When I got to the part where I found Spence trapping Gabrielle in the Orchid Center, his hand on her hip, Marshall and Gabrielle exchanged a speaking glance. I pressed on as Marshall picked up the drifts of colored tissue paper, still scattered on the floor by my built-in desk, and tucked them back into the gaudy gift bag. He returned all this to the table as well. I plucked the Bluetooth from my ear, then set it beside the phone.

Now all the things the mother had given me were clustered in the center of the table. Marshall sat down on my other side, and the three of us huddled around the pile as I spoke, as if it were a tiny campfire on the coldest, darkest night of the year. I reached out and powered down the Bluetooth, then made sure the ringer was on. If she called, I’d want her on the speaker.

If. That word almost cracked the icy quiet that had come over me in the car. I didn’t let it. My whole life was hinged on that short word. If she called, I needed to be clear and calm and perfect.

And if she didn’t? That was an abyss that made me put the word away.

Even thinking it might be a cosmic betrayal. Not just of Robert or my hope in his small heartbeat. It felt like a betrayal of the mother herself, as if my doubt could reverberate through the universe and make her call her daughter back and throw away her own burner phone.

The phones were our only concrete connection, but there was another, stranger cord. Our sick intimacy echoed still, and even though I understood now how much she’d lied, I still believed in it. Perhaps because it was the only hope I had.

She’d promised to call in the morning, and it wasn’t even midnight. I would not break yet.

I’d come to the place in the story where Gabrielle had found Marshall and me on the path to the Botanical Garden’s exit. “And the rest you know. You saw what those capsules did to him.”

Gabrielle looked up from her screen, the set of her pretty face so very serious. “How do you know it was the pills? Maybe it was a seizure.”

Marshall shook his head. “That would be one hell of a coincidence.”

I agreed with him. “Whatever she gave me, it wasn’t roofies. It was meant to kill him.”

Marshall glanced at the silver flask. “We’ll find out. The cops can test the bourbon.”

Instantly and urgently, my hand was on his arm. “We’re not calling the cops.”

He looked surprised. “We have to. This is way above my pay grade. Unless you think we should go straight to the FBI?”