AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I suck in a breath. “What do you mean?”
“She died in the hospital a day after she was born, but her death was caused by a TriCPharma drug—an opioid withdrawal seizure.”
“Oh my God.”
Even though Mom was in recovery by the time she had Sally, I know from my clinical training that opioid withdrawal symptoms in babies can last for months after a mother is clean.
“The Cadells paid off the hospital staff to tell her it was SIDS to keep the truth from her. They knew she could’ve sued them and brought their entire operation down.”
This family is evil incarnate. To think how many lives could’ve been saved if TriCPharma had ceased to exist fifty years ago?
But I still don’t understand why the Cadells care if I know about Sally now and why suddenly they’ve been trying to find out if my mom is still alive. People dying from TriCPharma withdrawal seizures has been a known fact for decades. It’s not any news that could jeopardize them now.
“Why are the Cadells trying to find out if my mom is alive now?”
His phone starts ringing. “It’s Paul,” he lets me know, then answers. “Hi, I’m at the hospital with her. She just askedme why the Cadells are after Irene now. Can I put you on speaker?”
Eddie puts his phone on my hospital tray and presses the speaker button.
“Hi, Beatrice,” Paul says over the phone.
“I’m so sorry about everything,” I say. “I hope they didn’t steal or damage anything at your apartment and that your dad is okay too.”
“He is, thanks, and our apartment is fine,” he says. “Listen, the Cadells are after your mom now because baby Sally was patient zero.”
“Patient zero?” I echo.
“The first baby on record to die of a TriCPharma-related drug seizure, establishing half a century-long of wrongdoing on the company’s part. Your mom found out the truth of what caused Sally’s death from Margot Cadell.”
Margot Cadell?
“Decades after Sally died, Margot also lost a newborn to a TriCPharma drug withdrawal seizure. The Feds found Margot’s diary, where she wrote about her struggles with anxiety and the first time she used TriCPharma drugs to help calm her. She found samples at her parents’ house after they had attended a TriCPharma conference. The drugs helped her feel better—temporarily—but quickly became addictive. Like Irene, she got clean before she gave birth, but it was too late. After she lost her baby, she was determined to take her family’s empire down and hired a detective to find other women who’d lost babies to their drugs. That’s when she uncovered what happened to Sally and that Sally’s dad, her cousin Billy, had known the truth the entire time. She threatened to tell your mom if he didn’t.”
“Remember when we went to Malibu, and Margot’s neighbors said she was in a volatile relationship with an older surfer guy?” Eddie asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
“That was Billy. There are dozens of pictures of him surfing online. It wasn’t Margot’s boyfriend. They were cousins, and Billy was trying to stop her from telling your mom the truth about what happened to his daughter,” Eddie says.
“So Billy knew all along?” I say.
“Yes,” Paul says over the phone. He was at the hospital nursery when Sally became distressed and overheard the staff talking about her withdrawal seizure. William Sr. made sure Billy never told Irene because of the problems it would’ve caused for TriCPharma. But years later, she found out from Margot, and when the Cadells found out about their correspondence, they shut down all communication between the two.”
That’s why Mom’s letter to Margot was returned unopened, the one I found in her box of letters. The Cadells made sure Margot never got it.
“How did you find all of this out?” I ask Paul. “Margot has been gone as long as my mom.”
“The Cadells thought the secret of what happened to Sally died when Margot died. What they didn’t know was that the father of Margot’s baby, Chris, knew everything too. They wrongly assumed Margot didn’t know who the father of her child was, but she did. Chris and Margot had had met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. She told him everything she’d learned about Sally before she died. She also told him that after the Cadells found out about her communication with your mom, Irene started facing death threats and even mentioned to Margot that she might be forced to disappear. He just gave up this information a few weeks ago,” Paul says.
“Why did it take him so long to come forward?” I ask.
“Margot had been clean for several months and then suddenly overdosed after their baby died. The Cadells blamed her death on a drug relapse caused due to grief over losing her newborn. But Chris never believed it. He thought she was murdered for trying to get the truth out about the knowndangers of TriCPharma drugs and feared for his own life, so he kept quiet until last month when he was dying of kidney failure and finally decided to tell the Feds the truth before he passed.”
“Oh my God,” I say.
“He called a few agents to his hospital bed and told them everything. They opened an investigation to look into Margot’s death as a possible homicide and another one to find out if your mom was actually dead or if she had disappeared like she had told Margot she might be forced to do. Unfortunately, someone at the bureau leaked the information about the search for Irene to the Cadells. That’s why you’ve been followed. They wanted to see if you were in contact with your mom to see if she was alive.”
“So the Cadells are worried if my mom’s still alive that she might come forward about Sally now because of the testimony Chris gave?” I ask.
