“House,” Ron finished, his voice cracking. “Pam, why do you have a key to our house?” For a moment, nobody in that hospital corridor moved. On the little screen of my phone, the woman on our patio held up a ring of keys in the glow of the motion light, selected one, slipped it into the lock, and turned it. The chain was already off. It had been lifted from the inside by a hand that was not mine, in the dark, at twenty minutes before two. Pam looked at the deputy. Then she looked at her brother. “Ron gave it to me,” she said. “He said I could check on Mama.”
Ron sank into the chair. “I gave you a key in the spring,” he said slowly. “Because you asked. You said she might fall, and I would not be able to hear it from upstairs.” He put his face in his hands. “I never said you could let yourself in at night.” The deputy, whose name was Caudill, did not raise his voice. He asked Pam to wait in the family lounge. He asked Ron to sit down. Then he turned to me, and with great courtesy, he asked whether I would watch the rest of the video with him, in case I noticed something he did not.
We watched it twice. At 1:44, Pam unlocked the door and pulled it open. She stood on the patio for almost a minute, looking up at the dark window of the room of Lois. Then she knocked, very softly, three times, on the glass of the back door. Lois, who sleeps lightly, came shuffling down the hall in her nightgown. She opened the door to see who was knocking. Pam stepped to one side, into the shadows, and Lois, confused and half asleep, took one step too many. The camera showed her falling. It showed Pam watching. It showed her not moving for a long time.
A locked door will keep out a stranger, but a camera over the door keeps out a lie.
Detective Mullins took over at six. Pam sat across the table from her, in the same coat, with the same wet leaves on the same shoes, and for twenty minutes she insisted she had been asleep in her own bed in Henderson. Then the detective played the video. Pam went gray. The story, when it came, came out all at once. Lois had changed her will in September, leaving the house to me, since I was the one who had cared for her. Pam had counted on that house for years. The plan, she said, was only to make it look as if I were neglecting her mother.
She had read on the internet that a caregiver who abuses or neglects an elderly person can be disqualified from receiving anything. All she needed was a fall, a report, and a witness to say I was careless with the door. She did not intend for her mother to be badly hurt, she told the detective, and she wept as she said it. The detective let her finish. Then she said quietly, “Ms. Hargis, your mother lay on that patio in forty degree weather for forty minutes. You watched. You did not call.” Pam had nothing to say.
Pam was charged with criminal abuse of a vulnerable adult, conspiracy to commit fraud, and unlawful entry. A year later, she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years. At the hearing, Lois asked to speak. She came to the front of the courtroom on my arm, with her cast, and addressed her daughter directly. “Pamela,” she said, “I would have given you the house if you had asked. I would have given you the china and the quilts and the piano. You could have just asked me.” Pam sobbed in the front row. The judge looked away and asked for a recess.
Ron moved into the house of his brother for four months. He did not argue about it. He knew what he had done, even if he had not meant for it to happen. He gave a long statement to the detective, and he sold his truck to pay the medical bills of Lois. In March, he came to the door with a paper bag of groceries and asked if he could cook supper. I let him in. We have not talked about the future. We talk about Lois, and about the weather, and about whether to repaint the kitchen. For now, that is enough.
Lois recovered. The wrist healed straight, and the doctor, a cheerful young man from Louisville, told her she had the bones of a woman half her age. She said she had the bones of a woman who drank a glass of milk every night. We replaced the chain on the back door with a deadbolt and put a second camera over the front. Ron installed a small bell on the patio steps, the kind they hang on a shop door, so that anyone walking there would make a sound.
In April, I found her on the patio at seven in the morning with her robe tucked around her knees and her cast resting on the table, drinking tea. The redbud tree was in bloom. I sat down beside her. She patted the arm of my chair and said, “Diane, you have been a better daughter to me than the one I gave birth to.” I told her not to talk like that. “Hush,” she said. “I am eighty six. I will say whatever I like.” I laughed, and I cried a little, and she handed me a napkin.
We spent that summer teaching each other things. I taught her to use the video telephone to see her great grandchildren in Atlanta. She taught me to make her biscuits, the real way, with cold lard and a light hand and no cookbook, and I ruined fourteen batches before I got one right. On Sundays, the whole family comes to the house, even Ron, who brings the peaches. And at night, before I go to bed, I walk to the back door and check the lock. It is a small habit. But I check it with gratitude now, not fear.