Part 3 — Two Hundred Ten Thousand
The figure typed on the line marked AMOUNT was $210,000. Every cent Dot and I saved over fifty-one years, on a form I had never seen, with my name already printed underneath.
Lester set a hand on my shoulder and said, Howard, sit down. Then he stepped between me and the table, lifted the clipboard like a casserole, and told Mr. Grady we would wait for the police.
I had already texted my daughter from the pharmacy, and she had called the Port St. Lucie police before Lester started the car. Two officers arrived four minutes after Tasha spoke to me in the hallway. They asked everyone in the kitchen to stay put.
Mr. Grady was a notary whose license had been revoked in another county. He gave a full statement on the spot, said he was paid cash to stamp whatever Tasha handed him, and gave up a briefcase of blank forms with other seniors names already typed in.
The white powder in the jar was tested that week. It was a crushed prescription sedative mixed through the sugar, one my doctor had never ordered. It explained the afternoon naps, the dry mouth, and the glasses on the floor.
Dots missing pills were no mystery after that. Tasha had been taking them for months, to sell and to crush. The count I made on the bathroom counter, fourteen of ninety, was the exact number she had not gotten to.
She was charged with exploitation of an elderly person, forgery, and giving medication without authority. Mr. Grady was charged with fraudulent notarization and conspiracy. The agency that sent Tasha handed over her file, including three earlier complaints it had failed to follow up.
The bank restored my two checks to the penny and froze the account she had been about to empty. A man who counts his wifes pills one by one is never as helpless as the people around him think.
A doctor checked me over and found nothing lasting. I stayed awake all afternoon within a week, and within a month I walked to the end of the street without my cane. My daughter flew in from Atlanta and stayed three weeks, and she cried at the sink every day, and I let her.
The agency paid for a new aide of my choosing, and I picked a retired nurse named Mrs. Odom, sixty-eight, who tells me what is in every cup before I drink it. She also drinks it first, which I never asked her to do.
The police let me keep Dots ring. It sits back on her dresser, in the dish. Anita from the pharmacy comes by Sundays to check the cabinet with me, and we throw away old bottles together, one at a time.
