Chapter 26. The Jar

Wren POV

I didn't take the extra-strength pills. I didn't throw them away either.

I sat on my bedroom floor until midnight with the bottle in one hand and Mom's card in the other, and I made a decision. Not the brave kind. The careful kind. The kind I'd been making my whole life.

If my mother had been lying to me for fourteen years, I wasn't going to find out why by screaming at her over a video call. She'd cry. She'd say I was confused. She'd say I was stressed and fragile and far from home, and by the weekend she'd be in the car.

So I'd do what she'd taught me without meaning to. I'd keep a secret, and I'd keep proof.

I found an old jam jar in the back of the kitchen cupboard, washed it, dried it and put it on the top shelf of my closet behind my winter boots. Then I dropped in the pill I'd palmed on Thursday, and the one from Friday, and the one from that morning.

Thre