“Restraining orders are the page you like,” Mother said.
Restraining orders?
I retreated to the porch, away from the door, watching them all walk up. Tucker was stiff and angry. Father clenched his fists, but walked calmly. Mother seemed to slump in on herself, tugging her skirt when it snagged on a cactus.
When they were all on the porch, I moved to the farthest corner. Mother opened the door. “Come, Ava. We didn’t make it.”
What did that mean?
“You knew better,” Father said. “You would have been violating the order.”
Mother’s laugh echoed on the weathered slats as she entered the house. “How? By being happy to see her when she showed up at my door?”
They all followed her inside, but I hesitated. Should I run away from all of them? They seemed so angry, so upset. I wanted to get away from the heat of their misery.
Tucker waited by the door. “Please come in, Ava. We all want to help you. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
I didn’t believe him, but what could I do? I needed to know what was going on. I scooted past him into the room.
Father stood firm by the door to the kitchen, arms crossed. “I’ve gathered enough evidence to bury you. Prescriptions you stopped filling. And this place.” He gestured at the house. “I sent more money than this. You should have been able to live better. And the way Ava described your shopping trips. What happened to the money? I bet a financial audit could figure it out.”
Mother sat on a chair and arranged her dusty green skirt. “You don’t know anything. Nothing at all.”
Tucker settled on the sofa. I shifted to the opposite wall, as far from all of them as I could get.
Mother pulled a worn shoebox from the shelf beside her. “These are all Ava’s prescription bottles.” She passed them to Father. “You’ll see everything is in order.”
“Then why wasn’t the last one refilled?” he asked.
“It quit working,” she said. “Unfortunately, the meds the doctor gave her next had terrible side effects. Nightmares. Dizzy spells.”
Father sorted through the box. “So, what? You decided not to give her anything else?”
Mother smoothed her skirt over her knees. “I took a chance on an alternative route of medicine. It’s beenworking for quite a lot of epilepsy cases.” She glanced over at me. “I did my research. Unfortunately, the regimen is illegal here in Texas, so I had to allocate most of the money I got each month to procuring it.”
Dad set down the box. “And what was that?”
Mother folded her hands together. “Marijuana.”
“You had her smoke joints?” Tucker asked.
She shook her head. “This was medical grade. There are several compassionate growers who refine it. But it’s expensive. I had one who was providing it for free for a while, and Ava bloomed with it. Just remarkable. Took to her studies so quickly.” She turned to me. “You were so lovely and kind. We got along so well.”
“Sure, if she was high all the time,” Tucker said.
“I had every reason to believe I was seeing a miracle. Reports of it were even making the news. Kids with fifty seizures a day, cured. But the man giving it to me was arrested, and I had to find another source as fast as I could, before I ran out.” Her hands knotted together, thumbs flicking against each other. “I was terribly afraid of getting caught. I could go to jail. I didn’t want Ava to know anyone, meet anyone, talk about it accidentally. She was so guileless, so sweet.”
“Is that why you didn’t want her to go anywhere?” Father asked.
She nodded. “She took it twice a day. No one could know.”
I glanced over at Father. He’d relaxed into a chair, his mouth a deep frown. “And you were going to hold her here—indefinitely? Lie to her about her age?”
Mother’s eyes cast to the floor. “I just wanted to buy myself some time. Her seizures weren’t that common. I needed to know if we were stopping them. If she thoughtshe was sixteen, I had two years, plenty of time to know if they were truly gone.”
Tucker leaned forward on the sofa. “You kept her prisoner,” he said. “She had no friends. No contact with the outside world. You had me arrested.”
Mother nodded. “I did. She was so impressionable. She’d tried to run away before, with a group of no-good hooligans. Keeping her safe during those tumultuous years was hard enough without outside influences.” She met my eyes. “You seduced her.”
