Edith Crumbley counted the pills in her palm before her daughter-in-law could see. Four white, one blue. The blue one was the thick one, the one that turned her tongue to felt and her thoughts to wet paper. She had swallowed it every morning for a year inside this shut-up house the regime called a care wing. She wanted to die under an open sky, not under this popcorn ceiling. To do that, she had to think. To think, the blue pill had to go. Marge stood in the doorway with a paper cup of water and a face like a slammed drawer. Her curlers were still in. They were always still in. "Swallow them, Mother. I am not standing here all morning." Edith mumbled. She always mumbled. It was the one thing they let her keep. She let her lip hang and her eyes drift behind the thick lenses so Marge would see only fog. "Verdun," Edith said. "The mud came up to the horses' necks." "Nobody cares about your war, Mother. Pills." Edith lifted her palm. She put the four white pills on her tongue. She tipped the water. She tucked the blue pill under her ring finger against the loose skin of her thumb. Marge squinted. "Open." Edith opened. Empty pink mouth. Marge grunted and turned to shout at the boy down the hall about his shoes. Edith closed her hand. For a long minute she sat still. The blue pill pressed cold into her palm. She had done this before and lost her nerve, swallowed it late out of habit, gone back under. Not today. She pushed the pill down between the mattress and the metal rail of the bed frame. It clicked against something small. She felt with her finger. Three more pills already there. Older. Chalky. She had done this before and forgotten she had done it. That scared her more than Marge did. She folded her hands in her lap and waited. An hour passed. The felt in her mouth thinned. The wet paper in her head dried at the edges. She looked at the window. Cheap blinds, screws in the frame, a lock with a key that hung on Marge's belt loop next to the pantry key. She saw the screws. She counted them. Six. She had not counted anything in a year. Marge came back with lunch on a tray. Canned soup. She set it down hard. "You look funny," Marge said. "You sick?" Edith let her jaw slack. "The Kaiser's boys," she mumbled. "Barbed wire." Marge rolled her eyes and left. Edith picked up the spoon. Her hand did not shake. She looked at the six screws in the window frame and, for the first time since they brought her here, she began to plan.