Chapter 2 - I AM NOT FORGETTING
Mom kept glancing at the hospital door.
“She moves things,” she said. “My glasses. My keys. My medicine. Then she waits for you to find them.”
Every example hurt because I remembered them. The glasses in the linen closet. Pills in the wrong bathroom. Keys inside a vase. The stove burner Bianca swore Mom had left on.
Each time, I had said, “Maybe you forgot.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Mom shook her head. “That’s what she wanted. She never made you feel cruel. She made you feel worried.”
The next morning, Detective Lena Ortiz came home with me.
“Photograph everything before you move it,” she said.
In Mom’s nightstand, I found two identical pairs of reading glasses. One had the tiny scratch Dad had made years ago. The other was perfect.
Ortiz stared at them. “Interesting.”
Behind a row of books, I found a spiral notebook.
March 4: Glasses gone again.
March 11: Medicine moved. Bianca says I did it.
March 19: Julian thinks I forgot dinner plans. I did not.
April 2: Heard Bianca in my room at 1:10 a.m.
Near the end, Mom had written in heavy letters:
I AM NOT FORGETTING.
The final page was worse.
If something happens to me, Julian needs to know I was afraid of Bianca.
Ortiz pointed to the date. Two weeks earlier.
Below it was another line:
She has a key to Dad’s locked cabinet.
May you like
I looked across the room at the walnut cabinet where Mom kept Dad’s old trust papers, deeds, and estate files.
The blue porcelain dish that held the key was empty.
