“No, this is Ariel. I live next door.”
They said Marjorie’s medication was ready for pickup.
When I told them they had the wrong number, the pharmacist apologized and mentioned that Owen had recently changed her emergency contact information.
I gripped my phone tighter.
“Changed it from whom?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t discuss private records.”
“Then why do you have my number?”
There was a pause.
“It may have remained in an older section of the file.”
I felt a knot form in my stomach.
Marjorie had once given me a spare key, insisting I keep it “just in case.”
That had been three years earlier, after she locked herself out while taking out the trash. She had pressed the key into my palm and refused to take it back.
“You are the most reliable person on this street,” she had said.
I had never used it.
Until that afternoon.
