I called the pharmacy using the number on the label and asked when the prescription had been filled. The woman said every thirty days, without missing one, for the past three years. I told her my mother had been dead since 2019. She checked the account and went quiet. Then she said the prescriptions were being picked up in person, always by the same woman, and the signature on the pickup record was on file. I asked her to read me the name. It was my mother’s name. I asked whether they had an ID attached to the account. She said they did — and the ID wasn’t my mother’s. It belonged to a woman forty years younger.
I drove back to the house and searched every room. The refrigerator had fresh groceries dated two days earlier, and the pill organizer was filled for the entire week. I opened the kitchen drawer and found receipts from the pharmacy, the grocery store, and a medical supply company. Every purchase had been made within the last month. Then I found something under the walker: a home-healthcare invoice with my mother’s name on it, showing visits every Tuesday and Thursday since 2021. I called the agency and asked why they’d been sending someone to an empty house. The woman on the phone said, “Ma’am, it’s not empty. We’ve been taking care of her there for years.” I told her my mother died seven years ago. She asked me to hold. When she came back, her voice had changed. She said the caregiver had specifically instructed them never to call me because I “didn’t want contact.”
I asked for the caregiver’s name. She gave it to me, and it was the same woman whose driver’s license was attached to my mother’s pharmacy account. I searched the name in my mother’s papers and found it written on the back of a photograph I’d never seen before. My mother had written one sentence beneath it: “If she ever comes back, don’t let her brother know.” I called my brother and asked whether he knew the woman. He said no. Then I asked why he’d been paying the water bill from an account we’d both agreed was supposed to be closed. He went silent and finally said, “Because Mom asked me to keep the house ready.” I asked, “Ready for who?” He didn’t answer.
Then I heard a noise behind me.
Someone had just unlocked the back door.
