"I think you should probably go," I say gently.
Milo doesn't seem to hear me.
He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small square of aluminum foil, folded over several times into a tight little package. His fingers work at the layers slowly, and two small blue pills drop into his palm.
He looks at them for a second.
Then he looks at me.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly, but I’m not sure he's talking to me. It’s almost like he’s talking to the room.
Milo tips his head back and swallows both pills dry, then he crumples the foil into a small ball between his fingers. His eyes drift back to the empty soda can on the coffee table, and he picks it up, dropping the foil inside.
Then he shakes it.
The sound it makes is thin and metallic and irregular.
Tnk. Tnk. Tnk. Tnk.
The world stops.
I don't move.
I can’t breathe.
My hands are very still in my lap, and my eyes are fixed on the can in Milo's hand, and somewhere very far away I can hear my own heartbeat.
I know that sound.
I’ve heard it in every nightmare for the last three years.
I just never knew what it was.
Three Years Ago
Elowen
"Mija, look at this."My mother holds up the end of day dispensing log, squinting at it over the top of her reading glasses. "Someone bought seventeen boxes of antacids today." She looks at me. "Seventeen."
"People have stomachs, Mamá."
"Let me tell you," she says, setting the report down with a decisive click of her pen. "Your abuela, God rest her soul, cooked with enough chili to strip paint off a wall, and no one in our family ever neededseventeen boxesof antacids." She shakes her head. "These people are weak."
I'm laughing before she finishes the sentence, and she catches it, laughing too, like she always does. It’s like my laugh is contagious to her specifically.
“You are awful,” I say, and she reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
My mother is still stunning at fifty-five.
Her dark hair is threaded with silver that she refuses to color, and she has reading glasses she refuses to wear halfthe time. She’s been telling people she's forty-nine for six years, and nobody has the nerve to correct her.
"Rosita." My father appears in the doorway between the back room and the main pharmacy floor. "Mrs. Chakraborty stocks up every month. Her husband has acid reflux."
My mother points at him. "You know everything about everyone."
"I'm a pharmacist," he says simply. "It's my job."
"Your job is to count pills and smile," she says. "Not to memorize the digestive systems of half the town."
