“How many did you take, Johnnie?”
His voice sounds different now, frayed and broken. He lowers me back to the floor, propping me against the wall. I hear the slosh of water as he reaches into the toilet.
“Eight.” The word burns on the way out, my throat raw, aching.
I think he’s pulling pills from the water, tossing them into the sink. Then I hear him start counting.
“One, two, three?—”
The beeping from downstairs cuts through everything again.
“Ann, get up here!” he shouts toward the hallway.
“Four, five…I only see five!”
Footsteps pound up the stairs this time, fast and frantic, nothing like before.
“Johnnie?” My mom appears in the doorway, her eyes going wide as they dart between us. “What’s going on?”
She moves to his side, their panic mirroring each other perfectly.
“She took pills, Ann.” He’s frantic and my heart hurts a little, thinking I caused this. “She took eight, I can only find five!”
“What pills?” Her gaze sweeps the room until it lands on the bottle on the floor. She picks it up, turning it in her hands. “These? Are these the pills you took, Johnnie?”
I nod, barely able to move.
And just like that, something shifts.
Her shoulders drop, tension melting out of her as quickly as it came. She reaches out, placing a steadying hand on my dad’s back.
“It’s okay,” she says, her voice soft but certain. “They’re only Tylenol. I put Tylenol in that empty bottle to carry in my purse sometimes, instead of the big bottle. She’s okay.”
I’m okay.
The words echo in my head, hollow and deafening all at once.
My dad sinks to the floor across from me, his knees pulled up, his head falling into his hands. My mom turns to me, wrapping her arms tightly around me, pulling me into her as she breaks, sobbing into the top of my head.
All three of us are crammed into this tiny bathroom. Sitting on the floor, crying, shaking, and trying to make sense of something none of us can fully grasp.
When I peek up from beneath her arm, my eyes land on the scattered mail across the floor. Envelopes fanned out where my dad must have dropped them.
One catches my attention.
It stops everything.
My breath.
My thoughts.
A letter addressed to me.
Return address—Laken, Ohio.
Collins Combs.
My beautiful girl,