Chapter 7 - Lydia's Daughter
Samantha Bell arrived at the hospital with a grocery bag full of the clothes her mother loved. She was forty-three, a public-school principal, and she looked as though the previous night had aged her ten years.
"The Rosebridge brochure showed a sunroom and a walking trail," she told me. "Vivian sent pictures every Sunday."
"Pictures of what?"
"My mother smiling. Wearing the blue sweater I bought her."
Lydia sat upright in her hospital bed. There was no blue sweater now, only a rough blanket and a blood-pressure cuff.
"Those pictures were taken the first day," she said. "After that they took my phone."
Samantha gripped the bed rail. "Mom, why didn't you tell me?"
"I tried. They told you I was confused, didn't they?"
Samantha's silence was an answer.
Lydia explained the evening routine. Vivian handed out pills in unlabeled cups. Walter sometimes went without food because he couldn't climb into a chair. Iris was told she would lose her niece's visits if she complained. Margaret slipped the residents extra water when she could.
"Your mother treated us like people," Lydia said. "That's why they hated her."
I asked about Helen Pike.
Lydia stopped moving. "She had trouble breathing one night. I heard her asking for an ambulance. Vivian said she'd already called one."
"Did it come?"
"Not while I was awake. The next morning her bed was stripped."
Samantha held up a business card from the facility's brochure. Under the Rosebridge logo was an emergency contact number. I dialed it.
May you like
A phone rang inside the diaper bag at my feet. I'd brought the bag from home and hadn't noticed the handset tucked beneath a stack of baby bibs. The number wasn't a care line at all.
It belonged to Evan, and he had kept it secret.
