Kris did the same, noticing that the square door in the wall was open just a crack. Through that sliver, she could see only the darkness of the secret room.
Kris turned back just in time to catch Sadie nodding toward the storage door. Her cheeks quivered with a suppressed smile.
“Are you sleeping in the room where your mommy died?” she asked.
We’re done, Kris thought, and before she could question herself, she was snatching up their mugs and rising to her feet.
Sadie stared up at her, confused.
“Where are you going?”
“I just …” Kris clenched her teeth. She could feel the tiny square door to her side and that sliver of darkness slicing into the white wall. She had been cautiously optimistic when Sadie invited her upstairs, but now Kris wanted to get back downstairs as quickly as possible. “Why don’t we take our tea down to the breakfast nook? We can talk down there.”
Sadie’s grin was gone. Her bottom lip began to tremble.
“No. She wants you up here.”
“Who?” Kris asked, confused.
Once more, Sadie glanced over to that little door for approval.
“What are you looking at, Sadie?” Kris knew there was anger in her voice, but at the moment, she did not care. “Why do you keep doing that? Why do you keep looking at that door?”
Whatever Sadie heard, it made her expression harden, the sadness that had moments ago threatened to overpower her gone in an instant. She glared up at her mother.
“You said I could ask you anything.”
Bounce tumbled to the floor as Sadie hopped up. She was out of the room before Kris could even call her name. She listened as Sadie bounded down the stairs. A few seconds later, the slam of her bedroom door echoed through the house.
Kris looked down at the limp body of Bounce the purple frog sprawled at her feet.
Sadie was not getting better.
It was time to admit that.
The Xanax rattled about the bottom of the plastic bottle, skittering away from her fingertip as she attempted to snatch one out. She was surprised to find so few left. It seemed just yesterday the bottle was still a third full, but now …
She peered in and quickly counted the yellow pills.
Seven.
A week, if she took only one a day. Two weeks if she could confine her usage to every other day.
She scanned the label on the side of the bottle. Quantity: 80.
Eighty pills when the prescription was filled. Could that be right? Had she gone through that many in two weeks?
She attempted to do the math in her head.
When had she first dipped into the meds? The first day? Or had she waited? And how many had she taken before leaving for Kansas?
Did it really matter? Even if she gave herself the benefit of the doubt and said she had arrived with sixty pills, over the course of fourteen days that was about four pills a day. And she knew for a fact that in the beginning, she was only taking two per day. That had been the deal she made with herself. Those were the rules.
There was only one explanation. In the past week, there had been days when she popped five or six in a twenty-four-hour period. There were times when she was running on a solid three milligrams of Xanax, not to mention the amount of wine she was downing every evening.
“People heal in different ways,” someone had told her after Jonah’s funeral. “Let it take whatever course it takes.”
But had they meant this? Isolating herself and her daughter in a cabin in the woods and numbing herself with pills and alcohol?
For a moment, she stood motionless, her finger still plunged into the pill bottle.
Then without another thought, she tossed the benzodiazepine into the back of her throat. Her mouth instantly filled with spit, and she swallowed it down.
Six pills left.
People heal in different ways.
She could accept that. But this way would require a refill of medication soon. She wasn’t too keen on contacting Jonah’s physician uncle out of the blue and asking if he could call in a prescription. That would require two things she wanted to avoid at all costs: informing more people—and family members at that—of her location, and answering the most irritating question anyone dealing with grief is expected to answer: “How are you doing?”
Well, my daughter is ignoring me, I’ve been spending all my time repairing a house I don’t intend to live in past August, and I’m calling you for more drugs, so how the hell do you think I’m doing?
Allison. She could ask Allison to call something in. They prescribed Prozac for people’s dogs all the time. Just last month, she wrote a prescription for a Pitt mix when it looked like training alone wouldn’t keep the high-strung pooch from nipping at neighbors who came too close to the fence. She could—
Kris slipped a hand around her forehead and pinched her temples, hard, as if trying to keep the rest of the thought from fully forming in her brain.
Prozac for dogs? How goddamn desperate are you?
Kicking off her shoes one by one, Kris climbed onto her bed fully clothed, then buried her hands under the pillows and pulled them against her cheek. The new mattress was still a bit too firm for her liking, but compared to the deathbed she had tried to sleep on that first night, it was heaven.
She lay on her side and listened to the rain pelt the windowpanes.
The pills weren’t the problem, she realized, as the one she had just consumed began to work its way into her bloodstream. No, the real issue was why she was taking the pills. And it had very little to do with Jonah, if she were being completely honest.
As much as she did not want to admit it, she knew that the more her daughter laughed and played, the more Kris popped and drank.
That’s shitty, her mind scolded. That is an absolutely shitty thing to think.
But it was true, wasn’t it? The constant sound of Sadie’s laughter, the flash of red hair as she raced by, her muffled voice floating down from upstairs as she carried on an animated one-sided conversation with no one. The more dependent Sadie became on this routine, the more Kris craved the bitterness of a Xanax on her tongue.
It shouldn’t be this way. She knew it was wrong. But right or wrong, this was the way she felt. Her daughter’s happiness had become the reason for her own unhappiness.
Deep in the black abyss of her mind, a door creaked open.
You’re a bad mother, that taunting voice purred.
No.
You’re selfish.
No. I’m trying to deal.
So is she. And you hate her for it.
I do not hate her! I love her!
You resent her.
Kris shut her eyes and pressed her face into the pillow.
She resented Sadie. She resented her resilience. She resented her innocence. She resented that she could not be that young again with all of her choices yet to be made.
And what would you choose? the voice behind the door asked. What would you do differently?
Kris’s scalp was beginning to tingle. The medication had found its way to her synapses.
I would have never married Jonah.
She rolled onto her back, her head sinking into the pillow.
Across the room, the window lit up as lightning flashed through the darkened storm clouds. Thunder rumbled angrily from one side of the world to the other, rattling the windowpane. Rain continued to pummel the roof, although Kris barely noticed it.
The task of keeping her eyes open was becoming too much to bear. Her vision blurred, the bedroom becoming a blur of shadows. She closed her eyes.