Chapter 4 - Maris Had Been Keeping Her Own Records
When I told my mother what the pharmacist found, she did something I did not expect.
She cried.
Not because she was surprised.
Because she had been waiting for me to believe her.
Then she said:
“I wrote everything down.”
“What?”
“Your father’s bad days.”
She had kept a calendar.
Blood pressure readings.
Meals.
Medication times.
Episodes of confusion.
Doctor calls.
And one repeated detail:
On the days Lenora prepared Alistair’s evening pill tray, his symptoms often worsened within hours.
Not every time.
Not neatly enough to prove anything by itself.
But often enough to bother Maris.
She confronted Lenora once.
Lenora laughed.
Told her she was paranoid.
Then persuaded me that my mother needed rest.
I actually said to Maris:
“Let Lenora help.”
That sentence became difficult to forgive in myself.
Maris also kept copies of medication labels.
One label appeared in her photographs but not in the official cardiology list.
The same overlapping prescription the pharmacist had flagged.
“Why didn’t you show me this before?”
“I tried.”
I remembered.
She had come to my office two weeks after Dad died carrying papers.
Lenora intercepted her in the hallway.
Later, Lenora told me my mother was obsessively trying to blame someone for a natural death.
I told Maris to take time.
To grieve.
To stop looking for villains.
She stopped talking to me about it.
She did not stop investigating.
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The blue records box in Dad’s old study contained the last pieces she needed.
And that was what she had come to retrieve the day Lenora swung the broom.
