Ana
I avoid eye contact with Vera in the rearview mirror.
She’s talking to Victor, but her stare is like a cattle prod. I have to get out of this car and away from them both. I feel
suffocated. Oppressed.
I’m still shaking inside from our visit to the police station. When that detective looks at me, it’s like he sees right through
me, knows all my secrets. I can’t hide myself from him, the real me. I don’t even want to.
The truth is that I have hurt people.
Sometimes I just get angry. Well, maybe it’s a bit more than anger. There’s like a little switch that flips. One minute I’m
fine, normal, the right version of me. The next I’m not. You know what it is? There’s a certain kind of injustice that I just
can’t tolerate. Someone who uses his position of power—whether it’s his place in the system, or his physical strength, or
his wealth—to hurt and abuse others. My shrink calls it a trigger. That’s about right. The trigger on a gun.
My phone pings. It’s Brock. She’s getting worse. You have to do something.
“Victor,” I say. “Can you drop me at the hospital? Iggy and Brock need me.”
“Is that a good idea?” Vera asks Victor instead of me. A little lash of anger. She always treats me like one of her children.
Victor bobs his bald head from side to side considering. I remember how the crown of his head is stubbly and left a slight
friction burn on the inside of my thighs.
I’ve got to hand it to him. He’s been strictly professional, not so much as a sideways glance in my direction.
“I think it’s fine,” he says finally. “Probably looks good, that she’s attending to her friend and her friend’s family. If
anyone is watching. Just don’t be overly affectionate with the husband or spend any time alone with him outside the hospital.”
“As if,” I say. “I broke up with him years ago. We try to get along for Iggy’s sake.”
“Ana, listen to Victor.” Vera’s voice is stern, bossy. “Do what he says.”
A lash of annoyance. “I’m not a child.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
Victor pulls off the highway and within minutes we’re arriving at the hospital. As soon as he stops I get out of the car.
Vera exits with me.
“We need to talk,” she says in a fierce whisper. “If you’re not honest with me I can’t help you.” She’s always been like this,
so desperate to control everything. Isn’t she exhausted?
“I am being honest with you. I’ve told you everything.” I don’t love how whiny I sound.
“How much does Regina Hayes know about The Cove?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did you tell Paul?”
“No! Of course not. But they’ve both lived in this town all their lives. There have always been rumors about The Cove. It’s
like an urban legend.”
“Except it’s true.”
“Look—there are no secrets in the age of social media, right? For fuck’s sake, there are online herbalists now, TikTok witches, Instagram voodoo doll practitioners.
There’s a Facebook page for modern day veneficas.
” A sorceress who uses potions and drugs for various reasons.
“People are practicing The Knowledge out in the light these
days. The good news is that there’s no such thing as truth anymore, right? Truth these days is whatever your curated social
media feed tells you is the truth.”
There’s a look that Vera saves only for me—some combination of fear, anger, pity, and love. I can’t really blame her. I’ve
fucked up quite a bit.
“Where did that doll come from?” she asks.
I have some ideas, but I just shrug. “You tell me.”
“It’s not one of mine,” she says. Coraline told me about Vera’s room in the basement. I’m surprised she still makes them,
those little effigies for protection. She seems to have left everything about The Knowledge behind her, buried it beneath
her supermom, trophy wife persona.
There’s something dancing behind my sister’s eyes. I get a brief glimpse of that inner beast, the one she keeps locked up
in the dark, the one she starves and neglects. I have a fleeting thought.
No. No way.
“I’m going to fix this,” I tell her.
“You keep saying that. But what is your plan, Ana?”
I hate it when she leans on my name like that, as if I’m one of the kids.
“I am going to figure out what happened to Paul and Iggy, figure out who did this.”
It sounds weak because it is. I don’t have a plan. I never do. That’s one of my biggest problems as a person.
“How?”
“I’ll handle it,” I say even though I have no idea what to do.
But I do have a way to maybe help Iggy, and that’s where my focus is now.
“You’d better,” she hisses. “Because I don’t like that detective. He’s got his sights on you.”
If she only knew.
“He knows too much about us,” she continues. “This could be very bad. And we’re already on warning with The Cove. I didn’t
like Lisander’s attitude. She’s not going to help us again.”
She grabs my hand, and I see it. Vera hides fear with anger. I remember the look she has now from the night Agnes came to
get us from the police station, Mac taken away in the ambulance, Sadie dragged into a police car in cuffs. The ground had
fallen away beneath our feet and all we had then was each other. She looks tired now, tiny lines etching around her eyes.
I squeeze her hand, then back away from her, our eyes locked, finally turning to head inside the hospital. Sirens wail as
an ambulance approaches, Vera keeping worried eyes on me. I wish there had been someone to protect Vera the way she has always
protected me. Maybe then she wouldn’t be such a panic case.
Inside the building, I’m assailed by a powerful wave of negative energy. How can anyone get well in a place so full of sickness, fear, death? I wonder as I march through the crowded foyer. The energy is not conducive to healing. Healing comes from the earth, from
within. Not in a sterile, harshly lit place like this.
In the elevator, I stand next to an ancient woman in a wheelchair attended to by a young male nurse. She looks up at me. The
Crone—knowledge and wisdom, a warning that the world is cruel and random, unless you do something about it and even then.
She holds a rosary in her hand, worrying fine polished dark beads and a tarnished crucifix between her crooked thumb and forefinger.
I smile at her, and she returns it with a toothless grin.
“Be careful,” she says with a little laugh. Maybe she’s talking to me. Maybe she isn’t. Her eyes are cloudy and unfocused.
“Always,” I tell her, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. The male nurse gives a wave as I step off the elevator.
In Iggy’s room, Brock sits head bent by her bed. He’s whispering something near her ear.
I wait outside the door a minute, watching them, feeling like an intruder, filled with regret for how I’ve treated my friend. I remember the promise I made to my sister. That I’d find out who did this. That I’d handle it. I use the moments before I walk into Iggy’s room to think.
Okay, what did Paul and Iggy have in common, aside from me? She used to work at his company, said he was an asshole, handsy.
There was some other incident at their office. A he-said-she-said thing that Paul said was all lies. No charges filed. That’s
when he started his own business—with Regina’s money. Iggy wasn’t too pleased when I started seeing him, told me I should
stay away. She told me the stories that I believed were just rumors. I wasn’t deterred. We had very different tastes when
it came to men. And when she warned me off him, I got mad. Since the argument, since the baby, Iggy and I were spending less
time together. But we were still close, still talked all the time. Just there was a tension there that hadn’t been there before.
She’d grown closer to Esme. Maybe there’s something there? Esme has hated Paul with a passion since the Business Journal article. But Esme’s a nerd, a gamer. A successful businesswoman. She’s no killer, right? And I can’t see why she would want
to hurt Iggy.
So, who was at the girls’ brunch, my exorcism?
Vera, Esme, Payton, Iggy, and me.
And April was there, serving. Vera’s little mouse had access to all the food. But what does April have to do with Paul? What
reason would she have to hurt Iggy?
We’ve all known each other for ages. And April’s been working for Vera for as long as the kids have been alive. She’s a member
of The Cove, is Lisander’s student. The truth is that April has never even been remotely interesting to me.
Until now.
I enter the room and Brock looks up, red eyed.
“How is she?” I say and he just shakes his head. I give him a hug. Beneath the negativity, there is a little bit of affection. I did give them my blessing, and I meant it. They’re right for each other. Anyone can see that.
I take a little vial from my bag, hold it out to him.
“What is that?”
“It’s a milk thistle blend, something Agnes developed to combat the effects of amatoxin—which Iggy’s symptoms seem to indicate.
It might help to protect her. That’s the best we can hope for, to strengthen the organs while the toxins work their way through
her system.”
“Are you sure it will work?”
I shake my head. I’m not. There are too many unknowns. What she ingested. How much. How healthy and strong she was to begin
with. I know she’s a fighter, that she loves Brock and the little stinko. So that’s something in her arsenal, the will to
live. Iggy looks like a doll, Cupid’s bow mouth, too red against gray skin, deep purple under her eyes, wrists tree-branch
thin. She’s fading. I take her hand and I can barely feel her life force.
“Iggy. Don’t you dare leave us,” I tell her sternly. “Don’t leave Noah. He needs you. I’ve been a shitty friend. And you were
right about Paul. I need you.”
Do her blue eyelids flutter?
I walk over to the IV line and give Brock a questioning glance. He shrugs. I take some satisfaction that Brock clearly knows
I would never hurt Iggy. Otherwise, he’d never let me near her. But there’s not much hope for modern medicine now. Of course,
all modern medicine derives from the shaman of indigenous cultures; all medication comes initially from plants. There is nothing