Anyway, he was asking me about April. Some woman named Brianna Anderson, whoever she is. I told him I didn’t know anything about it. His light blue eyes looked disappointed, but he just nodded.
Then he asked me about Courtney. That was the question I was waiting for. I told him everything I knew. I’ve been waiting so long to tell that story. And I knew it was coming.
He told me he thought April was going to get in a lot of trouble for this. But I don’t understand that part at all. My brain is still fuzzy. Even now. Even though they’re weaning me off the medications, I still have trouble thinking. It could last a long time, they say. But I still don’t quite understand.
But here’s what I remember.
It was one of the nights when Peggy was giving me my evening meds. I know this, because she never gives me all my medications. Usually, when the nurses leave, I feel foggy. But after Peggy gives me my medications, I can still think. When she left for the night, she hugged me and said, “Hang in there. We’re going to get this fixed.”
The nurse on the unit that night was Deborah. Deborah spends the whole night on her phone. She doesn’t notice when you hit your call button. She doesn’t notice anything. Sometimes it’s annoying, but that night it wasn’t. That night, I didn’t want her to notice.
I left my room and went to the nurses’ station. Deborah was nowhere to be seen. She was probably out on the balcony, talking to one of her friends. She had left her big red purse on the counter. I fished around inside and found her keys.
The exit to Shady Oaks has a code on it. Over the years, I’ve heard the nurses talk about the code. What’s the code again? Everyone is always asking. I’ve heard it enough times that I’ve committed it to memory.
9419
I used to be a math teacher a long time ago, in my other life, back when I was young, and that’s how I know that all the numbers in the code are perfect squares. That makes it easy to remember. 9419. I punched it into the keypad and then I jammed my thumb into the red button below. I heard a click and the door unlocked.
It was that easy.
It was night time, so there were only a handful of cars in the lot outside the building. I looked down at the keys in my hand. One of them was a key fob. I pressed the unlock button and I saw a set of lights flash. It was a white SUV, just like the kind April used to drive.
My loafers sounded like gunshots on the pavement as I walked over to the SUV. Any second, I was sure Deborah would come running out of the home after me. It didn’t seem possible I was getting away with this so easily.
I opened the door to the white SUV and slid into the driver seat. I stuck the key into the ignition and the car roared to life. I stared down at the dashboard in amazement. I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car in so many years. I hadn’t even been in a car in years. But I was sure I could still drive. That sort of muscle memory never leaves you.
A little camera lit up on the dashboard. I had never seen anything like it before. The question stared at me on the screen. Where would you like to go?
Where did I want to go? I wanted to escape. I wanted to get away from that awful nursing home where they held me down if I didn’t want the medications that made me feel like a zombie. But what could I do? I had no money. I was wearing pajamas.
And then an address popped into my head. My son-in-law’s office.
If I went there, I could talk to Elliot. I always liked that boy. He would help me. I would tell him the whole story, away from April’s prying eyes. I could ask him for money. I would promise him that I would never do anything to hurt his family, if only he would let me get away.
It was as good a plan as any.
I typed in the address, and the screen lit up with directions. I pulled out of the spot and got on the road. I was right—I hadn’t forgotten how to drive. It came easy for me. And fortunately, there were very few cars on the road. I drove slowly and carefully though. I knew if I got pulled over, it would all be over.
It was a ten-minute drive to Elliot’s office. I parked in the empty lot, but I couldn’t make myself get out of the car. Maybe I couldn’t trust Elliot. Maybe he would go right to April. And then I would be back where I started. Worse, because they might find out Peggy hadn’t given me my medications. Without Peggy, it would be like entering an endless fog I could never get out of.
I thought about driving away. I could go as far as the car would take me, and then hitch a ride. But what could I do without any money or identification? In pajamas!
While I was trying to figure out my next move, the door to the building swung open. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was April.
I squinted through the dimly lit parking lot at my daughter. She was dressed in a red blouse and a skirt that was far too short for somebody her age. She had let her hair grow out a bit since the last time I saw her too. She had been keeping it shorter, but now it was long and flowing. She looked good. Better than good. She looked at least ten years younger.
She was happy. She had a great life. Thanks to me.
April looked in my direction. She squinted into the darkness, and for a moment, our eyes met. Then she quickly ducked her head down so that her blond hair hung in her face and hurried the rest of the way to her car. A blue Kia. It didn’t seem like April’s style, but I never really understood my daughter. She had never really been the same since her father died when she was five. He was watching her that day, and he had a heart attack while they were playing dollhouse. Dropped dead right in front of her.
April’s car started up, and she sped out of the parking lot. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel, then I threw the car back into drive and followed her.
She knew I was following her. Her driving became more erratic. She was making turns that were taking us in a circle. I was worried I was going to get pulled over trying to follow her, but I couldn’t stop. I kept following her.
It seemed to go on forever. Finally, I hung back a bit and shut off the lights. Maybe she thought I stopped following her. I watched as she pulled over in front of a somewhat broken-down house in a quiet residential neighborhood. I could tell it wasn’t a good neighborhood. Did April live here now? It didn’t make sense to me.
I pulled over a few car lengths away. I watched her get out of the car, her pretty blonde hair swishing around her. She was going home to her family. Something I couldn’t do anymore, because of her. Again, my fingers tightened around the steering wheel as I filled with rage. And I looked in the backseat. There was a shovel on the seat, like the kind for shoveling snow.
I reached back and grabbed the shovel. And I got out of the car.
The street was completely dark. There was a street light, but the bulb had blown out, and April was nothing but a dark silhouette. She startled as she looked up at me. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then her shoulders relaxed.
“Oh my God.” She clutched her chest. “I thought you were someone else!”
I squeezed the handle of the shovel in my right hand as I stared at my daughter under the dim light of the crescent moon. She looked so pretty. She didn’t look her age at all—she looked no older than twenty-five. She must have had plastic surgery to look good on her show. Anyway, she looked like somebody who had a wonderful life. Who didn’t have a care in the world.