The pharmacy label was intact.

My son’s name, printed right there.

The date.

The instructions I had read a hundred times.

And the bottle was almost full — the liquid at the line it would have started at, though Toby had supposedly been given a dose morning and night for days.

I felt something cold move down my spine as I looked at it, because I had watched, or thought I had watched, that medicine be given.

I had trusted that it was being given, on the nights I finally fell asleep, by the people who kept telling me to rest, to stop hovering, to let them help.