I left for the day.”
“When?”
“About seven months ago.”
Exactly when the symptoms began.
Then the pediatrician called with the next development.
A preserved sample from Lily’s worst previous episode could be tested more specifically.
The result identified exposure to the same prescription sedating medication Vanessa used for sleep.
Still, the laboratory could not tell us who gave it to Lily or how.
The medicine proved exposure.
The rest would have to come from behavior, records and statements.
Then Lily’s therapist asked her one final question.
“Did Vanessa ever tell you what would happen if doctors found medicine in your body?”
Lily nodded.
“She said I’d probably get sent away because people would think I stole her pills.”
Vanessa had not only been creating symptoms.
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She had been preparing an explanation that blamed Lily for them.
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