“But I thought she was clean,” Alice replied, confused.

“As far as we knew she was, but the results from her screening came back with trace amounts of drugs in her system, so she’s been getting them from somewhere. We aren’t sure yet, but the prison is running an investigation.”

In the end, it didn’t matter. Kallie’s mother was released from the hospital, but she died two days later in jail while awaiting transport back to the prison facilities. Helena explained that the hospital had found some underlying issues with her heart, but that she had refused treatment for them many times and did again at the most recent visit. Helena told us that we could apply for adoption immediately. We didn’t even have to go to court for it; it was granted without opposition. It was one of the happiest days in my life.

**********

I woke up with a start and glanced at my alarm clock. It was only a little after two, so I couldn’t exactly justify getting up for the day. I was wide awake, though. After staring at the ceiling for about fifteen minutes I sighed and decided to go to the kitchen to make myself some warm milk. It had always helped me to sleep in the past, and I figured it couldn’t hurt. I needed to try and get some more sleep anyway; Shane was liable to admit me to the hospital herself if I didn’t get more rest than I had been.

I put on my slippers and started to shuffle down the hall to the kitchen, trying to walk as quietly as I could so as not to wake Shane and Jenny. I was about three feet from the guest room door when I realized I shouldn’t have worried about that. I could hear whispers, and I figured they were just talking until I heard a muffled moan.

I froze and waited, thinking that maybe I’d imagined it. Jenny had been diagnosed with arthritis a couple of years ago, and it was pretty bad. She was on several different pain medications but they never seemed to make it completely better, and Shane had told me several times that it was always worse at night. She said that sometimes Jenny would wake her up because she was crying from the pain, and Shane had to try and soothe her back to sleep.