I’d been worried, yes, but I’d accepted it. What else could I do?
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I watch,” Damian said simply. “I listen. Mom thinks I don’t understand, but I do. When she thinks I’m asleep, she grinds up pills in her room and mixes them into the tea packets with a little spoon. I saw her through the crack in the door.”
My stomach twisted.
“What kind of pills?”
“Different ones,” he said, voice wavering but steady. “Some are really strong sleep pills. Some are little white ones that she says make older people calm so they don’t argue. I heard her tell Dad that if an older person takes enough of them over time, it can make their brain slow down and stop working right. Then doctors just say it’s normal because of their age.”
I pressed a hand to my mouth as memories rushed in—Nyla’s concerned questions about my memory, her quiet suggestions that maybe I shouldn’t live alone anymore, the way Dean had started to look at me like I was fragile glass.
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