Ana #2
“I find myself wondering,” says the detective, following close behind. “Your ex was found dead this morning. It’s too early for the toxicology report. But it does look, according to the medical examiner, as if someone poisoned him. Blue around the mouth, clawing at his throat. No other
visible cause of death.”
The image jars, but I say nothing, just as Agnes would have advised.
“Now your friend from the brunch is being rushed to the hospital. Her husband said severe stomach pains, loss of consciousness.
A seizure.”
I move through the threshold, but he’s right at my heels. I stop in the door frame, make it clear that he’s not welcome inside.
He’s too close. I can smell his clean scent, feel his heat. I think about running my fingers through that inky black hair.
I know it to be soft and silky.
Stop. Stop.
“Baa,” says Noah. Bad man, that’s right. Smart kid.
“In my business, you’re always looking for connections,” says the detective, rubbing at his stubbled jaw. “The ways in which
seemingly separate events are linked.”
“Is that what you were looking for the night we first met?”
He moves another step close, and I move back. A dance.
That brief uptick of a smile. “What were you looking for?”
“I got what I was looking for.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be.”
It was a particularly seedy bar, the wee hours when it’s not yesterday and it’s not tomorrow. There was some classic rock
ballad on the jukebox. The bathroom mirror had a big crack in it, and when I caught my reflection there, I looked like a cubist
version of myself, fractured and strange. Holding on to him, I let him take me hard and desperate against the cold porcelain
sink. I had a painful bruise on my back afterward.
I’ve really got to get off that app.
I start to close the door, but he places his foot there to stop me.
We might have had a drink together after, even maybe laughed a little about how crazy it was to meet people like this—if I hadn’t snuck out the back.
“I waited,” he says. “You took off. Something I said?”
He never said anything about being a cop. Of course he wouldn’t. And I never said anything about being dumped by my boyfriend,
or how sometimes I meet people on the app just to feel something, anything, even if it’s the tingling fear of risk, or the
thrill of risky behavior of which Vera would vehemently disapprove. Vera would never hook up with some random man on an app strictly for no-strings sexual encounters. Not Little Mrs. Perfect Life.
Noah starts squirming in my arms, making unhappy noises.
“It’s time for you to go,” I say.
A beat. A breath.
“So, as I was saying,” he says, slipping back into detective mode. “Today, I have a dead body buried in a shallow grave in
the park. Now a young woman rushed to the hospital. At the moment, there’s only one obvious connection.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
Well, I walked right into that one. I offer him a wan smile.
“I’m asking you to leave. Unless you have a warrant, you need to go. I know my rights.”
“Of course you do. Everyone does these days thanks to all the crime fiction, podcasts, docu-dramas, what have you.”
He pauses a second, our eyes locked, and I find myself thinking about the feel of his lips on my throat. Then he removes his
foot. I quickly close the door between us, hard.
“See you at nine tomorrow, Ms. Blacksmith.” He raises his voice so that I can hear him through the door.
“With my attorney,” I say loudly enough for him to hear.
Noah thinks that’s funny, offers me a drooly smile. He’s a decent audience. I touch my finger to his nose.
“As is your right,” says the detective.
I decide to let him have the last word because I’m reeling from this day, exhausted, and, yes, as loathe as I am to admit
it—afraid.
I don’t have an attorney per se. I have a text from Payton saying that her ex—big-shot city defense lawyer Victor Freeman—will take us to the station tomorrow
morning. I wonder if my good pal Payton would be as willing to help me if she knew that I slept with Victor very shortly after
they broke up. It was just a one-night thing after we’d bumped into each other at that notorious law firm Christmas party,
the same night that I met Paul actually, though Paul and I wouldn’t hook up for a while. I just hoped they didn’t get back
together because then I’d have to carry this dirty little secret to their wedding, their kid’s baptism, birthday parties,
whatever. This is an example (okay, another example) of the behavior that Vera says needs improvement. Consequences, Ana! It’s like you have the frontal lobe development of a twelve-year-old boy.
Now at the station tomorrow I’ll have slept with both of the men in the interrogation room. Relationship status: complicated.
“Good night, Detective,” I say because I know he’s still standing there.
There’s a moment, with him on one side of the door and me on the other, when I could see my way to opening it and letting
him inside. Not to search the premises. But to let his hands roam my body. To tell him everything. He seems so familiar. I
feel like he’s known to me, and I am known to him. But that’s just fantasy, right? We’re strangers. Maybe even enemies.
Question your impulses. More advice from the shrink.
Noah makes another unhappy noise, reaches out and grabs a big fistful of my hair, yanking painfully.
“Easy, tiger,” I say, unfurling his little fingers.
Babies and therapists. Major cock-blocks.
“Good night, Ms. Blacksmith.”
I watch out the side window as Bandeau walks down the path and gets in his car.
Finally, he drives away, the other vehicles clearing, the police cruiser included. It was just an ambulance call, someone
sick needing medical attention. There’s no reason for the police to be here except maybe protocol, or because they had nothing
better to do on a slow Sunday night.
Still, I’m jumpy, edgy. Are they coming back? Will they bring a warrant? Will they want to search my apartment? I had better get back there at some point and clean up.
That detective is going to be a problem.
Now Noah is bobbing his head toward my breast with an open mouth. It takes me a second to get it.
Oh.
I find the bottle in the fridge, then pop it in the warmer the way Iggy showed me. Feeding him, it turns out, is easy and
a decent distraction. He rests in my arms, and sucks away like a little gremlin, feet kicking. The kitchen is bright and big
box store chic, everything white and flat, stainless steel appliances. But it is all cheap, shiny on the outside, particle
board on the inside. Not like at Vera’s where everything might as well be carved from marble—bespoke cabinetry, lavish walk-in
closets, an espresso machine that cost more than a trailer home.
Iggy is prone to those little signs with inspirational sayings. You have to look through the rain to see the rainbow, in bold type on a dish towel hanging from the oven handle. Sing like no one is listening on a little wooden key rack by the door leading to the garage.
Poor Iggy. She’s always been so desperate to make lemonade out of the lemons life has served her, over and over. It was only
after we knew each other for a while that I would learn that her young life was almost as unstable and chaotic as mine and
Vera’s.
I’m thinking, wheels turning.
Stomach cramps, loss of consciousness, seizure. Solanine, the active ingredient in deadly nightshade, is a possibility. Foxglove, a digitoxin, might also present first as an upset stomach—vomiting, cramps, dizziness. I flash on the open drawer in The Kitchen, the missing hemlock.
I am mentally running through the brunch menu, when a horrible smell wafts up from the little monster.
I am not changing him. No way.
“That’s where I draw the fucking line, kid.”
I swear he winks at me.
I rise quickly, leave the bottle in the sink, grab the diaper bag by the door. Something catches my eye on the counter. Iggy’s
phone. I grab it and stuff it in my pocket. Then I’m buckling the little stinko into the car seat in the back of Brock and
Iggy’s car. I roll down the windows, all of them, and head to the hospital.
Poison, Agnes always said, is a woman’s weapon. Because female power must be subtle, a secret. It must hide itself in whispers
and spells, incantations and prayers. And harmful substances are all around us, often masquerading as something beautiful,
a pretty flower you might put in a vase, one that might grow peacefully in your garden.
The herbalist embraces her female side, in that she nurtures a garden, uses her skills and the earth to produce, to bring
life. The herbalist heals, using nature’s gifts to soothe and even cure. But some plants are more deadly than any venomous
creature, any gun or knife you might wield. It’s stealthy. Like a snake in the grass, you’ll never see it coming. And by the
time you’re bitten, it might already be too late.
When I get to the hospital, I find Brock slumped in the ER waiting room, eyes rimmed red. He’s been crying, which I suppose
is appropriate but fills me with disgust.
“How is she?” I say, coming to stand in front of him. Noah is squirmy and smelly in my arms. Brock rises and I shove the baby
at him.
“I don’t know,” he says, taking Noah, who pumps his legs in delight. “No one has come out.”
“He needs to be changed.”
He nods, takes the diaper bag, and walks off looking shell-shocked. If there’s anything I can’t tolerate it’s male weakness.
“Kindness isn’t weakness,” Iggy said about Brock just after I dumped him. I was listing his many flaws and all the things
about him that had grown to annoy me. I should have known she had her sights on him. In fact, maybe I did know that, and that’s
why I initially wanted him.
“Strength isn’t just about power,” she said. “It takes strength to love someone well.”
But that sounded like one of her insipid inspirational plaques.
The emergency room stinks of blood, illness, and fear. I gaze around at the mess of humanity. Everyone here is in a state
of disrepair. A thin frightened-looking young girl holds an ice pack to her bruised head. An old woman coughs wetly in the
corner. We’re so fragile, aren’t we? Our bodies so susceptible to breaking down. I feel a rush of fear and sadness, which
I tamp down with anger.
Brock returns with the baby, who has gone quiet, head lolling against his father’s shoulder. Noah rubs at his eyes with a
tiny fist. He’s tired; it’s way past his bedtime.
“I fed him,” I say. I touch his fat little hand and he grabs for my finger and holds on tight.
Ew. I’m not going to start liking this little brat. It’s bad enough that I have “feelings” for Coraline and Grant, the little
terrorists who literally take up every bit of Vera’s emotional bandwidth.
Noah reaches for me, and I grudgingly take him. He nestles in, rests his head against my chest.
“How about that?” says Brock with an unpleasant smirk. “You are human.”
There’s bitterness between us, an edge. He wishes Iggy and I weren’t friends. Maybe he wonders if we compare notes on his sexual prowess, or lack thereof. We don’t. Iggy refuses to dish on Brock, even when she’s drunk.
“My mom’s on her way,” he says when I don’t bother to respond. “She’ll take Noah.”
“Good,” I say. The baby suddenly feels five pounds heavier in my arms and he’s a little chunker to begin with. I look down
and he’s fast asleep.
“What happened at that brunch, Ana?” Brock is looking at me, suspicion etching lines between his thick brows. “She was fine
before she went.”
But then the doctor is approaching, a hot, young Indian guy with dark skin and a lustrous mane of black hair. I notice a simple
gold wedding ring. Not a deal breaker.
“I’m Dr. Pavesh,” he says to Brock. “I’m afraid we’ve had to intubate your wife. She’s in a coma.”
“Oh, god,” moans Brock.
The doctor keeps talking, the room spinning.
Low blood pressure.
Loss of kidney and liver function.
“Can you tell me what she’s had to eat in the last twenty-four hours?”
All eyes are on me. “I don’t know,” I say, voice rasping. “I wasn’t paying attention at brunch.”
“Maybe we can get a list of items that were served?”
“Of course,” I manage. “My sister was hosting. I’ll call her.”
They let us back to see her. In the intensive care unit, she looks like a puppet, pretty and still, with tubes from her arms,
her mouth. A machine is breathing for her, its mechanical sigh filling the room. A rhythmic beeping assures us she’s still
alive.
I take her cool, delicate hand. Brock has taken the baby and stands in the corner, crying again.
It’s just the two of us, like it used to be. Just Iggy and Ana, no secrets between us, inseparable, devoted. I guess that
was a long time ago. We’ve both changed.
For some poisons, there’s no antidote. You just have to treat the symptoms and hope the body survives the toxins’ ravages.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper so no one can hear me.
Brock is sniffling behind me. A pretty blonde charge nurse comes in and takes the baby from his arms. “He can’t be in here,”
she tells him. He reluctantly lets her take the baby, and then we’re alone, the sound of Noah squalling growing fainter. Nurses
crowd around him outside the door; soon the baby is smiling, and his adoring audience coos.
Brock stands behind me now. “What happened at the fucking brunch, Ana?”
I shrug, looking at Iggy’s blue-veined eyelids, her jutting cheekbones. “I don’t know. Nothing. It was just mimosas and girl
talk until that detective came.”
“What did she eat?” he hisses.
But my head is spinning, words jammed in my throat. Paul is dead. Iggy’s gravely ill. Shallow grave. Coma. This is bad. Really
bad.
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Well, that tracks, doesn’t it? Because you’re only ever thinking of yourself.”
I’ve never seen him like this—angry, afraid. Even when we broke up, there was no heat, no yelling or harsh words. Just: If that’s what you want, Ana, I’ll respect it.
“That’s not true,” I protest, even though of course it is. But he’s already turned back to Iggy.
I edge toward the door. Brock sits down beside the bed, takes her hand, presses it to his lips. He doesn’t even seem to notice
me slipping out the door, his focus on his wife so total now, his questions of me forgotten.
Down the hallway, his mother—who always disliked me—is marching toward the room. A domineering, thick-bodied hausfrau, she’ll
take over here. I give a quick glance at the gaggle of nurses cooing over the baby, move quickly in the other direction.
Then I’m outside in the dark, cold night. Another ambulance is approaching, sirens bleating.
I take their car again and hum out of the lot, heading where I always do when the shit hits the fan.
To Vera.