Miss Eleanor’s weathered hands trembled as she counted out the vitamins, arranging them in neat little rows on her scratched kitchen table. The late afternoon sun filtered through the dusty windows of her ramshackle farmhouse, casting long shadows across the faded linoleum floor.
“Mama, you don’t need to take all those pills,” Sarah drawled from the doorway, her voice thick with concern. “The doctor already said—”
“Hush now,” Eleanor snapped, not looking up from her ritual. “These ain’t just regular vitamins. These here are special. They talk to me, you see. Tell me things about what’s coming.”
Sarah stepped into the kitchen, her bare feet sticking slightly to the tacky floor. The humid Mississippi air hung heavy around them, filled with the drone of cicadas and the distant lowing of cattle.
“Things like what, Mama?” she asked, though she dreaded the answer.
Eleanor’s rheumy eyes gleamed with an unsettling intensity. “Why, about your daddy, of course. He’s coming back soon. The orange ones told me so last night.”
Sarah’s chest tightened. Her father had been dead for fifteen years, his truck found wrapped around an oak tree after a night of heavy drinking. But Eleanor had never accepted it, turning instead to her increasingly bizarre vitamin obsession.
“Got to take the purple ones at sunset,” Eleanor muttered, “and the yellow ones when the rooster crows. That’s what keeps the bad spirits away. Your daddy taught me that, you know. From the other side.”
The elderly woman’s collection had grown steadily over the years - bottles upon bottles of supplements ordered from dubious sources, their labels promising everything from eternal youth to communion with the dead. Sarah had tried removing them once, only to find her mother had hidden stashes throughout the house, tucked away in old boots and behind loose floorboards.
“How about some real dinner instead?” Sarah suggested gently. “I could fry up those catfish Bobby brought by.”
“Can’t eat yet. Got to take the green ones first or the messages get scrambled.” Eleanor’s fingers danced over the pills like a pianist’s over keys. “Your daddy says he’s sorry, by the way. Sorry he left us like he did.”
Sarah felt the familiar ache in her throat. “Mama, please—”
“He’s standing right behind you now,” Eleanor whispered, her eyes focused on something past Sarah’s shoulder. “Says he wishes he could hold you one more time.”
A cold draft brushed Sarah’s neck, raising goosebumps along her arms. She refused to turn around, refused to feed into her mother’s delusions. But then she heard it - the faintest whisper of her childhood nickname, spoken in a voice she’d tried so hard to forget.
When they found Eleanor the next morning, she was still at the kitchen table, surrounded by her precious vitamins. Her expression was peaceful, almost triumphant. In her final letter, she wrote only: “He came for me, just like the pills promised. Don’t worry, sugar - we’ll watch over you now.”
Sarah buried her mother next to her father’s empty grave, and with them, all the bottles of vitamins she could find. But sometimes, on quiet evenings when the cicadas sing their loudest, she swears she can hear them both laughing from somewhere just beyond the veil, and she wonders if perhaps her mother’s pills had held some truth after all.