She had asked three times if she should make the one with cauliflower or green beans, and the answer had finally been the green beans. As Julie stuck the frozen plate in the microwave and pressed the first button, Elena called from the other room and said, "I think the cauliflower one is probably better, don't you, Julie Honey?"

Julie's head dropped and swung on the hinge of her neck. "I already opened the one with the green beans, Elana. Do you want me to put it back in the freezer?"

"Yeah." The old woman stated her wish in a single, quick breath and said nothing more.

Julie smacked the open button on the microwave and pulled out the frozen dinner. She realized she had already vented the plastic, but she wasn't about to try explaining that putting it away could ruin it. Elena wants the cauliflower; she can have it. As the microwave hummed again, she quickly went about the business of sorting out Elena's meal-time pills. There were so many. The last time she'd put them in a pillbox, Elana got mad that it didn't open right away and threw the whole box at the wall before calling Julie in from work to help her pick them up.

"Sheit!" There was the sound of something falling off a table. Books, trash, and something glass. "Julie. I spilled my water!"

She went back to the living room where the old woman was sitting in her white recliner across from the tv with no off-button. It was a wonder she could use the end table next to her at all with a nearly two-foot-high pile of phonebooks and bingo catalogs. The glass was right at her feet, a puddle of water and ice cubes spreading across the carpet. But Julie kindly went over, grabbed a towel, and soaked up the water. Then she got a new glass and went back to the kitchen to sort the pills.

The microwave beeped.

"Julie, honey. The remote is all wet. Bring me a towel in."

She showed up a second later and thrust a paper towel out to the old woman.

"You know I have my own family to get dinner ready for, Elena?" She said.

"I know."

Julie had been coming to Elena Stroller's house every day after work for the last year. It wasn't on her way. She wasn't paid to do it. Elena wasn't family. She just did. Ever since the church introduced her to the Strollers eight or so years ago, she had periodically come out to their old farmhouse to help them, knowing that no one else would. Frank had been just as lazy and needy as Elena before he died. Together they made the most unlikable couple in existence, and after, Elena had with no one. Julie's family was understanding. Her kids thought it was nice that she went out of her way to do so much for the Strollers, but sometimes she wondered why she did it.

Julie came back in with the microwave meal emptied onto a plate—the way Elena liked it—in one hand and a fist full of pills in the other. She put the food down on the tv-tray and handed the medicine to Elena. Julie went to grab her coat.

"Thank you, Julie," Julie said, mimicking Elena's voice.

Elena was silent.

"Alright," Julie said as she threw the jacket around her back, "I'm going now." She had to force herself to say this next part, "Is there anything you need before I go, Elena?"

The old woman didn't respond. She just kept taking her pills and staring at the TV while Julie waited for a reply.

Fine, Julie thought, and she reached for the crusty doorknob, thinking about how she would get a call later. Too bad.

"Wait, Julie Honey. I can't find my piulls," Elena said. She said the word pills as if it had three syllables to it. She over-enunciated certain words like this. Her voice would also get shill and loud when she did this, and Julie couldn't help thinking her voice sounded like a baby crying.

"What do you mean," Julie said as she spun around. "I gave you all of them. Did you drop one?"

"No," Elena said. Her face scrunched with a little anger and frustration that Julie hadn't read her mind. "I mean the other piulls. My nighttime piulls!"

"Don’t scream at me. I’m standing right here.” Julie tried to keep her voice calm.

She went into the kitchen and looked at the assortment of orange bottles lining the countertop.

“Which one is missing?”

“The thyroid one! I can’t find it!” Elena shouted with the same tone in her voice her kids threw at her when they were too busy playing Halo to set the table or couldn’t be bothered to take out the trash.

Julie quickly looked through the dozens of medications for the thyroid pill. It just had to be the one that could cause problems if she went a night without it, Julie thought. She looked on the floor, behind the trashcan, under the counter. No piulls. Julie let out a deep sigh and started looking under the clutter. She preemptively grimaced at the thought of what moldy mess she might find under each month-old newspaper or stack of junk mail.

Elena wasn’t a hoarder. She just had a lot of stuff. Or so she claimed anytime Julie broached the subject. Hoarder or not, the only thing Elena knew how to find was the ashtray, and even that was fifty-fifty some times.

“God, Elena. It’s not in the kitchen. Where did you take your pills last night?”

Julie went back to the living room and looked at the old woman whose attention was fixated on the television. She snapped her fingers and walked in front of the tv to get her attention. Elena bobbed her head and looked around.

“Did you take them into your room last night?”

“I don’t remember, Julie Honey.”

“You don’t remember where you took the pills that you lost.”

“In the bathroom, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Elena never took her eyes off the tv.

So, Julie went into the bathroom to look in the medicine cabinet caked in calcium residue. Not there. She looked around, even grabbing the handle near the tub and leaning over the edge to look in there. She had come here with her son, Cody, a few weeks ago to help install that grip. Elena had complained about how hard it was to get in and out, and she was scared of falling. Julie was also afraid Elena would fall because she would be the one driving out here to pick her naked body off the floor. Julie shook her head and frowned at the memory of that. She was still mad at Elena.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Not more than a month before they put up the handle, Julie had made the mistake of confiding in Elena Stroller. It was a stupid decision, and she knew it at the time. For some reason, Elena patting the couch next to her and saying, “Sit down and tell me what’s bothering you,” had triggered some illusion of elderly wisdom. The tone in her voice even chanced from cranky toddler to sage in that briefest moment of clarity. Julie remembered thinking this might have been what she was like before. Before their son died. Before Frank sublet the farmland. Before she knew her. And she did need someone to talk to, so she sat down.

Julie had nearly broken out into tears when she told the story of how Cody had come out of the closet. She and her husband didn’t know what to do or what to say. And she forgot who she was talking to because Elena had been listening instead of watching the tv. But once she finished her story, Elena’s head snapped back to the tv, and all she said was “Okay.” She unceremoniously dropped the entire conversation, dismissing it as not her problem. And Julie sat there, asking herself what she had expected. Wisdom? Advice? As if. But that wasn’t why she was mad.

She had to bribe Cody to come out to the Stroller Farm on a Saturday in the first place, but she couldn’t have done the measuring and drilling alone. Elena was human at first. She offered to make lemonade as they worked. Elena came in with the cups on the tray, pushing the bathroom door open with her backside. Then she said, “So, Julie Honey. Is this your faggot son, or the other one?”

The piulls weren’t in the bathroom. They weren’t in the sink. They weren’t in the tub. They weren’t behind the toilet or under the floormate. So, Julie went into Elena’s bedroom and started looking. There. Not on the nightstand. Not on the dresser. She got down on her chest and reached under the bed, where she found something else that made her frown in anger.

“Elena, did you know you had this power sander under your bed?” Julie asked, presenting the beaten-up old box with the black power cord hanging out the top.

“Yeah,” Elena said. If she were Cody’s age, she might have followed it up with “duh!”

“That’s great that you knew that. Because it would have been nice to know back when you said I could borrow it and we couldn’t find it. Remember that?”

“I remember? Did you find my piulls yet, Julie Honey? ”

She had asked Elena if Frank had owned a sander when they were refinishing their kitchen table. Elena promised that he did and led her to the barn. They spent all day in the heat looking for the sander in every nook and cranny of the musty barn. Every time Elena said it was for sure in that pile in the corner, but it might be buried deep down. After the third piled of junk, she figured out that Elena was trying to get her barn reorganized. There was no power sander, and Elena refused to say thank you for the free labor. For the next weeks, she tried to use the promise of the sander to get Julie to do the rest of the barn.

Julie threw the box on the couch and muttered, “You’re impossible,” under her breath. Then her cellphone rang. She dug into her pocket and flipped it open. It was her husband wanting to know why she wasn’t home from work yet.

“Oh, I’m just here with Elena still trying to find her nighttime piulls,” Julie said, giving the old woman a nasty glance when she turned up the volume to the tv. “Well, the roast is in the crockpot, hun,” Julie continued. “You and the kids can eat without me if you want. I won’t be much longer.”

Elena turned the volume up again, and Julie slammed her phone closed without saying goodbye to her husband.

“I am trying to talk on the phone to my husband waiting for me! You can’t mute the damn tv, Elena?”

Elena matched her yelling and raised her a shrill scream. “I’m watching this. Go to the other room!”

“Nuh-uh!” Julie scolded. “I am not arguing with you. I’m missing dinner with my family. You can miss the end of your show. Stand up. I wanna see that those pills aren’t underneath of you.”

Elena refused. “They’re not under me. Look somewhere else.” She said it so matter-of-factly that Julie’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. She bent down, grabbed the old woman by the arm, pulled her out of the white armchair, and saw that there was nothing underneath of her.

“I told you, I ain't sittin’ on them!” Elena wined and lowered herself back to the chair.

“So sorry,” Julie said sarcastically.

She started looking through the living room, and she wasn’t careful about it anymore. She ripped the cushions off the couch. Nothing. She threw the rug up. Nothing. She tossed through a stack of magazines. Nothing.

“It’s not in here either, Julie Honey. Why don’t you look somewhere else? Maybe they’re out in the barn.”

“Were you in the barn last night?”

“No, but maybe someone came in here and moved them out there. Can you check? Please, Julie Honey. I need those piulls.”

Julie said nothing. She glared over her shoulder at the needy bitch who went back to watching her show.

It was then that she became suddenly aware of how hot she was running around the house in her jacket. She stripped it off and went back to the kitchen for a glass of water. All she could think about as she ran the scratched plastic cup under the tap was how Elena had thrown a fit the last time she got a glass of water and didn’t then wash the cup and put it back in the cupboard. She swallowed hard and resented the woman she had taken care of all this time. She was always acting so feeble, like she could do nothing for herself.

She finished the cup and set it down on the counter next to the sink while she stared at the cupboard, imagining just how naïve she would have to be to wash the cup and put it away. That’s when something caught her eye. At the top of the cabinet above the sink. Something orange. Something round. Something in a place where it should never be. Julie climbed on the counter and reached up to grab the pill bottle. She marched back to the living room and dropped the bottle in Elena’s lap with a look of stern accusation on her face.

“Oh, Julie Honey. You found them. Thank you, Julie Honey. Thank you. You found my piulls for me. Thank you.”

The thank-yous flowed from the old woman’s mouth like tickets spewing out of an arcade cabinet. She could almost hear the dinging siren going off to let everyone know she’d struck gold.

“Cut it out, Elena,” Julie said, unable to hide the anger in her voice. “Tell me how the hell they got on top of the cupboards. Not the top shelf. They were on top of the cabinets.”

“I don’t know, Julie Honey. I don’t know how they could get up there. But thank you. You found my Piulls. Thank you. Why don’t you go ahead and borrow that sander if you want, now, Julie Honey? I insist. I want to do something nice for you. You found my piulls. I want to—”

Julie interrupted her. “You put them up there.”

Elena was motionless for a whole second before going back to her rambling thanks.

“You put them on top of the cabinet. That’s why you knew they weren’t in the living room.”

“I don’t know how they got up there, Julie Honey. I don’t know.”

“You put them there to keep me here looking for them. God Elena! Why? Why would you keep me away from my family like that?”

The old woman was silent. She looked down at the carpet as her whole body twitched. She looked like a convict who’d just heard the guilty verdict and was realizing the extent of their consequences for the first time. Julie wasn’t sure if Elena even knew what a consequence was.

“I know you’re lonely, Elena, but I come here every day after work to help you. I can’t stay every night to keep you company, and I’m sick of you trying to use me like this!”

The old woman remained silent as Julie once again put on her jacket and reached for the door. Before she left, Julie spun around, grabbed the sander off the couch, and shook her head at Elena one more time.

She got into her car and drove away, spinning her tires on the gravel drive. She raced the sun to get home before dark. And as she pulled into her garage and apologized to her family for being so late, her phone rang. Caller ID showed it was Elena. But she was too angry to hear an apology.

Elena called the next morning again before Julie went to work, but it was still too soon to hear her say sorry. She called again while Julie was working. And again, just before the end of the day. Then one final time when Julie had gone straight home after work. That time, Julie picked up the phone.

“Julie Honey. When are you going to get here? I’ve been calling you. I need you to pick me up some cigarettes before you come over today, Julie Honey.”

She flipped her phone shut without a word and swore she would never go back to see Elena Stroller ever again.